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diff --git a/28599.txt b/28599.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4fda79a --- /dev/null +++ b/28599.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5612 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Australian Writers, by Desmond Byrne + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Australian Writers + + +Author: Desmond Byrne + + + +Release Date: April 24, 2009 [eBook #28599] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTRALIAN WRITERS*** + + +E-text prepared by David Wilson and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +AUSTRALIAN WRITERS + +by + +DESMOND BYRNE + + + + + + + +London +Richard Bentley and Son +Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen +1896 + +[All rights reserved] + + + + +CONTENTS. + + PAGE + INTRODUCTION 1 + + MARCUS CLARKE 29 + + HENRY KINGSLEY 90 + + ADA CAMBRIDGE 131 + + ADAM LINDSAY GORDON 159 + + ROLF BOLDREWOOD 189 + + MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED 229 + + TASMA 260 + + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Any survey of the work done by Australian authors suggests a question +as to what length of time ought to be allowed for the development of +distinctive national characteristics in the literature of a young +country self-governing to the extent of being a republic in all but +name, isolated in position, highly civilised, enjoying all the modern +luxuries available to the English-speaking race in older lands, and with +a population fully two-thirds native. The common saying that a country +cannot be expected to produce literature during the earlier state of its +growth is too vague a generalisation. There are circumstances by which +its application may be modified. It certainly does not apply with equal +force to a country whose early difficulties included race conflicts, +war with an external power and political labours of great magnitude, and +to another whose commercial and social development, carried on under +more modern conditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous, has been +facile, unbroken and extraordinarily rapid. + +Nor can paucity of literary product, where it exists, be satisfactorily +explained by the unrest that continues in a new land long after it has +attained material prosperity and the higher refinements of life. The +Americans are a type of an extremely restless people. They have been so +throughout the greater part of their history, and the characteristic is +now more marked than ever. It is a fixed condition of their national +being, an expression of the cumulative ambition that is the source of +their varied progress. Yet from time to time men have arisen among them +who not only have given intimate views of a new civilisation, but have +added something to the permanent stock of what Matthew Arnold used to +call 'the best that is known and thought in the world.' Even when the +independent nationhood of the United States was still but an aspiration, +Benjamin Franklin had familiarised Europe with much that has since been +recognised as inherent in the modes of thought and manners of the +Western race. + +The bulk of the literature of America is, of course, still small in +proportion to the culture and intellectual energy of the country; but it +has been and is sufficient to interpret in a more or less distinctive +way all the leading phases in the evolution of the national thought and +sentiment. The subtle influence of the deeply-grounded religious feeling +which, implanted by the Puritan pioneers, has survived generations of +intense absorption in material progress and the distractions that modern +life offers to the possessors of newly-acquired wealth; the pride of the +people in their independence, and their natural tendency to overrate it +in comparison; with the conditions of other countries; the contrasts +furnished by a society fond of reproducing European habits, yet +retaining a simplicity and freshness of its own: these and other +features in the progress of the United States for over a century may be +found expressed in its literature from the native standpoint, and not +merely from that of the intelligent outside observer. + +An American writer in discussing, a few years ago, the quality of the +literature produced before the War of Secession, when wealth and leisure +were abundant among the planters and in the principal New England towns, +observed that 'there would seem to be something in the relation of a +colony to the mother-country which dooms the thought and art of the +former to a hopeless provincialism.' If a comment so largely fanciful +could be made respecting Australasia and Canada, it would practically +mean--at all events from the American point of view--that as long as +they remain dependencies of Great Britain, and therefore lack the +stimulus of an active patriotism, so long will much of whatever is +individual in their social development and national aspirations be +without expression. In the case of the Australasian colonies it would +further mean (apart from any consideration of their future independence) +that a people far removed from other communities of the same race and +already giving promise of being the greatest power south of the equator, +must continue for an indefinite period to be wholly sustained and swayed +in matters of thought and art by a country over twelve thousand miles +distant that happens for the present to offer the most convenient +markets in which to buy and sell. The point need hardly be discussed, +but it suggests some facts in the intellectual life of Australia that it +will be of interest to name. These may not be found to explain why there +is yet no sign of the coming of an Antipodean Franklin or Irving, or +Hawthorne or Emerson; but they will help to show why the literature of +the country grows so unevenly, why it is chiefly of the objective order +and leaves large tracts of the life of the people untouched. + +Perhaps the paradox that a people may read a great deal and yet not be +interested in literature could hardly be applied to the Australians, +but it is a fact that they make no special effort to encourage the +growth of a literature of their own. By no means unconscious of their +achievements in other directions--in political innovations, in sport and +athletics--they appear not to take any pride in or see the advantage of +promoting creative intellectual work. Will this be considered natural +and reasonable, as already they are supplied with books and plays and +pictures from England and Europe, or as a proof of thoughtlessness and +neglect? 'Why,' asked a critic in the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1819, +'should the Americans write books when a six weeks' passage brings them, +in their own tongue, our sense, science, and genius in bales and +hogsheads?' Are the Australians of these days asking themselves a +similar question? It would seem so. In 1894 they imported books, +magazines and newspapers from the United Kingdom to the value of +L363,741: this, too, at a time when most of the colonies were understood +to be rigidly economising in consequence of a financial crisis. A decade +before the amount was not far short of a hundred thousand pounds +higher. + +Foremost in his list of the salient intellectual tendencies of the +native population of the United States Mr. Bryce places 'a desire to be +abreast of the best thought and work of the world everywhere, and to +have every form of literature and art adequately represented and +excellent of its kind, so that America shall be felt to hold her own +among the nations.' And he further attributes to them 'an admiration for +literary or scientific eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that can be +called genius, with an over-readiness to discover it.' + +Artistic talent in America has from an early period in the history of +the country enjoyed the stimulus of local respect and attention. Mr. +Henry James has testified to the 'extreme honour' in which writers and +artists have always been held there. Literature is now a subject of +special systematic study in all the important schools; literary +organisations are numerous, including no fewer than five thousand +circles for the study of Shakespeare; authorship has become something +like a craze in fashionable society; the intelligence of the criticism +in the weekly press is on the whole equal to that in English journals; +and several of the magazines are largely devoted to the more artistic +kinds of writing. If the results of these incentives to production seem +comparatively small, as they undoubtedly do, it must not be forgotten +that the profession of letters in America long suffered, and is still +suffering, from the absence of international copyright law. Before the +year 1891 the markets were filled with cheap reprints of British and +European works (often of an inferior class), and even now authors have +to encounter competition with a vast quantity of foreign matter of which +copyright, owing to the peculiar conditions of the law and of the +publishing trade, is often obtained at prices much below its real value. + +It is not, however, the native literary product of America that is +noteworthy so much as the widespread and conscious taste for literature +among the people, and the means which they adopt to promote it. The +best friend of Australia could not credit it at present with any +markedly active desire 'to have every form of literature and art +adequately represented and excellent of its kind.' In this respect the +results of the high standard of education attained in the Government +schools and the subsidised Universities are disappointing. The +Universities of Sydney and Melbourne will soon be fifty years old, but +neither is yet represented with distinction in the higher forms of +literature and art. The Governments, at least, do their duty. Having +liberally provided for school education, they spend annually large sums +in making additions to picture-galleries, in maintaining libraries (of +which there are over eleven hundred), technological schools and museums, +and in other ways adding to the comfort and enlightenment of the people. +But large private contributions are rare, and the founding or endowment +of public institutions still rarer. + +Of societies or clubs devoted specially to the interests of literature +there are very few--probably not half a dozen. Here and there among the +upper classes there are little coteries whose members read the English +and French reviews, and are well posted in all movements of interest in +the world of letters, but there is no actual organisation among them, +and they do not seek to extend their influence. Their ambition is +confined to providing for their personal improvement and pleasure. The +reading of the people, though extensive, is not serious nor in any way +specialised, unless a recent notably high average of borrowing in the +historical departments of a few of the free libraries be taken into +account. The leading book exporters in London say that throughout the +Antipodes the public demand is confined, as in England, mainly to the +'general' literature of the hour. 'Whatever has succeeded in London will +usually succeed in Australia' is the invariable remark of the exporter +and the first principle that guides his tentative selection in the case +of all newly-published works. The circulation of the best British weekly +and monthly reviews by some of the principal subscription libraries +helps the reader to choose for himself, but if he should wish to buy a +new book, however valuable, that has not become popular in the business +sense, he will probably have to send to London for it. + +The wealthy people seem to select their reading-matter chiefly with a +view to entertainment. Not long ago the manager of one of the most +fashionable of the Melbourne circulating libraries said that about +ninety per cent. of the female and seventy-five per cent. of the male +frequenters of such libraries in Australia read only novels. But this +average is perhaps rather over-stated, being given at a time when there +was an exceptional demand for certain novels that had obtained notoriety +by an audacious treatment of sex questions and English society. + +A glance at the fare which fourteen of the London publishers provide in +their colonial editions is of interest. Excellent value, of its kind, is +usually offered in these issues, but here again we find proclaimed an +excessive preference for light prose literature. Of 264 volumes in one +'colonial library,' 238 are of fiction. Sketches, memoirs, reminiscences +and a few essays make up most of the balance. The taste of the working +classes, so far as it can be ascertained from the records of the +principal free libraries, is, curious as it may seem, decidedly sounder +than that attributed to the customers of the subscription libraries. It +must be remembered, however, that the former are seldom tempted with new +fiction, and never with fiction of the spicy or questionable kind. Some +of the larger institutions are rigidly exclusive in regard to the light +kinds of literature. + +Authorship in Australia loses an important incentive in the absence of +local magazines. All of the better kind have lacked sufficient public +support. Several of them, including the _Colonial Monthly_ (established +by Marcus Clarke), the _Melbourne Review_, the _Centennial Magazine_, +and the _Australasian Critic_ (the latter conducted by the professors of +the Melbourne University) promised so well that their want of support is +not easily explainable. It has been attributed to an unreasoning +prejudice, an assumption that being locally produced they must +necessarily be inferior; but this probably does the reading public less +than justice. Apparently from their contents, most of the magazines +failed because they were made too Australian in character, too unlike +the English periodicals to which readers had been so long accustomed. +There are many fine magazines in the United States, but their conductors +do not make the mistake of trying to do without British and European +contributions. They know the value of names as well as of matter. +Foreign writers supply about one-third of the contents of the monthlies. +When great interest suddenly attaches to some national question, their +enterprise, like that of the newspapers of the country, sometimes takes +the special form of securing cabled summaries of the opinions of +influential politicians in Great Britain and elsewhere for immediate +publication. + +A contributory cause of the failure of Australian magazines is the fact +that the cost of their mechanical production has always been higher +than that of any of their imported competitors. This promises to be a +difficulty for some years to come. Book-publishing, as a separate +business, is also practically impossible, for like reasons. The +Australian reader attaches no special value to the possibilities of the +local magazine, partly because its place as a literary and art record is +considered to be fairly supplied by the weekly newspapers. Moreover, it +is said he demands cheapness as well as high quality in his periodicals, +and knows that both can be got in several English, American and European +magazines. If this be so, the same predilection will no doubt account +for the spectacle of leading London firms sending to the colonies tons +of their popular modern books in paper covers, and offering them at +about half the price charged in the United Kingdom, where they are +obtainable only in cloth-bound editions. + +That no one has yet lived by the production of literature in Australia +is not a matter for surprise. No one, indeed, would seriously think of +attempting to do so. Gordon was a mounted policeman, a horse-breaker, a +steeplechase-rider--anything but a professional man of letters; Marcus +Clarke was a journalist and playwright, and wrote only two novels in +fourteen years; Rolf Boldrewood's books were written in spare hours +before and after his daily duties as a country magistrate; Henry +Kingsley returned to England before publishing anything; Kendall held a +Government clerkship which he exchanged for journalism; Mr. Brunton +Stephens is in the Queensland Civil Service; Mr. B. L. Farjeon's +colonial work was mainly done in connection with the New Zealand press; +Messrs. Marriott, Watson, E. W. Hornung, J. F. Hogan, Haddon Chambers +and Guy Boothby, among younger writers, have taken their talents to +London; and none of the half-dozen female novelists have been dependent +upon literature for a livelihood. + +What, it may be asked, becomes of the best talent developed by the +Australian schools and Universities? It is employed, or tries to find +employment, in the practice of law, medicine, journalism and teaching. +From law to politics is but a step in the colonies, and the chances of +attaining Cabinet rank, rendered frequent by the prevailing aggressive +form of party government, are often attractive to men of ability and +ambition. The journalists are more or less drenched with politics all +the year round, and they, too, occasionally find it an easy matter to +vary their occupation by assisting in the active business of law-making. +The tension of their daily lives, severer than that of the majority of +press writers in Great Britain, leaves them little or no leisure for +literary work of the higher kind, and generally the prospect of being +compelled to send whatever they might write to the other end of the +world for the chance of publication discourages effort. It may safely be +said that there are young men on the editorial and reporting staffs of a +dozen of the principal journals who possess ability that would secure +them distinction in the wider fields of England or America. To their +skill and spirited rivalry is due the universally high quality of the +Antipodean press. Mr. David Christie Murray, writing after considerable +experience of the colonies, and as one who had been an English +journalist, said that on the whole he was 'compelled to think it by far +and away the best in the world.' The remark is without exaggeration so +far as it applies to the large weekly journals. + +The extent of the favour shown by Australian readers to the works of +their own novelists is, as a rule, exactly proportioned to that which +their merits have previously won in England. Booksellers and their +London agents, who of course treat all literature from a purely +commercial standpoint, are at all events unanimous in discrediting the +existence in recent years of any prejudice against colonial fiction of +the better class. It is now very seldom sent out in two or three volume +form, they say, but neither are the most popular English novels, except +occasionally to subscription libraries. For representative Australian +work, then, there is a fair field but no favour. It is as though the +function and existence of the authors apart from the rank and file of +English letters were not recognised. There is an exception to this rule +in the poet Gordon, as a portion of his writings, the Bush _Ballads and +Galloping Rhymes_, irresistibly commemorate the national love of +horseflesh and outdoor life. Every Australian now knows that _For the +Term of his Natural Life_ is a great novel of its class; but as a +leading Victorian journalist (Mr. James Smith) once pointed out in an +article in the _Melbourne Review_, Clarke's real merit was for years +undervalued, because he was known to be 'only a colonial writer.' +Thousands of English, European and American readers had admired the +novel before they thought of inquiring who the writer was or whence he +came. It is true that the story attracted a good deal of interest in +Australia even during its first appearance as a serial, but from +elsewhere came its recognition as one of the novels of the century. + +The authors whose lives and writings are briefly sketched in this volume +are all noted in some degree for accuracy and sincerity in their +representation of life in Australia. They have all written from abundant +knowledge--from love, also, perhaps it may be added--of this great wide +land with its brilliant skies, its opportunities and its wholesome +pleasures. That they should fail to cover their field--that they tell +too much of country life and adventure and too little of the throb and +energy of the cities--is in a large measure explained by the fact that +their books are of necessity primarily written for English readers. + +Somehow it is assumed that people in the mother-country continue to be +interested only in the picturesque, the curious and the unusual in +Australian life. The idea is in part a survival from earlier years when +a host of military officers, Civil Servants, journalists and tourists +described in some form the more obvious peculiarities of the colonies: +their giant, evergreen forests, strange amorphous animals, aristocratic +gold-diggers, ex-convicts in carriages, and general state of +topsy-turveydom. There is quite an amazing variety of occasional records +of this class in forgotten books, magazines and pamphlets. In at least +a score of well-known novels there are charming country scenes, true in +every particular; but there is a distinct limit to the power of fiction +of this kind to interest remote readers, while much repetition of it +might well be misleading. + +A writer in the _Australasian Critic_ once rightly observed, respecting +a batch of short stories of the conventionally Australian kind, that +English readers might 'fancy from them that big cities are unknown in +Australia; that the population consists of squatters, diggers, +stock-riders, shepherds and bushrangers; that the superior residences +are weatherboard homesteads with wide verandas, while the inferior ones +are huts and tents.' No foreign reader could understand from them that +'more than half the Australian population have never seen kangaroos or +emus outside a zoological garden, and that not one in a hundred, or even +a thousand, has seen a wild black fellow.' There is a well-known type of +Australian novel to which the same remarks might apply with almost +equal fitness. + +The lack of interest on the part of the novelists in the cities is the +more noticeable because they contain one-third of the whole population +of the country, a proportion said not to have a parallel in any other +part of the world. This neglect is surely a mistake, founded on an +erroneous conception of the tastes of the English public, and resulting +partly from the absence of anything like a local literary influence upon +the writers. 'Have the stress and turmoil of a political career no +charm?' asks Mr. Edmund Gosse, in referring to the restricted scope of +the English novel, and in making a plea for 'a larger study of life.' + +The same question might with very good reason be raised concerning the +political life of Australia, which has been almost entirely neglected +since Mrs. Campbell Praed used up the best of her early impressions and +settled in England. The majority of the writers of fiction who continue +to live in the country are women, and possibly not interested in +politics; but the chief reason why the romance is seldom written of the +Cabinet Minister who started life as a gold-digger or draper's +assistant, or of the democratic legislator whose first election was +announced to him through a hole in a steam-boiler that he was riveting, +is to be found in a belief that it would not be appreciated in the +far-off land whither all Australian books must go for the sanction of +their existence. Here again the British reader appears to be misjudged, +for has he not accepted from another direction, and enjoyed, _Democracy_ +and _Through One Administration_? Mrs. Praed, lightly skimming the +surface of Antipodean political life in two of her stories, has shown it +to be not without humour, nor lacking in the elements of more serious +interest. But she cannot be said to have exhibited any particular belief +in the political novel, and none of the more practised among her +colonial contemporaries has ever given it a trial. + +On the main question of a national literature it will perhaps be +concluded that Australia has yet scarcely any need to be concerned: that +not much must be expected from a civilisation which, though it has been +rapid, began little more than a century ago; and that the existence of +wealth, and the possibilities of leisure and culture which wealth +affords, cannot produce the same effect upon art in a new country as in +an old one. The whole matter no doubt is somewhat difficult of decision. +It has been none the less useful to indicate why so little of the work +already done is the work of native writers--why the existence of much of +the best of it may almost be considered accidental. And while a refusal +to take the trouble of independently judging the worth of a local +artistic product may or may not be an invariable characteristic of a new +country, it was also right to contradict on the best available authority +the assertion of a 'prejudice' against the work of Australian authors. + +A portion of the talent that cannot be absorbed in the already +overcrowded ranks of law and medicine might find employment in building +a literature which should have something of national savour in it, if +migration to England were no longer a condition of success to those who +would make writing a profession, as migration to New York or Boston is +similarly found to be a necessity to the young Canadian man or woman of +letters. It need not be wished that the colonial Governments would do +more than they have done--certainly not that they would create a sort of +civil pension list, as a section of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria +contemplated doing ten years ago in discussing a proposed grant to the +family of Marcus Clarke. But the Universities might extend their +influence, and those who have leisure might combine to introduce some of +the methods which have helped to create a living public interest in +literature and art in European countries. In other words, there is +needed an increased sense of responsibility in the cultured class: those +people, among others, who yearly help to fill the luxurious ocean +steamships on their long journeys to the Old World, and who bring back +so singularly little practical enthusiasm for their own land in the +South. + +Meanwhile it is encouraging to note the high promise of the work of some +of the younger writers. Mary Gaunt (Mrs. H. Lindsay Miller), the +daughter of a well-known Victorian judge, has, in _The Moving Finger_, +raised the short story to an artistic level hardly approached by any +other Australian writer. And Mrs. Alick Macleod, author of _An +Australian Girl_ and _The Silent Sea_, has given in the former novel--a +fine story, despite some irregularities of form--the most perfect +description of the peculiar natural features of the country ever +written. For the first time the Bush is interpreted as well as +described. In the attitude displayed in this story towards the +fashionable life of the towns there is habitual impatience and +occasional scorn. The sketches of Mrs. Anstey Hobbs' efforts to found a +salon, the flirtations of Mrs. Lee-Travers--who 'chose her admirers to +suit her style of dress'--Laurette Tareling's solemn respect for +Government House, and the generally satirical view of the 'incessant +mimicking of other mimicries,' are no doubt justified; they are often +decidedly entertaining. But it would of course be a mistake to accept +all this as more than a partial view of Melbourne society. The book does +not pretend to deal with it in other than an incidental manner. Mrs. +Macleod's studies of character and often clever dialogue suggest that +she might profitably adapt to the presentation of Australian life the +quiet intensity of Tourgueneff, or the delicately observant style of the +American critical realists, Henry James, W. D. Howells and Richard +Harding Davis. And here one wonders whether the Australian novelists who +find so little material in Sydney and Melbourne have seen what the new +writer, Henry B. Fuller, has done with the life of modern unromantic +Chicago? + +According to Mr. Howells, America, through the medium of its own +particular class of novel, 'is getting represented with unexampled +fulness.' The writers 'excel in small pieces with three or four +figures,' and are able conveniently to dispense with sensationalism--a +point not yet reached by Antipodean novelists. 'Every now and then,' he +says, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfect +comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would +gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody +else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or +a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster +of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story; +"no promenade, no band of music, nossing!" as Mr. Du Maurier's Frenchman +said of the meet for a fox-hunt. Yet it is all alive with the keenest +interest for those who enjoy the study of individual traits and general +conditions as they make themselves known to American experience.' As the +Transatlantic social conditions, of which the realistic novel with only +three or four figures is understood to be the outcome, are being more or +less repeated in Australia, a similar literary medium will probably be +found best adapted to the portrayal of life there. At least it may be +claimed that there is no lack of material in the shape of individual +traits which have not yet been suitably described in any form. + + + + +MARCUS CLARKE. + + +In the peculiarity of his fitful talents, and in the character of his +best work in fiction--a pathetically slender life's product--Marcus +Clarke is still alone in Australian literature. Others have shown the +cheerful, hopeful, romantic aspects of the new land; he, not less +honestly, but with a more concentrated and individual view, has pictured +some of the monotony of its half-grown society, the gloom of its +scenery, and the painful realities of its early penal systems. Reputed +only as a novelist, he possessed besides imagination some of the higher +qualities of the critical historian. And had his life been prolonged, he +might almost have done for Australian city life what Thackeray did for +the London of seventy years ago. He could, at least, have written a +novel of manners that would have credited the people of Australia with +some individuality: such a novel as would mark the effects which +comparative isolation must produce in a people who are educated and +intelligent beyond the average of the British race, intensely +self-contained and ambitious, and of whom two-thirds are now +native-born,--a novel that would have corrected the too languidly +accepted judgments of omniscient elderly gentlemen, who, after a few +weeks or months spent among the smallest and most imitative section of +Antipodean society, gravely conclude that 'leaves that grow on one +branch of an oak are not more like leaves that grow upon another, than +the Australian swarm is like the hive it sprang from.' + +A rhetorical half-truth of this kind, as applied to the entire people, +can best be answered in the manner of the modern realists. The field is +narrow in Australia, yet not too narrow for the writer who, foregoing +the taste for sensation, will be content to transcribe and interpret +impressions of the moving humanity around him to their minutest detail; +who will forget the pioneer squatter, the Oxford scholar disguised as a +'rouseabout,' and the digger and bushranger of a past generation; who +will sacrifice something of dramatic effect in the endeavour to produce +a faithful and finished picture of colonial middle-class society. As +qualifications for such work, Clarke had exceptional courage, +straightness of eye, and a decided taste for exposing shams, superadded +to a forcible and satirical style of expression. + +Whether he had the tact and temperate spirit that must form the basis of +these qualities in the production of serious fiction is less certain, if +he may be judged by the tone of such minor pieces as _Civilization +without Delusion_, _Beaconsfield's Novels_, and _Democratic Snobbery_. +There is a certain violence in these which is more offensive than their +undoubted cleverness is admirable or their satire entertaining. They +show that the writer retained some of the impetuosity and prejudices +which were marked features of his youth. + +Clarke was an anti-Semite, therefore in the Beaconsfield novels he saw +little beyond an expression of the author's personal exultation as the +successful representative of a maligned race. In the theological +controversy of _Civilization without Delusion_, an even less effective +and becoming performance, the young author revealed a deficiency which, +in any writer, can only be regarded as a misfortune and a cause for +tolerant regret. The spiritual side of his nature was an undeveloped, +almost a barren field. Neglected in boyhood and sapped by early habits +of dissipation, it had no strength to resist the agnostic conclusions +which were the product in later years of a coldly critical examination +of the general grounds of Christian belief. + +In dealing with religion, his characteristic independence developed into +a stiff intellectual pride, and from that into a recklessness which +disregarded alike his public reputation and the feelings of others. But +these forays into the preserves of theology were happily rare. Such +questions obtained no permanent place in his thoughts: they were only +the passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It is +indeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense of +humour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless field +of religious contention at all. + +There are a few facts in the early life of Marcus Clarke which are +sometimes so strongly, and even painfully, reflected in his brief career +that they form a necessary preface to any consideration of his literary +work. Soon after his birth at Kensington (London) in 1846 his mother +died, and thenceforward through all his youth he seems to have received +little advice or attention from relations. His father, a barrister and +literary man of retired and eccentric habits, exercised over him a +merely nominal authority, and so he had liberty to gratify a spirit of +inquiry and curiosity notably beyond his years. At his own home he +became the pet of his father's acquaintances, a set of fashionable +cynics. + +In _Human Repetends_, a sketch of his published several years later, +there is a passage which substantially records his experiences at this +time: 'I was thrown, when still a boy, into the society of men thrice my +age, and was tolerated as a clever impertinent in all those wicked and +witty circles in which virtuous women are conspicuous by their +absence.... I was suffered at sixteen to ape the vices of sixty.... So +long as I was reported to be moving only in that set to which my father +chose to ally himself, he never cared to inquire how I spent the +extravagant allowance which his indifference, rather than his +generosity, permitted me to waste. You can guess the result of such a +training.' + +Left alone in the world at the age of eighteen, upon the death of his +father, he emigrated to Australia. Failing to take any interest in a +bank-clerkship provided by an uncle for him at Melbourne, he was sent to +a sheep-station near Glenorchy, one hundred miles inland. Here again he +paid little attention to the occupation chosen for him. All the day and +half the night were dreamed away in literary thought. Just as he +wandered alone over fern-hill and creek-bed, plain and mountain range, +and absorbed impressions of a scenery at once repulsive and fascinating +to him, so he dipped into all kinds of literature without method or set +purpose. But he preferred fiction, and as the consignee of an endless +succession of French novels he became a marked man in the eyes of the +village postmaster. + +Two years had thus been spent, when a Dr. Lewins, who was known as a +'materialistic philosopher,' visited the station and made the young +Englishman's acquaintance. A warm mutual regard resulted, and soon +Lewins succeeded in obtaining a small post for Clarke on the Melbourne +_Argus_. This was the beginning of the most brilliant journalistic +career established on the Australian press. + +A less happy result of the same friendship was Clarke's conversion to +the arid and uninspiring doctrines of materialism, though perhaps it +could hardly be called a conversion in the case of one upon whom the +deeper principles of Christian faith had never obtained any real hold. + +Colonial democracy seems to have been to Clarke at once a source of +inspiration and of scorn. Coming from among the English upper classes, +with the education and temperament of an aristocrat, he was yet readily +able to sympathise with the higher principles of the new society. Its +intelligence, virility and free intercourse broadened and interested +him, as it does most young Englishmen. But for that common product of +a new country, the pretentious plutocrat, he had only contempt. + +It is the bitterness with which this feeling is expressed in his +journalistic writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for +work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some of +those who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldom +much studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer's +character. The same hand that in the famous _Snob Papers_ so savagely, +and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of English +society, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essential +facts of life is the most conspicuous quality. So, too, might it have +been in the case of the 'Peripatetic Philosopher,' whose weekly +criticisms of Melbourne men and manners in 1867-68 has correctly been +judged the best writing of its kind yet done in Australia. In these +articles, remarkable as the work of one who was only in his +twenty-second year, there is a closeness of observation and incisiveness +of style which promised much more for their author than the +circumstances of his life afterwards permitted him to realise. + +The usual effects of an undirected youth and an undisciplined manhood +explain Marcus Clarke's failure to render to his adopted country the +service which, as a distinctly gifted writer of the realist school, he +seemed well fitted to perform. He was a Bohemian, who, while resisting +the worst vices of his class, shared its carelessness and improvidence +to a degree that left little energy for ambitious work. + +His was not an idle nature by any means: it was only erratic, fond of +variety, impatient of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen years' +literary work, his thoughts make excursions from town-life to +country-life, from social satire to story-telling, from art to +ethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe! Here are the titles of a few +of his compositions: _Lower Bohemia in Melbourne_ (a sketch), _Plot_ (a +sensational drama), _Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy_ (magazine +article), _The Humbug Papers_ (humorous and satirical), _The Future +Australian Race_ (an ethnological study), _Goody Two Shoes_ (a +pantomime), _Civilization without Delusion_ (a theological discussion +with the Bishop of Melbourne), _The Power of Love_ (an extravaganza), +_Dore and Modern Art_ (a review), _Cannabis Indica_ (a psychological +experiment). Almost the whole of Clarke's life may be said to have been +devoted to the supply of some temporary demand of the periodical press +or the stage. Even the two novels which represent his only sustained +work were written for serial issue in Melbourne magazines. + +It does not appear in either case that he wrote with any special view +to establish a literary reputation; indeed, it would seem that the story +of convict life might not have been completed but for the strenuous +importunity of the firm of publishers with whom he had contracted to +write it. + +Journalism, the early occupation of so many eminent men of letters, has +usually been abandoned as soon as the young writer has once shown +exceptional ability as a novelist. This rule was not followed by Clarke. +As the leader in his day of the journalistic class, who, as the late Mr. +Francis Adams has said with substantial truth, still 'stand almost +entirely for the conscious literary culture of the whole Antipodean +community,' he held a position which would have unfavourably affected +the literary tone and ambition of a still more energetic and original +writer. + +He had no predecessors in the special work he elected to do; he had to +establish his own standard of achievement; and he was without the +constant stimulus which intercourse with literary society, such as that +of London, affords. The demands of the newspapers were then, as now, +more for purely ephemeral criticism or narrative than for matter worthy +to rank as permanent literature. + +An alert, pithy style and a distinct gift of satirical humour such as +Clarke had, and developed by a wide range of reading, were just the +qualities which are always in request on the keen, aggressive daily +press of Australia. One can easily imagine the flattering demands made +upon the young author's powers by the men who were his personal friends +as well as employers. + +Whenever he was deficient in taste of expression, or in urbanity of +criticism (as in his treatment of the Jews), he showed the effects +partly of impetuous haste, and partly of his remoteness from those +centres of literary opinion which always beneficially influence a young +writer, be he ever so original or naturally artistic. It has been +doubted whether Clarke was ever fully convinced of his own powers; but +however feasibly this may have applied to the first four or five years +of his literary career, there was no ground for it after the unanimously +favourable reception accorded to _For the Term of his Natural Life_ upon +its issue in book form in 1874. + +In England and America, as well as in Australia, this one novel gave him +an immediate and distinct reputation. With it he might have speedily +established himself as one of the leading writers of the day, and, +turning from the depressing realism of penal cruelties which can have no +further parallel in British countries to something more within our +sympathies--to the realism of modern Australian life,--have supplied +what is still conspicuously lacking in Australian fiction. Yet, during +the remaining seven years of his life he produced no imaginative work +worthy his name and ability. The ever-ready market of the local +newspaper press absorbed his best efforts, and such intervals as there +were he devoted to an attempt to establish himself as a writer and +adapter for the stage. + +In this way the years passed without yielding much beyond a livelihood. +Meantime, Melbourne was his microcosm: he made a systematic study of its +life from the purlieus of Little Bourke and Lonsdale streets to the +palace of his 'model legislator' on Eastern Hill. Like Balzac, one of +his favourite novelists, he made observation a severe and regular +business, but he lacked the energy or the patience to take full +advantage of its results. Balzac employed his accumulated materials in +bursts of creative energy which, if terrible in their intensity and +their drain upon his health, had at least method in them, and effected +their purpose. Poverty did not swerve him, nor prosperity sate him. + +That part of genius which consists in natural depth and accuracy of +vision Clarke had in abundance, but he was weak in the lesser gifts of +patience and synthetic power, perhaps also in ambition. Moreover, an +unfortunate extravagance, which led from chronic debt to bankruptcy, +compelled him to continue the class of work which gave the surest and +most regular income. + +Repeated requests by the Messrs. Bentley for more fiction were neglected +from year to year, and similar indifference was shown to a flattering +invitation to join the staff of the _Daily Telegraph_ in London, an +opportunity that would have led to the establishment of Clarke in those +literary circles outside of which no purely Australian writer, with the +exception of Rolf Boldrewood, has ever yet received adequate +recognition. + +Among Clarke's uncompleted writings are a few brilliant chapters of a +novel which promised to be as permanent a record of his ability as the +well-known convict story, though of a different kind. But the author had +the unlucky faculty of attending to anything rather than the work which +offered him certain fame and fortune, as well as the most natural +employment of his powers. At the time of his death he was only in his +thirty-fifth year. Probably with advancing life he would have become +more settled in his tastes and habits, realising that the work at which +he was happiest in every sense was the writing of novels, and that +alone. + +The satire and cynicism so noticeable in Clarke's writings, especially +in his critical sketches and essays, are liable to give an inaccurate +conception of his temperament. They obscure, as such characteristics +nearly always do in literature, the gentler aspects of the writer's +nature. His satire is, perhaps, too uncompromising. It often seems to +reflect a personal bitterness, to take too little cognisance of the +springs of human weakness. Undoubtedly brilliant in force and keenness, +it yet too seldom produces the kind of hearty laugh with which Thackeray +and Swift, for example, relieve their fiercest scorn. His personal +experience of life had been discouraging. He had sounded its depths and +sipped its pleasures; its rude facts found him deficient in self-control +and fortitude. He had refused to learn the common logic of existence. + +There is an element of tragedy in the rapid change which the unhappy +circumstances of his private life wrought in his temperament. Addressing +the disciples of Mrs. Grundy in an early essay defending the +Bohemianism of his youth, he tells them that they are ignorant how +easily good spirits, good digestion, and jolly companions enable a man +to triumph over all the ills that flesh is heir to. 'You cannot know,' +he adds, 'what a fund of humour there is in common life, and how +ridiculous one's shifts and strugglings appear when viewed through +Bohemian glass.... Life seems to you but as a "twice told tale, vexing +the dull ear of a drowsy man" seems but as a vale of tears, a place of +mourning, weeping, and wailing.... I wish ye had lived for a while in +"Austin Friars"; it would have enlarged your hearts, believe me.' + +This was the cheerful philosophy of Clarke as a young bachelor, after he +had spent his slender patrimony, disappointed the successive efforts of +friends to make a business man of him, and was about to begin the +earning of a living by his pen. A dozen years later we see him with +developed talents and a valuable name, but broken in fortune and spirit, +and gloomily anticipating death months before it came. The Jew usurers, +whose race he despised, had long been his real masters, and, with a +nature sensitive in the extreme, he writhed in their bondage. + +Improvidence had been not merely an unhappy incident, as it is in the +lives of so many young men of artistic tastes; it had overweighted him +more or less for years, and 'the thoughtless writer of thoughtful +literature,' as the author of his biographical memoir has called him, +sank beneath it while yet at the beginning of a career full of the +brightest promise. The sort of companionship that pleased his careless +youth had latterly proved unsatisfying, and to some extent distasteful +to him. Its effects upon his character were so unfavourable that some +who had been his companions in journalism felt it necessary, after his +death, to credit him with a greater capacity for kindly forbearance +towards humanity than is apparent in the bulk of his writings. + +'My friend,' says one writer, 'was one of those many geniuses who appear +to be born to prove the vast amount of contradictory elements which can +exist in the same individual. In his case these contradictions were so +apparent--and, if I may use the term, so contradictory--that, unless one +knew him, it was impossible to believe what his nature was. On the one +hand, he was recklessly generous, impulsively partisan, morbidly +sensitive, and highly chivalrous; on the other, forgetful of +obligations, defiantly antagonistic, unnecessarily caustic, and +affectedly cynical.... His life was one of impulse, and the direction of +the impulse depended solely on surrounding circumstances.... He has +passed from us at an early age, leaving behind him some enemies made, +perhaps, by his own waywardness; but he has left many friends, +too,--friends who loved him for the good that was in him.' + +In another sketch of the author, his character is thus summed up: +'Caustic he was sometimes, and cynical always; but beneath there beat a +heart of gold--a heart tender and pitiful as a woman's.' This estimate +is amply justified by the power of pathos and the often tender analysis +of human feeling in _For the Term of his Natural Life_, however absent +the same qualities may seem in many of the shorter stories. + +An interesting picture of Clarke's personality is given by a writer in +the Sydney _Bulletin_: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour +delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His +face was a remarkable one--remarkable for its singular beauty. Like +Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and +one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of +genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles +Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his +witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant +things, and scattering _bons mots_ with apparent ease, so that in +listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such books +as Horace Walpole's correspondence and those of the French +memoir-writers.... He knew not how to care for money, yet he had none +of those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, and +are cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, "He had no enemy but +himself."' + +In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus Clarke scarcely more than +pointed to the material which the life of such cities as Melbourne and +Sydney offer a novelist capable of work like that of Mr. W. D. Howells, +or the series of tales of urban society in America by Mr. Marion +Crawford. There is now an opportunity, and, one might almost say, a +need, for fiction which shall also, in effect, be salutary criticism. +The Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact that a single decade will +sometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire people +in a new and rapidly-developing country. + +Thus, with the struggle for subsistence now keen to a degree which could +not have been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a few years ago; with +Parliaments, hitherto safely democratic, threatened with Socialism by +the increasing practice of electing artisans and labourers to do the +legislative work of their respective classes; the crash of fortunes +which never had substantial existence; the pauperising to-day of the +paper millionaire of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old men, after +overreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of life +afresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the faltering +novice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secure +and cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business of +government,--with these and some social aspects still less agree able to +contemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may have +the disposition and ability to carry on the work which Clarke had +indicated, but scarcely begun, before he died. + +_Long Odds_, Clarke's first story, deals with English life, and bears no +resemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name is +chiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a _mesalliance_, and +horseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complications +of gambling and intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less to +do with sport than the title suggests. The plot is mainly concerned with +the selfish, cruel, and infamous in human nature--a singularly dark +theme for a young beginner in fiction to choose. Except at rare +intervals when the business of characterisation is momentarily set +aside, as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster Steeplechase and +the Matcham Hunt, there is little suggestion of youthful spirit or +freshness. + +The outlines of plot and incident are attractively arranged, the +expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There +are traces of Dickens' burlesque without his sympathy, and the high +colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton's wit. Disraeli's satire, too, +is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose +experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book, +is allowed no opportunity to show the better, and rarely even the +ordinary, capabilities of the new race of which he is ostensibly a type. + +It is said to be a well-understood maxim of the novelist's art that many +a liberty taken with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if the writer +keeps a constant eye upon his villain, and deals honestly by him. In +_Long Odds_ there are two villains, and at least two others villainously +inclined. Between the four of them the easy-going hero has no chance. + +It is natural that, in the construction of a novel which aims at +dramatic point before anything else, the 'simple Australian,' as his +author is at last constrained to regard him, should seem less useful +than the polished and unprincipled man of the world. But in this +instance the balance of interest is too unequal. Dramatic quality has +been secured at the expense of tone and proportion. Of the two male +characters whose exploits in rascality it becomes the real business of +the story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more natural and entertaining. + +There is an attention to detail in his portrait which suggests that the +lineaments of the conventional society villain may have been filled in +with the help of a little personal knowledge, perhaps of some of those +morally doubtful individuals already mentioned as having been among the +acquaintances of Clarke's early youth. Dacre is the chief cynic of the +story, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of the +small stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is both +his associate and enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of dastard, +and altogether disagreeable. + +The author is not entirely forgetful of the interests of his nominal +hero. If throughout three-fourths of the story Calverley is made the +plaything of circumstances that favour only rogues, he is at last +allowed a triumph in love and sport which, though unsatisfying from an +artistic point of view, is calculated to soothe a not too fastidious +taste for poetic justice. + +Conscious of the conventional character of his principal theme, the +author apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. The +result of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidents +that might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; the +conceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviously +improbable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverley +and Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness which +the reader carries away from the study of so much of the bad side of +human nature. + +In connection with criticism of this kind, it ought, however, to be +noted that other hands besides the author's are known to have +contributed to the novel. Shortly after it began to appear serially in +the _Colonial Monthly_, Marcus Clarke fell from a horse while hunting, +and sustained a fracture of the skull which interrupted his literary +work for many weeks. How much of the writing had previously been done +seems to be a subject of dispute. It is, however, quite clear that, in +order to preserve continuity in the publication of the parts, Clarke's +friends did write some portion of the story, but whether in accordance +with the author's _scenario_, supposing one to have existed, has not +been stated. + +'Only a few of the first chapters' were the work of Clarke, says the +editor of the _Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume_, writing in 1884; but in +an article published in the _Imperial Review_ (Melbourne) for 1886, the +contributed matter is limited to a couple of chapters written by Mr. +G. A. Walstab, and skilfully inserted in the middle of the novel. +Walstab was one of Clarke's best friends, and he is no doubt the +'G. A. W.' to whom the story is dedicated 'in grateful remembrance of +the months of July and August, 1868.' + +From the absence of a prefatory explanation when _Long Odds_ was +published in book form in 1869, it may be assumed that Clarke was +satisfied with the quality of the contributed work. At least, he was +willing to take the full responsibility of its authorship. But even with +this in view, it were well, perhaps, not to hold him too strictly +accountable for the faults of the story. Not much must be expected from +a first novel produced in the circumstances mentioned, and issued when +the author was only twenty-three. In his haste to give it final shape +immediately after the serial publication, he was probably ill advised. +One can only regret that it was not set aside for a year or so, and +written afresh, or, at least, largely revised. Perhaps this would have +been expecting too much from so unmethodical a worker as Clarke. The far +finer dramatic taste and literary form of his masterpiece, issued five +years later, showed how little indicative of his talent was the earlier +work. + +In view of the large extent to which the life of the Australian landed +classes has been described in fiction during the last twenty years, it +is curious to read the plea Clarke offered to his Antipodean critics for +passing over the literary material close at hand and preferring the +well-worn paths of the English novelist. + +During the serial publication of _Long Odds_ the colonial press raised +some objection to the laying of the scene in England instead of in +Australia. The author replied simply that Henry Kingsley's _Geoffry +Hamlyn_ being the best Australian novel that had been, or probably +would be, written, 'any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting life of +the colonies could not fail to challenge unfavourable comparison with +that admirable story.' + +The excuse is just a little too adventitious to have convinced even +those to whom it was originally addressed. None the less, it may at the +moment have accurately represented the opinion of a beginner who at that +time could scarcely have known the extent of his own powers. + +Probably he had given the subject little thought. His colonial +experience was certainly less varied than Kingsley's had been. Above +all, his tastes, and in some degree his temperament, differed +markedly from those of his predecessor in the field. The judgment or +instinct that kept him from coming into direct competition with +Kingsley--assuming his own questionable belief that any effort of his +would have been competition--at least erred on the side of safety. That +the immediate alternative should have been an imitative example of a +hackneyed class of English novel, ineffective of purpose, +book-inspired, and tainted with the deadness of cynicism, is something +which admits of a more definite opinion. + +'I have often thought,' says the writer, referring to the hero of +_Geoffry Hamlyn_ 'and I dare say other Australian readers have thought +also, How would Sam Buckley get on in England? My excuse, therefore, in +offering to the Australian public a novel in which the plot, the +sympathies, the interest, and the moral, are all English, must be that +I have endeavoured to depict with such skill as is permitted to me the +fortunes of a young Australian in that country which young Australians +still call "Home."' + +Without this prefatory sign-post, the reader could never have suspected +such a purpose. Clarke may have had it definitely in his mind when he +first sat down to the work; but if so, it was put aside, consciously or +unconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favour +of more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter, +really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive of +the story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anything +typically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama of +passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be a passive spectator +of it. + +To say that he was good-natured, jovial, popular, 'the sort of man that +one involuntarily addresses by his Christian name'; that although he was +shy and awkward in the society of ladies, at ease with his own sex only +when cattle and horses were the subject of conversation, ignorant of +music, and unable to tell Millais from Tenniel, he 'could pick you out +any bullock in a herd ... shear a hundred sheep a day ... and drive four +horses down a sidling in a Gippsland range with any man in +Australia,'--to say all this by way of preliminary, to add that +Calverley was no fool, and yet to show him in scarcely any other guise +than that of a trusting victim of rogues, is to go a very short distance +in the portrayal of a typical Australian. + +In the slack-baked condition in which we find him, he merely repeats the +ordinary spectacle of green youth in the process of seeing life and +buying experience at the usual high figure. Compared with the real +squatter (who, ordinarily, is college-trained, and does not shear sheep +nor risk his neck unnecessarily), Bob, the son of rich 'Old Calverley,' +and nephew of an English baronet, is as an exaggerated stock-figure of +the stage to the commonplace blood and brain of everyday life. A +childlike trust in one's fellows, a reputation for good-nature, an +untamable taste for horseflesh and the pursuits of the Bush, belong to +every young squatter in a certain class of Australian fiction; they are +qualities which may be applied indiscriminately, with always some +effect. + +The real squatter is a more civilised and reliable, if less picturesque, +person. He likes both work and pleasure, provided they be suitably +proportioned. His work is in the personal management of his properties; +his pleasure is taken in the large cities. He entertains no fantastic +prejudices against urban life, in proof of which he often spends his +later years in some city hundreds of miles from the scene of his early +toil and pastoral successes. + +As a young man in London, he can be found with rooms at the Langham, the +Metropole, or some other of the half-dozen fashionable hotels known to +colonial visitors. There he will entertain his friends, joining with +them, in turn, the continuous movements of the society season. He +frankly lacks much of the ease and polish of the young Englishman, but +his natural amiability and good spirits largely compensate for these +deficiencies, while they preclude any feeling of discomfort on his own +part. + +During his three or six months' stay in London (the combination usually +of a little business with a very full programme of pleasure) he spends +freely, and in his tour of the clubs plays here and there a little at +cards--perchance loses. Worldly beyond his reputation, and somewhat +Chesterfieldian in his principles, he consents to be a Roman while at +Rome. He has inherited the British hatred of fuss and personal +peculiarity, and none shall call him mean. But, unlike many of his +English friends at club and course, he has watched and taken some part +in the hard process of making money, and knows the difference between a +little gentlemanly extravagance and the reckless hazarding of a fortune. +At least, it may be affirmed of him that in nine cases out of ten he is +decidedly no fool. + +These are only a few of the prominent outlines of the type of young man +who, his holiday over, returns unspoiled to work on his own or his +father's estates. Those whose passion for a horse destroys all +self-control, who spend thousands in gambling and betting, who +innocently take every smooth gentleman at his own valuation, are merely +individuals--persons who may as unfailingly be found in England or +elsewhere as in Australia. + +Sam Buckley is a typical descendant of the British pioneer colonists, as +every Australian knows. In attempting to give an answer to his own +speculation of 'How would Sam Buckley get on in England?' Clarke +presumably undertook to continue the portrayal of this type. The result, +considered apart from the function Calverley fulfils in _Long Odds_, +must be held as emphatically a failure. + +Never was a novel written with a franker or more deliberate purpose than +that shown in _For the Term of his Natural Life_. The author had the +twofold object of picturing the dreadful crudities and brutalities of +the early system of convict 'reformation' in Australia, and of +preventing their possible repetition elsewhere. The first of these aims +was attained with a fuller employment, and perhaps more moderate +statement of historical facts, than can be found in any other fiction of +the same class; the second was ineffective, because, when it found +expression, the abuses which had suggested it no longer continued at the +Antipodes, and could not conceivably be repeated on the existing +settlements at Port Blair and Noumea. + +The story was written a quarter of a century too late to assist the +abolition of convict transportation to Australia. Had it appeared at the +right time, it might have done much where formal inquiries and the +testimonies of disinterested and humane observers had repeatedly failed. +For sixty years the practice of deporting criminals had been carried on, +upheld in England by official indifference and callousness, and in the +colonies themselves by the greed of a small class of private persons who +grew rapidly wealthy upon the strength of assigned convict labour, until +the free emigrants by the authority of their numbers were able to insist +upon its cessation. For so long as the colonies were willing to receive +a population of criminals, so long was England only too anxious to +supply them and make a virtue out of it. It mattered little to the +official mind that the system was incurably bad and immoral; the main +thing was to speedily and effectually transfer an awkward burden to +other shoulders. The entire history of penal transportation from Great +Britain throws a sinister light upon the national character. The +practice originated with banishment of convicts to the American colonies +under conditions which constituted a form of slavery. + +The criminal on being sentenced became a marketable chattel of the +State. His services were sold by public auction, the purchaser acquiring +the right to transport him and sell him for the term of his sentence to +a builder, planter, manufacturer, or other employer beyond the Atlantic. +The price paid to the British Government averaged five pounds per head, +and some of the more useful prisoners were resold in America for +twenty-five pounds each. One of these dealers in convict labour, in +giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, made a +matter-of-fact complaint that 'the trade' was not so remunerative as +people supposed. Artisans sold well, but the profit realised upon them +was often consumed by losses upon some of the others. One-seventh of his +purchases died on his hands, and in the course of business he had been +obliged to give the old, the halt and the lame in for nothing. When the +War of Independence closed the United States against the traffic, +Britain was given a fresh opportunity to reconsider and place its penal +system upon a more humane basis; but the temptation to adopt sweeping +measures was once more too strong to be resisted. The promoters of the +Australian scheme were in so great a hurry to seize their chance that +they despatched over seven hundred convicts before even the site for the +first settlement was chosen. The hardships which this characteristic act +afterwards entailed are too familiar in history to need repetition. +After such recklessness, it is no wonder that, as Sir Roger Therry has +observed, 'the first-fruits of the system exhibited a state of society +in New South Wales which the world might be challenged to surpass in +depravity.' + +A generation passed before the British Government reluctantly admitted +transportation to be a failure. Lord John Russell, as late as 1847, +discovered that it had been 'too much the custom to consult the +convenience of Great Britain by getting rid of persons of evil habits, +and to take that view alone.' In planting provinces which might become +empires, they 'should endeavour to make them, not seats of malefactors +and convicts, but communities which may set examples of virtue and +happiness.' + +This mild, platitudinous rebuke came when all the damage was done. It +remained for the free inhabitants of Australia to point to a plainer +principle in declaring that 'the inundating of feeble and dependent +colonies with the criminals of the parent State is opposed to that +arrangement of Providence by which the virtue of each community is +destined to combat its own vice.' + +To illustrate in a single story all the most prominent and pernicious +features of the transportation system, Clarke had to invent a case of +crime in which the criminal, unlike the majority of the worst offenders +sent to the settlements, should always be worthy of the reader's +sympathy. It was necessary that the felon be a victim as well as a +felon; that he should not regain his liberty in any form, but continue +by a series of offences against the authority of his gaolers to +experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie +Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be +exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist +between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who, +for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We +must treat brutes like brutes,' says the prime martinet of the story: +'keep 'em down, sir; make 'em _feel_ what they are. They're here to +work, sir. If they won't work, flog 'em until they will. If they +work--why, a taste of the cat now and then keeps 'em in mind of what +they may expect if they get lazy.' + +The author chose to represent the extreme case of a man who, innocent of +a murder charged against him, allowed himself to be transported under an +assumed name in order to prevent the exposure of a long-concealed act of +unfaithfulness on the part of a beloved mother. + +Richard Devine is the bastard son of an aristocratic Englishwoman who in +early youth was forced by her father into a loveless union with a rich +plebeian. The single fault of the mother's life is confessed after +twenty years, when the husband in a moment of anger strikes her +high-spirited and obstinate son. The latter consents to leave his home +for ever, and relinquish the name he has borne. On these terms the wife +is spared. Richard Devine goes on the instant. Crossing Hampstead Heath, +he comes upon a robbed and murdered man, and presently is arrested for +the crime. The explanation that would save him would also cause the +dreaded exposure of his mother, and so he withholds it, gives a false +name, and, having put himself beyond the means of defence and the +recognition of friends, is convicted and sentenced to transportation for +life. + +In making all the subsequent career of Rufus Dawes abnormally +painful--that of a dumb sufferer who in sixteen years' confinement, +ending only in a tragic death, experiences by turns every form of +punishment and oppression--the author often touches, though it cannot be +said he ever exceeds, the limits of possibility. + +'Need one who was not a hardened criminal have suffered so much and so +long?' is the question that continually recurs to the mind of the +reader; but it is suggested by the prolonged and pitiful sense of +unsatisfied justice rather than by any doubting that the extremes of +penal discipline as practised in the name of the British Government +between forty and sixty years ago could have been successively applied +to a single human being. The writer adheres relentlessly to his central +idea to the end. Dawes' unameliorated servitude and unavenged fate were +intended to symbolise glaring anomalies of justice which never were +remedied. The 'correction' he is subjected to was that which the laws of +the time permitted, and which in many cases goaded its victims to draw +lots to murder one another in order to escape from their misery. + +Some of the least creditable features of convict transportation, of +which it was said by Earl Grey in 1857 that their existence had been a +disgrace to the nation, came to an end only when the system itself was +abolished. But novelist and statesman alike struck at the abuses without +feeling it necessary to mention any of the good results of the system. +Its inherent merits were strictly few, indeed; yet they ought to be +sought in history by anyone who would get a fair idea of the prison +policy of the period. It is, of course, inevitable that the criticism +conveyed in a strong imaginative work should fail to give a full view of +results so complex as those produced by the largely haphazard method of +the Australian penal settlements. + +The practice of assigning prisoners to private employment, for example, +produced notable effects upon society, of which Marcus Clarke's story +gives but the faintest indication. If Rufus Dawes had been an ordinary +first offender, he might have regained liberty soon after his arrival in +Van Diemen's Land. But, as we have seen, it was the purpose of the +author to make him exhibit all the rigours of convict discipline. His +case must therefore be regarded as more exceptional than typical. As a +rule, only men inveterate in crime were detained in constant punishment. +Transportation for life meant servitude only for eight years if the +convict conducted himself well, a condition which, of course, depended +largely on the sort of master who secured his services. Major de Winton, +an officer who served for some years on Norfolk Island, has mentioned +that a prisoner by good conduct received a ticket-of-leave after he had +been twice sentenced to death, thrice to transportation for life, and to +cumulative periods of punishment amounting to over a hundred years! + +An interesting view of Marcus Clarke as a literary workman is obtained +from the story of the conception and laborious writing of _For the Term +of his Natural Life_. It affords the first, and unhappily the last, +evidence of how far he recognised the claims of realism in fiction; and +from the account of his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery of +keeping to the strict line of history, we see the man as his friends +knew him contrasted with the conscientious artist known to the general +reader of his famous novel. + +The best of Clarke's minor writings display the results of much general +culture, but give no proof of special preparation. They are short, +concentrated, forcible--the natural expression of a brilliant, +impetuous, and spasmodic worker. He overcame his natural repugnance to +lengthened toil and minute thoroughness when he saw them to be essential +conditions of his task. But the effort was a severe one. + +In 1871, when about twenty-five years of age, he was ordered to recruit +his health by a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over three years +writing extensively for the press, and joining in the gaieties of +Melbourne life at a rate which a constitution much stronger than his +could not have withstood. The idea of writing a story of prison life had +suggested itself previously during his reading of Australian history. +Finding himself now without sufficient money for the proposed holiday, +he decided to put into active progress this literary project which had +hitherto been only vaguely outlined. + +Printed records of the convict days there were in abundance at +Melbourne, and from these alone such a writer could have made a +sufficiently striking story. But he concluded that he could make his +picture at once truer and more vivid when the surroundings of the old +settlements had become a full reality to his mind. Messrs. Clarson, +Massina and Co. readily contracted with the young novelist for the first +publication of the story in their monthly, the _Australian Journal_, and +made him an advance of money. Off he went with characteristic +confidence, and some weeks later returned ready primed and eager for the +new work. His enthusiasm soon cooled. The story commenced to appear +after the first few chapters were written, and the unbroken industry +necessary to maintain a regular supply of the parts was more than Clarke +could give. + +Writing against time, he is said to have felt like a convict himself. +The irregular dribbling out of the story so injured the reputation of +the journal that for a time its circulation was reduced to one-half the +ordinary issue. + +Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a sympathetic memoir of Clarke, +has given an entertaining account of what followed: 'The author would +be frequently interviewed by the publishers, and would as frequently +promise the copy. When moral suasion was apparently powerless to effect +the required object, payments in advance were made with somewhat better +results; but as this could not go on _ad libitum_, copy would fall into +arrears again. At last it was found that the only way to get the author +to finish his tale was to induce him into a room in the +publishing-house, where, under the benign influences of a pipe, etc., +and a lock on the door, the necessary work would be done by the facile +pen; and in such manner was _His Natural Life_ produced.' + +In a note of apology to their readers in January, 1871, the publishers +print a somewhat comical letter which they had received from the +delinquent author. Forwarding a single chapter of the story, he tells +them that they must make shift with it as best they can, and he will let +them have a larger supply during the following month. The letter +concludes nonchalantly as follows: 'This is awkward, I admit, and I +suppose some good-natured friend or other will say that I have +over-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself in honour of the so-called +festive season, but I can't help it.' + +The story as first published was much longer than the form in which it +appears in the English edition. At the request of the present writer, +Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who was one of Clarke's literary friends, +supplies the following account of how the novel came to be so +extensively curtailed: + +'As one of the trustees to the public library (Melbourne), I saw Clarke +constantly, and had always a friendly, and sometimes a confidential, +conversation with him. He visited me now and then at Sorrento, and on +one of these occasions he spoke of a story he had running through a +Melbourne periodical about which he was perplexed. He asked me to read +it, and tell him unreservedly what I thought of it. I read the story +carefully, making notes on the margin, and wrote him frankly the +impression it had made on me. + +'After twenty years I can recall the substance of the letter, which is +probably still in existence. A powerful story, I said, but painful as it +is powerful. The incidents, instead of being depressing, would be tragic +if they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But there was no one in the +story whom he could have intended us to love or honour. The hero +underwent a lifelong torture without any credible, or even intelligible, +motive, and on the whole was a _mauvais sujet_ himself. To win the +reader's sympathy, all this must be altered. I strongly advised that the +latter part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak was described +under a leader whom he named Peter Brawler, should be omitted; and I +objected to the publication of a song in French _argot_ with a spirited +translation, as the latter would naturally be attributed to the author +of the novel, whereas I had read it in an early _Blackwood_ before he +was born. + +'Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and said he would adopt all my +suggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection of +his mother's good name the motive of the hero's silence, and he omitted +both the things I had objected to.' + +Ending, as it began, with a tragedy, the artistic unity of the novel is +thus preserved, and the dominant aim of the author emphasised. Many of +those who read it in the serial parts strongly disapproved of the +excisions, but there can be little doubt that the story is the stronger +for their having been made. + +It was as the work of a vivid historian, rather than of a social +reformer, that Marcus Clarke's masterpiece won its popularity, and, for +its dramatic and substantially accurate view of the worst (always the +worst) aspect of convict life, it will continue to be read while anyone +remains to take an interest in the unhappiest period of Australian +history. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken the +intelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practical +method of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity and +inhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers was +fond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how far +English gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion and +invested with more power than single individuals should ever possess, +may become despots, and even blackguards. + +It is a grim record. Let those who are inclined to doubt it turn to the +originals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of +1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, with +all his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himself +even to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-fact +historians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their great +privileges to describe. For example, there were times during the first +thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the +officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with +the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions they +held. + +Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but made +no use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait of +Dawes' passionate and licentious cousin. + +In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessary +throughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specifically +put upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the good +effects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to the +colonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so often +wrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system. +His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during his +term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system +loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the +other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to +their undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate. + +The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series of +punishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest, +consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to the +highest, consisting of long and tedious torture.' It was with the latter +part of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose to +represent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk +Island as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir +George Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by the +experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House +of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and +'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting +those who undergo punishment.' + +The idea which is the ganglion of Clarke's plot was always seen clearly, +but never obsessed his mind as did a cognate theme that of the impetuous +reformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishment +known as the 'silent system,' the English novelist obtrudes his moral +with a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendid +eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian +novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained +by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and +by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lesson +to the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously calm and +impersonal presentation. + +In the rapid progress of the plot the reader is kept keenly interested. +If he have an eye for the moral he will detect it at once; if not, there +is no importunate author to force it upon him. In either case he will +find the story an absorbing one. 'It has all the solemn ghastliness of +truth,' said Lord Rosebery, writing to the novelist's widow in 1884. He +confessed that the book had a fascination for him. Not once or twice, +but many times, had he read it, and during his visit to Australia he +spent some time in viewing the scene of the old settlements and +examining the reports upon which the novel is so largely based. + +That there are some exaggerations in the treatment of facts need hardly +be stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, and +outbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modify +the description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fully +depicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, _His +Natural Life_ is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that most +young writers would have been tempted to commit. Clarke was too good an +artist to think of pleading the sanction of facts for any misuse of the +privileges of good fiction. To maintain a strong impression on the +reader, his touch is occasionally strong and fearless, like that of +Kipling. But this object attained, he uses his materials with an almost +unnecessary reticence. The episode of the cannibalism of Gabbett and his +fellow-convicts is exceptional. Yet it purposely falls short of the +terrible original, which is happily hidden away from general view +between the covers of an old Parliamentary report. + +It has been said of Clarke, by one of his friends, that in his estimate +of motives he was invariably cynical. Though the assertion goes too far, +it seems to suggest the best explanation of his notable preference for +delineating the dark side of human nature. He appeared ever to see vice +more clearly, or at any rate to find it more interesting for the +purposes of fiction, than the good or the neutral in character. But his +cynicism--if it really formed a settled feature of his character--was +not of the kind that implies any indifference to injustice or +dishonesty. In this particular, both his fiction and essays have no +uncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke that his bad characters +are in most cases wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a life of +debauchery under the influence of a pure woman's affection, but the +effect is afterwards destroyed by evidences that the attachment on the +man's side is sensual and based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prison +tyrant and base denier of Dawes' heroism remains unexcused. + +Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only important representatives of +the ordinary virtues in _Long Odds_, are little more than dim shadows +contrasted with the clearly-marked personalities of half a dozen others +in the story who are rogues, or the associates and instruments of +rogues. 'The human anguish of every page' of _His Natural Life_ which +Lord Rosebery found so compelling to his attention, need not have been +so continuous and unqualified. + +The author seems purposely to have ignored the opportunity afforded by +the story for the introduction of a character who, while asserting the +claims of Rufus Dawes and the broader interests of humanity, need not +have defeated the main motive of the plot. It was a decided error not to +gratify in this way the combative instinct of the reader. The Rev. James +North--'gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest'--might have been an +active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the clergyman in _It's Never Too +Late to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmed +and self-accusing drunkard. + +The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity and +dramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalities +among its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is +distinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, a +hopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which become +almost monotonous in their unvaried severity. + +But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the +clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of +an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or +that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured +convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of +criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else? + +How naturally from such a person comes that savagely humorous +dissertation upon the treatment of prisoners! 'There is a sort of +satisfaction to me, by George! in keeping the scoundrels in order. I +like to see the fellows' eyes glint at you as you walk past 'em. Gad! +they'd tear me to pieces if they dared, some of 'em.' + +Frere is a triumph of consistent literary portraiture. He is generally +understood to have been a study from life. But as the official whose +name has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerably +more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus Dawes, it must +be assumed that Clarke aimed only at the representation of a type. + +Brutes like Frere and his vindictive associates, Burgess and Troke, +there undoubtedly were on the settlements, but the average official has +probably a better representative in Major Vickers, the Commandant. +Vickers is not an unkind man, but does not trust himself to do anything +unprovided for in the 'regulations,' for which he has an abject respect. +'It is not for me to find fault with the system,' he says; 'but I have +sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the +chain-gang and the cat.' But he never gives intelligence, much less +kindness, a fair trial. + +Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture of a good woman to be found +in any of the author's stories. Taken in childhood by her parents to the +penal settlements, and separated there for years from youthful society, +familiarised with the constant aspects of crime and suffering, and +habitually in the society of her elders, she early develops into a +quaint, matter-of-fact little creature, such as might well disconcert a +peacock like the Reverend Meekin. + +To Frere, whose knowledge of other women has been mainly immoral, her +innocence and wilfulness, and her instinctive dislike of him, serve as a +strong attraction. Though he becomes her husband by means of a cruel +fraud, he never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement so +tragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as a +relief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers, +despite the gloomy environment of her youth, is throughout an intensely +womanly woman, the delicate conception of whose character surely places +her creator far above the rank of the cynics in literature. + +Not the least of the elements which combine to make _His Natural Life_ +one of the most remarkable novels of the century is the occasional +skilful varying of its painful realism with a colouring of romance, as +in the relations between Dawes and Sylvia: his absorbing devotion when +she is so strangely made dependent upon him at the deserted settlement; +his long-continued confidence that she will effect his vindication and +deliverance; and, finally, the dominant motive of securing her safety +against North with which he escapes from the gaol at Norfolk Island, and +joins her in the doomed schooner on its last voyage to Van Diemen's +Land. + +What Oliver Wendell Holmes called 'the Robinson Crusoe touches' in the +story--including the experiences of the marooned party at Macquarie +Harbour, and those of Rex in his escape through the Devil's +Blowhole--also help to leave with the reader of the novel an +ineffaceable memory. + + + + +HENRY KINGSLEY. + + +What are the special qualities that constitute the permanent charm of +Henry Kingsley's early novels? Some English critics, judging him by +principles of literary art, have said that his best work is in many +places of slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic power, and +imitative in expression. A series of episodes, they observe, supply the +place of a plot in _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_; the central +motive of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ is an impossible story of a +young woman's self-sacrifice; and the Thackerayan mannerisms in +_Ravenshoe_ are an offensive blemish upon an otherwise fine novel. + +As a set-off to these defects, which are of less real consequence than +may appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freely +credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style +far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers +in his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position above +that of his more celebrated brother. + +The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with +Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a +hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as +it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of +them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in +one particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatever +may be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned a +story without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certain +of a permanent place in the literature of the young country where he +encountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life. + +The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having been +recorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interest +might be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point of +view, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckley +and Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of the +three best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons for +their enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds of +the favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, to +leave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _Geoffry +Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but in +most respects they are the highest, because the least artificial, +expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their more +noticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to the +question which opens this essay. + +Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of +education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields +of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with +ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford +without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried off +to the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensational +period of their development, and attracting people from all parts of the +world. It was the time when the ordinary business of the colonies could +scarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexed +employers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urged +Governor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit +mining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible to +persons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.' In the +country districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the +towns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it half +done; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews had +deserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content to +stand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being found +up-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt to +stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings,' was the +reply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners. + +Ex-military and naval officers, professional men, convicts from Van +Diemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexican +mines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbed +shoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in the +crowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo. +In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of them +were toiling in Victoria alone. + +Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist his +first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that +he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and +the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from +England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they +thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was +continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to +his wife. + +An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new edition +of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary +career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent +in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which +succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less +precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman +in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he +was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then, +like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel the country +in search of work on the sheep and cattle stations. + +A well-known pastoralist of the western district of Victoria, the late +Hon. Philip Russell, was accustomed to describe to his friends the +arrival at his station many years ago of a party of 'sundowners' +(_i.e._, tramps), among whom was Kingsley, looking 'very much down on +his luck.' Soon found to be no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest at +the station, where he remained for several months. The most agreeable +glimpse obtainable of his colonial life is given in _Old Melbourne +Memories_, a little collection of sketches published by Rolf Boldrewood +twelve years ago. + +At the period which they recall, Boldrewood was a young man, and making +the experiment in squatting which, though disastrous in its ultimate +commercial results, was afterwards turned to a rich literary account by +him. A friend of his named Mitchell occupied a station in western +Victoria named Langa-willi, and there on one occasion Boldrewood met +Kingsley. The passage in which he gracefully records the event is worth +quoting in full. + +'Why Langa-willi,' he says, 'will always be a point of interest in my +memory, apart from other reasons, for I spent many a pleasant day there, +was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest +of Mitchell's. + +'It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffry Hamlyn_, that immortal work, the +best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the +well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can +imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down +comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host had ridden +forth with his overseer to make-believe to inspect the flocks, but in +reality to get an appetite for lunch. + +'I like to think of them both spending the evening sociably in their own +way, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing away till he had covered +the regulation number of sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps when +the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell reading steadily, or writing +up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the +glasses at ten o'clock; then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke on the +verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, happy, +unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not strong, and +for his talented guest, who was not always so profitably employed. I +suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often +looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the +restful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi.' + +At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being among +the happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley's +career after he returned to England may be summarised here in a few +words. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the first +four or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest as +he lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, and +became more conventional in his methods. + +He essayed journalism for a time, first as editor of the Edinburgh +_Daily Review_, and later as a correspondent of the same journal at the +Franco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being without +the necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had +much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The +writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed +always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he +employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy. +Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his +life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of +which he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels. + +It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word +of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its +riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the +disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers +during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any +of his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ +seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the most +striking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60. + +The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centre +at which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, a +daily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters was +primitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulation +of wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperity +created by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memories +which it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, he +succeeded with singular completeness. + +Save the technical knowledge of geology shown by Trevittick in _The +Hillyars and the Burtons_, and by the encyclopaedic Dr. Mulhaus in his +lecture at the picnic in the grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there is +nothing to suggest that the author had any personal acquaintance with +mining in the colonies. The experience that was so fresh and abundant in +his mind is put aside in favour of a set of facts and pictures not even +incidentally connected with life on the gold-fields. + +As if to emphasise the motive of his choice, if motive there was, he +selected the pre-auriferous period for the Australian parts of his +stories. His squatters become wealthy by a comparatively slow process, +extending over some sixteen years. The squatters of the gold period +would certainly seem better adapted to the purposes of fiction. There +is, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance in the sudden burst of +fortune which within the first few years after 1851 raised so many of +them from positions of struggling uncertainty to affluence, with incomes +varying from ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some few cases as +high as thirty thousand pounds, a year. + +The first and last use Kingsley made of his gold-fields experience is +seen in the sketch of mining of the successful sort in the third volume +of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but this is so slight that it might +have been imagined by a writer who had never handled a shovel or a +washing-cradle in his life. + +The Australian people have so often been the subject of flippant and +ill-natured criticisms, that they can readily appreciate any liberal +estimate of themselves in whatever form it may be placed before their +kindred in Great Britain. It is a fact, as natural as it is undeniable, +that they are very sensitive to praise or blame. What wounds them more +than adverse comment itself, is the circumstance of its often proceeding +from persons who have accepted without warning their too prompt and +trustful hospitality. + +To anyone but the incorrigibly confident and good-natured Antipodean, +the lesson would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished visitor +should be petted less, and left more dependent upon his own devices in +the collection of materials for the inevitable book or magazine article. +Though the result might be the same, there would be no ingratitude, and +the critic would be less able to pose as an impartial inside observer of +Australian society. + +Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight of +imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion +towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or +months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself +from the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point. + +It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casual +writers, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whether +these kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surround +them. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do +not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a +complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well +to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall +say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable? + +By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning the +colonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of the +pioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate +(since largely realised) of the future of the country, find more +enduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing in +ordinary circumstances. + +The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ would +earn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itself +spirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which this +first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might be +unfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at least +told nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generous +one, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort. + +It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting to +preserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrant +colonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Some +of the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, and +delicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; and +then there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broader +expanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, a +greater trust in human nature. + +As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, this +difference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable in +the light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly exists. +Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley's +young Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of the +characteristics of their British parents. But, still, they show +themselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds of +representatives in the homes of the Australian gentry. + +Of such was the young squatter who so attracted the attention of Mr. +Froude at the first station he visited in Victoria. 'He had till within +a month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work for +four years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained the +manners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as a +deer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot.' Of +course, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minute +observation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content to +fly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softest +sofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin,' he might have +seen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptly +called the working aristocracy of Australia. + +The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, and +picturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian, +Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the +rest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardships +which have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil, +loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. The +aspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one. + +There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he has +made squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic.' Had Kingsley +been himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might have +obtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect the +historical value of his work is less than it might have been. But the +compensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author's +choice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he was +telling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group of +emigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and its +difficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with the +exception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketches +rather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was the +first to describe in fiction the rural life of the country, to recognise +the beginning of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate the +pervading spirit of cheerful confidence to which so much of the rapid +early development of Australia was due. + +It may well be regretted that one who had so keen an eye for all that +was best in the social life of the country, at one of its most +interesting periods, should not have written a volume or two of +reminiscences, but no colonial reader would wish _Geoffry Hamlyn_ or +_The Hillyars and the Burtons_ to have been made the vehicle of more +descriptive matter than they contain. Kingsley was more sparing in the +use of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the younger +writers are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may be +considered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper to +Hamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of +Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the story +of the lost child. The latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus' geological +lecture, has the merit of being one of the best pieces of prose the +author ever wrote, and gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford an +opportunity for a dramatic settlement of the order of their suit for the +hand of Alice Brentwood. In the main narrative the periods of 'dull +prosperity' are expressly avoided. After that first beautiful picture of +the pioneer settlement, 'the scene so venerable, so ancient, so seldom +seen in the old world--the patriarchs moving into the desert with all +their wealth to find a new pasture land'--the action of the story is +rapidly advanced to the later days of their success. The estate which +has been the home of Major Buckley's forefathers for generations no +longer providing a competence, he has resolutely left it for the land +where he is to find 'a new heaven and a new earth.' Unlike so many of +the pioneers, he has bade a final good-bye to England, but that it is +_not_ 'for ever' one can safely predict from the outset. He sees the old +country in long years after, when, with some of the wealth garnered on +the rolling prairies of Northern Australia, his son has proudly bought +back the family domain of Clere in all the completeness of its original +acres. Within a few brief chapters the colonists are discovered in the +security of assured wealth. Sitting under their station verandahs, they +can contemplate almost with calmness the death of their cattle by +hundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They have +arrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in the +cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.' Meanwhile, the old Devonshire +life is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create a +new Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homes +among the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourse +approaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--of +life as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softening +glow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of ideal +friendship, of youthful love, family affection, pride of nationality, +and charity towards all mankind. + +Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and wont to declare that the +proportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the world +over. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all his +novels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it spring +their most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that +'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,' which Matthew Arnold +assigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and right +feeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silent +and kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. The +names alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall scene +after scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind to +return. There is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature, +refined, calmly courageous--a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs. +Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom +Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and +didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to +politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend +her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic, +passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; Captain +Brentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who is +sighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young lovers +so nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers came +down'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humoured +roar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who is +everybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except George +Hawker, of whose 'tom-cat' skull he has made that amusingly audacious +examination at the beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful to +find all the faces familiar in the old land reappearing in the new, even +though the coincidences which attend their coming seem too good to be +true. + +But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness of the story in +contemplation of the swift succession of happy scenes created for him. +In these there is nothing dubious or artificial. They are sketches +straight from the life of the country, and it is their beauty that makes +_Geoffry Hamlyn_ a classic in Australian literature. + +Among the characters, there are so many who inspire us with love rather +than mere interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes, of +conversations, rides, pleasure-excursions, and other intercourse, which +in another book might prove wearisome, becomes here the best enjoyment +of the reader. With what vivacity and gusto the author describes the +visits exchanged between the home stations, and the comforts and +happiness which they reveal! Half the book is made up of them, and yet +the majority remain sufficiently clear in the memory to be recalled +separately. Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away, buys a station +near at hand, he and Buckley having become inseparable, and now Baroona, +Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles apart. 'There was always a +hostage from one staying as a guest at the other.' The visits were +generally unannounced, and the visitors stayed as long as they felt +inclined to. The effects of this custom are once amusingly illustrated +at the home of Captain Brentwood. It is when the members of the little +colony hear of the arrival of his beautiful daughter from Sydney, where +she has been at school. 'That week one of those runs upon the Captain's +hospitality took place which are common enough in the Bush, and, +although causing a temporary inconvenience, are generally as much +enjoyed by the entertainers as the entertained. Everybody during this +next week came to see them, and nobody went back again. So by the end of +the week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all uninvited, +and apparently bent on making a long stay of it.' They help one another +when there is work to be done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously. +Kingsley has properly made eating and drinking a noticeable part of the +hearty full-bodied existence of his squatters and their friends. + +There is no class of people who have a better capacity for enjoying the +material comforts of life than the country gentlemen of Australia. Major +Buckley is just the sort of person one might have expected to hold +decided views on the subject of dining as an art. To dine in the middle +of the day was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the gifts of +Providence. 'I eat my dinner not so much for the sake of the dinner +itself as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows--a feeling that +you have nothing to do, and that, if you had, you'd be shot if you'd do +it.' + +On another occasion the author himself preaches a similarly agreeable +doctrine, concluding with the advice: 'My brother, let us breakfast in +Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives end.' + +Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in midsummer forgotten. Anyone in +an armchair under a broad Australian verandah, who fetched anything for +himself, would, in the author's opinion, 'show himself a man of weak +mind.' Niggers were all that a Southern gentleman wanted to complete his +comfort when the sun was at baking-point. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's teachings +undergo a playful deprecation. Did she know the exertion required for +cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount of +perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of +Bass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking two +lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The +Southern gentleman undertakes to affirm that she didn't. + +In the conversation of Kingsley's colonists, the business of the +squatter, his hopes, fears and struggles, find no place, and the idea of +hard work is never obtruded for its own sake. The talk is the talk of a +cultured class who live wholesome lives and have no cares. The twelve +thousand miles that separate them from the centre of their intellectual +life are obliterated. The men preserve their individual tastes, together +with that comradeship and mutual considerateness which have their origin +in the best traditions of college life. The same loyalty and chivalry +are prominently reproduced in the characters of _Ravenshoe_ and _Silcote +of Silcotes_. But in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ these qualities are perhaps more +noticeable (at all events to a colonial reader) than in the later +novels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentially +competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attached +to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'an +Oxford man,' is 'an inveterate writer of songs,' a pastime which only +the annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley is +intent on the education of his son, in which he is careful to provide +for a knowledge of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor Mulhaus finds the new +country an even better field than the old one for his researches as a +naturalist and geologist. In telling his story, Kingsley seems, in +short, to have treated pioneer squatting in Australia as the brighter +aspects of English country life have been treated in fiction for +generations past. He expends his best efforts in showing the picturesque +surroundings and interior comfort of Australian homes. Neither their +tables nor their bookshelves lack any of the best luxuries of the hour. +The greyness and rawness of their environment are not touched upon. +Marcus Clarke could never have shown the Australian people so much of +the beauty of their strange fauna and flora as can be found in _Geoffry +Hamlyn_. He would have allowed the budding civilisation of the country +to be swallowed up in sombre desolate forests, or appear as lonely +specks on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he might intend the +contrary, that, substantially, would be the final impression left on +the mind of the reader. Australian scenery awed and depressed him. With +all his powers of graphic expression, he could seldom write of it +without exaggeration. It was the fascination of the grotesque rather +than the picturesque that he felt. Kingsley, though scarcely so graceful +and vivid a describer, had a keener and more constant sense of natural +beauty. His vision was unclouded by the peculiar susceptibility of +temperament which narrowed the view of his brilliant contemporary. He +could not have indulged in rhetorical flourishes at the expense of +accuracy, as in the familiar passage professing to give the Australian +view of 'our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds +who cannot fly, our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all +fours.' A comparison of Marcus Clarke's too often quoted description +with the sketches of landscape given in, say, the twentieth, +twenty-eighth and thirty-sixth chapters of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and at the +beginning of the third volume of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ +curiously illustrates how far the appreciation of Australian scenery +depends upon the point of view of the observer. + +Kingsley's descriptions, like all else that he wrote of the country, +breathe an unmistakable personal enjoyment. They are the natural +expression of a happy disposition, just as is the boyish fun with which +he surrounds the love-making of his characters. 'Halbert kicked Jim's +shins under the table, and whispered: "You've lost your money, old +fellow!"' when Sam Buckley, flushed and happy, rejoined his friends in +the sitting-room at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in the garden. +Jim Brentwood had peevishly bet his friend that the lovers would go on +shilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert, with keener vision, had +foreseen the very hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of five pounds +on the event. More comical still is the spectacle of Hamlyn ducking +under the bedclothes to escape the boot that is about to be flung at +him, for laughingly discrediting the story of which his bosom-friend +Stockbridge has tragically unburdened himself concerning the +evaporation of his love for Mary Hawker. + +Whether in recording the actions and dialogue of his characters, or in +describing scenery and the habits of the birds and animals which figure +so often in his first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own +happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure +mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's +interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance +of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach +an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if +they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good +fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model of manliness. + +Kingsley's knowledge of household pets was of the kind exhibited by +persons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, with +only the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer of +their peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsical +exaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found at +Garoopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with Alice +Brentwood is almost unique in Australian literature. + +Buckley's ride to rescue his sweetheart from the bushrangers is one of +the most moving and dramatic incidents in the book, and a good specimen +of Kingsley's graphic narrative style. A band of the outlaws who were +the terror of pioneer colonists fifty years ago have risen in the +district, and, after committing outrages at one station, are reported to +be riding on to another twenty miles distant. At the latter, Captain +Brentwood's home, Alice happens to be alone. When the terrible news +comes to her young lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest road +is ten miles from Brentwood's. What start have the bushrangers had, and +will they arrive before him? + + Sam's noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree a hundred years + old, stood in the stable. The buying of that horse had been Sam's + only extravagance, for which he had often reproached himself, and + now this day he would see whether he would get his money's-worth out + of that horse or no. + + I followed him up to the stable, and found him putting the bridle on + Widderin's beautiful little head. Neither of us spoke; only when I + handed him the saddle, and helped him with the girths, he said, 'God + bless you!' + + I ran out and got down the slip-rails for him. As he rode by, he + said, 'Good-bye, Uncle Jeff; perhaps you won't see me again'; and I + cried out, 'Remember your God and your mother, Sam, and don't do + anything foolish.' Then he was gone.... + + Looking across the plains the way he should go, I saw another + horseman toiling far away, and recognised Doctor Mulhaus. Good + Doctor! he had seen the danger in a moment, and by his ready wit had + got a start of everyone else by ten minutes. The Doctor, on his + handsome, long-bodied Arabian mare, was making good work of it + across the plains, when he heard the rush of a horse's feet behind + him, and turning, he saw tall Widderin bestridden by Sam, springing + over the turf, gaining on him stride after stride. In a few minutes + they were alongside of one another. + + 'Good lad!' cried the Doctor. 'On, forwards; catch her, and away to + the woods with her! Bloodhound Desborough will be on their trail in + half an hour. Save her, and we will have noble vengeance!' + + Sam only waved his hand in good-bye, and sped on across the plain + like a solitary ship at sea. The good horse, with elastic and easy + motion, fled on his course like a bird, lifting his feet clearly and + rapidly through the grass. The brisk south wind filled his wide + nostrils as he turned his graceful neck from side to side, till, + finding that work was meant, and not play, he began to hold his head + straight before him, and rush steadily forward.... + + One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on the plain and + die. He was in the hands of God, and he felt it. He said one short + prayer, but that towards the end was interrupted by the wild current + of his thoughts. Was there any hope? They, the devils, would have + been drinking at the Mayfords', and perhaps would go slow; or would + they ride fast and wild? After thinking a short time, he feared the + latter. They had tasted blood, and knew that the country would be + roused on them shortly.... + + Here are a brace of good pistols, and they with care shall give + account, if need be, of two men. After that, nothing. It were + better--so much better--not to live if one were only ten minutes too + late.... Now he was in the forest again, and now as he rode quickly + down the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the hoarse + rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end was well-nigh + come.... Now the house was in sight, and now he cried aloud some + wild inarticulate sound of thankfulness and joy. All was as peaceful + as ever, and Alice, unconscious, stood white-robed in the verandah, + feeding her birds. + + As he rode up he shouted to her and beckoned. She came running + through the house, and met him breathless at the doorway. + + 'The bushrangers, Alice, my love!' he said. 'We must fly this + instant; they are close to us now.' + + She had been prepared for this. She knew her duty well, for her + father had often told her what to do. No tears! no hysterics! She + took Sam's hand without a word, and, placing her fairy foot upon his + boot, vaulted up into the saddle before him.... They crossed the + river, and dismounting, they led the tired horse up the steep slope + of turf that surrounded a little castellated tor of bluestone.... + + 'I do not see them anywhere, Alice,' said Sam presently. 'I see no + one coming across the plains. They must be either very near us in + the hollow of the river-valley, or else a long way off.' + + 'There they are!' said Alice. 'Surely there is a large party of + horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or eight miles off.' + + 'Ay, ten,' said Sam. 'I am not sure that they are horsemen.' Then he + said suddenly in a whisper, 'Lie down, my love, in God's name! Here + they are, close to us!' + + There burst on his ear a confused round of talking and laughing, and + out of one of the rocky gullies leading towards the river came the + men they had been flying from, in number about fourteen. They had + crossed the river, for some unknown reason, and to the fear-struck + hiders it seemed as though they were making straight towards their + lair. + + He had got Widderin's head in his breast, blindfolding him with his + coat, for should he neigh now they were undone indeed! As the + bushrangers approached, the horse began to get uneasy and paw the + ground, putting Sam in such an agony of terror that the sweat rolled + down his face. In the midst of this he felt a hand on his arm, and + Alice's voice, which he scarcely recognised, said in a fierce + whisper: 'Give me one of your pistols, sir!' + + 'Leave that to me!' he replied, in the same tone. + + 'As you please,' she said; 'but I must not fall alive into their + hands. Never look your mother in the face again if I do.' + + He gave one more glance around, and saw that the enemy would come + within a hundred yards of their hiding-place. Then he held the horse + faster than ever and shut his eyes. + + Was it a minute only, or an hour, until they heard the sound of the + voices dying away in the roar of the river, and, opening their eyes + once more, looked into one another's faces? Faces they thought that + they had never seen before--so each told the other afterwards--so + wild, so haggard, and so strange. + +If, as Professor Masson says, 'it is by his characters that a novelist +is chiefly judged,' Henry Kingsley's future reputation will be found to +depend almost solely on what he accomplished in _Geoffry Hamlyn_, _The +Hillyars and the Burtons_ and _Ravenshoe_. In the first two of these +there is an abundance of original observation and little conscious study +of character. The vivid Australian scenes of the one, and the Chelsea +life of the other, are transcripts of the author's own memories. His +knowledge of the squatters he got by working for them and living with +them; what he knew of police and convicts and bushrangers he learned in +doing police duty; the life of the Burtons, as told in 'Jim Burton's +Story,' was that which the author saw during his boyhood round his +father's old rectory on Chelsea Embankment. + +'He seemed to me,' says Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie, 'to have lived his own +books, battled them out and forced them into their living shapes, to +have felt them and been them all.' Hardly all--one feels bound to say. +The remark is entirely true of nearly everything in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and +of three-fourths of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but to _Ravenshoe_ +it applies in a more limited degree, and to some of the later novels +scarcely ever. Either through carelessness (of which one often suspects +him) or deficiency of judgment, Kingsley more than once allowed the +exigencies of his plots to destroy all consistency in his characters. + +Thus, Squire Silcote, the clever old ex-lawyer, is made to retire from +the world and brood for many years, and on quite insufficient grounds, +in the belief that his first wife had been unfaithful, and had tried to +poison him. Nothing short of a condition of semi-insanity could explain +his conduct. In other respects the character is finely conceived. Emma +Burton, too, is a perfectly natural and charming person until she is +employed to revive the old problem of how far a sense of duty can +triumph over the power of love. Her devotion to her deformed brother is +wrong, because it is unnecessary. But even if this were not the case, it +would be irrational in a woman so eminently sensible and unromantic as +she is shown to be in the first half of the story. Almost at the +beginning of her voluntary service she is represented as realising 'the +hideous fate to which she has condemned herself in her fanaticism.' It +is quite impossible to make the reader believe that, loving Erne Hillyar +as she did, she could for years persist in rejecting him, and that her +brother would permit so much sacrifice on his account. + +The beautiful, crazy Gerty Neville is another instance of perversion. +Her silliness is exaggerated in order that she shall weary and disgust +the _blase_ aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is more +inconceivable than the 'coo-ee-ing' which Mr. Hornung's 'Bride from the +Bush' employed to attract the attention of a colonial acquaintance of +hers in Rotten Row. + +But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the +caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in +a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty, +audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burton +and his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson. + +Even in _Silcote of Silcotes_ there are intermittent glimpses of +finely-conceived character which almost outbalance the eccentricities of +the Dark Squire and his sister, the fantastic meddler in foreign +intrigue. Kingsley's skill lay chiefly in his portrayal of men, +especially of young men, such as the dashing Charles Ravenshoe and his +philosophic friend Marston (a study of the George Warrington type); +Lord Welter, Lieutenant Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, reckless +profligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank Maberly, the athletic +curate; and Sam Buckley, the type of an Australian country gentleman. +With old men he was less successful. Lord Saltire, the placid +good-natured cynic of _Ravenshoe_, is, however, a clever exception. 'All +old women are beautiful,' says Kingsley in one of his stories, and he +never portrayed one that was not. His best are Miss Thornton and Lady +Ascot. The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker and Adelaide Summers, +are rather slightly drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat indistinct +personage compared with the Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed and +Ada Cambridge. + +The superior position usually accorded to _Ravenshoe_ among Kingsley's +novels is merited more by the soundness of its plot than by the +naturalness of its characters. It was the author's first essay in pure +romance, and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character from imagination +was always largely, sometimes extravagantly, to idealise. He loved to +people old country houses with walking mysteries, to unravel tangled +genealogies, and discover secrets of youthful folly, to apportion +property to rightful heirs, and endow his characters with a superhuman +generosity. When Charles Ravenshoe is recovering from the long illness +which terminates the full series of his misfortunes, he sends for +Welter, the man who might be considered his arch-enemy, who not so long +before that had seduced Charles's sister and stole his _fiancee_. +Ravenshoe is represented as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs, +and thinking only of Welter as his favourite schoolfellow and youthful +companion. Anticipating doubts as to the feasibility of this, the author +proceeds to discuss the point with the reader, as he does in many +similar instances throughout the story. He appears to have a constant +anxiety about the impression he is making, and his comments and +confidences certainly become distasteful. But this foible goes only a +small way to discount the sterling merits of the novel. + + + + +ADA CAMBRIDGE. + + +Towards the close of 1890 the Australian booksellers--a cautious, +conservative class in their attitude towards new fiction, especially +that produced by the adventurous female writer of these latter +days--began to display so marked an interest in the work of Ada +Cambridge, that one not acquainted with the circumstances of the case +might have credited them with a friendly--possibly a patriotic--desire +to give due place to a newly-risen native genius. And when, in the +following year, another story from the same pen appeared, the popularity +of the author was firmly established. + +The neat red volumes were on every stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gave +them a place of honour in his show-window, and the leading critical +review said that the second story possessed a charm which ought to +induce even the person who ignored fiction on principle to make an +exception in its favour. It was the kind of gratifying recognition that +the public always believes itself eager to offer the deserving young +writer. Yet Ada Cambridge's literary work had extended over no less a +period than fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay in securing +recognition might have been avoided. Probably in England she could have +won a substantial reputation in a third of the time, and with half the +labour expended by her in contributing to the Australian press. But, as +the wife of a country clergyman, she had other matters besides +literature to occupy her attention, and was content to write when there +happened to be leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of the +leading colonial newspapers. + +About half a dozen novels were issued in this way, besides occasional +articles and poems. The publication of the longer stories in the +_Australasian_, a high-class weekly journal, ought in itself to have +made a name for the author, and possibly would have done so, were they +not in most cases so obviously a local product, and therefore not to be +seriously considered. It was a repetition of the experience of Rolf +Boldrewood. In the end, as usual, it was the English public that first +accepted her novels for what they were worth. + +Ada Cambridge is a native of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaint +villages of which are a picturesque background of some of her best +stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage, she went with her husband, +the Rev. George Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church of England, +to Wangaratta, in Victoria. After residing successively in several other +country towns of this colony, they settled in 1893 at Williamstown, a +waterside suburb of Melbourne. + +A novel entitled _Up the Murray_, dealing with life in the colonies, was +published by Ada Cambridge (the author continues to issue her work under +her maiden name) in the Melbourne press in 1875. Others of the same +character followed at irregular intervals. Two were issued in book-form +by a London firm of publishers, but did not attain to much more than a +library circulation. + +When the author again came before the English public, it was with a +novel in which the purely Australian interest was rigidly subordinated +to dramatic quality and a richly sympathetic study of character. _A +Marked Man_ is the story of a younger son of an old English county +family who, while sharing the pride and indomitable spirit of his +ancestry, develops a hatred for conventional prejudices and religious +cant, and, after making a final assertion of independence by marrying a +farmer's daughter, emigrates to New South Wales to establish a name and +fortune on his own account. + +The first half of the action takes place in England, the remainder in +the colonies. The natural beauties surrounding the home of the Delavels +at Sydney are not less delicately and poetically described than the +village life they have left behind in the mother country--the +patriarchal rule of an old-fashioned, rather pompous house, over a +people retaining the hereditary respect of vassals for their feudal +lord; but the view given of Australian society is, in keeping with the +relation to it of Richard Delavel and his household, of the slightest +kind. + +Delavel and the only daughter whom he has trained to be his second self, +whose comradeship makes him almost forget the long-drawn thraldom of his +early _mesalliance_, live in a world so much and so necessarily their +own, that one is grateful for the good taste which excluded from it the +bustle and commoner interests of colonial life. The novel met with +general, and in several instances cordial, favour in England, and since +then the author has yearly increased her reputation. + +Three out of five of the later novels are, like _A Marked Man_, made +comparatively independent of the distinctively local interest to which +we have been accustomed in the works of most Australian authors. It is +not possible, for example, to point out anything in the shape of an +essentially local first cause for any of the principal incidents of +_Not All in Vain_ and _A Marriage Ceremony_. The passionate half-brute, +Neil Hammond, who pursues the heroine of the former story across the +world, and terrorises her with his unwelcome attentions, would have met +a violent death, or himself have murdered someone, in his own country or +elsewhere as inevitably as in Australia; and the man who killed him +would not have found Katherine Knowles less faithful during the long +years of his imprisonment had her sacrifice been under the daily +observation of Hammond's family and her own strait-laced aunts in their +East Norfolk home. + +In _A Marriage Ceremony_, the only advantage secured by taking the story +from London to Melbourne--instead of to New York, let us say--seems to +lie in whatever added strength the sense of greater distance imparts to +the temporary appearance of a final separation between Betty Ochiltree +and her strangely-wedded husband. The marriage that was a condition of +their inheritance having been performed, bride and bridegroom part in +accordance with a previous agreement. The former reappears as a +prominent figure in the society of modern Melbourne--the Melbourne of +1893, when the failure of banks and land companies was a regular subject +of morning news. + +Here, it might be supposed, was an opportunity for one or two vivid and +instructive sketches of the sensational period that witnessed the proof +of so much folly and its punishment, and wrought so many more effects on +all classes of Australian society than could be noted in the common +records of the time. But the great crisis is almost ignored in the +novel. There are merely a few passing references to its progress, and a +mention of the loss on the part of Mrs. Ochiltree of some of the wealth +which she is beginning to regard as having been rather spuriously +acquired. + +Even the very successful story of the _Three Miss Kings_ and _A Mere +Chance_ tell little of the city life of Australia, though their action +is placed in it almost exclusively. The latter is a tale of match-making +intrigue and money-worship in Toorak, but the main interest of the plot +apart, the account of fashionable Melbourne is a singularly colourless +one. As for Mrs. Duff-Scott and her Major, the amiable pair who in the +character of leaders of Melbourne society undertake to find husbands for +Elizabeth King and her sisters, and whose benevolent intentions are so +effectually forestalled, they are as conventionally English as though +they belonged to the pages of Miss Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood. + +Again, though during half of _Fidelis_ we are given occasional +impressive and delightful glimpses of Nature under southern skies, the +principal characters are English, and in England is centred first and +last the dominant pathos of the story. A complete absence of dialect +from the novels helps to emphasise the author's slender use of +extraneous aids to interest. + +The influence of Ada Cambridge's twenty-five years' Australian +experience is shown in her general outlook upon life, rather than in the +details of her work. The prevailing tone of her books is one of marked +cheerfulness, sincerity, and simplicity; she has a hearty dislike for +conventional stupidities, especially for the mock-modesty that stifles +honest sentiment; and she gives emphatic endorsement to the pleasant +dictum (which seems so much more feasible in sunny Australia than in +colder northern lands) that the second half of life is not less fruitful +and satisfying than the first. + +As the general effect of Ada Cambridge's teaching, so far as it can be +gathered from her plots, and the few instances in which she has +permitted herself anything in the shape of didactic expression, is to +make us more patient with life's complexities and perceptive of its +compensations, and more content with whatever happiness may be drawn in +our way by the chain of accidents called Destiny, so do her principal +characters, in their foibles and their strength--in the little acts and +impulses which qualify alike their heroism and their baseness--tend to +make us more discriminative and charitable. + +In almost every case they are strong studies from some point of view. +Of deliberate analysis there is very little; but there are numerous +realistic touches not commonly admitted in fiction, which, handled with +skill and insight, keep the character within the pale of common +experience and increase rather than alienate the reader's sympathy. +Thus, Richard Delavel's outburst of relief upon the death of his first +wife, so far from being vulgar and brutal, as it might have seemed in +other circumstances, recalls and emphasises the high sense of duty and +honour and the iron self-restraint which had enabled him to be in all +essentials a good husband for twenty-five years to a cold-hearted +creature, between whom and himself there had never been either common +interest or feeling, and for whose sake he had relinquished the woman +that would have been his real mate in intellect and sympathy. Delavel's +housekeeper, who is also a privileged friend, takes him to task for his +unseemly hurry to go in search of this old love before his wife had been +a week in her grave. He makes no secret of his relief. 'The sense that +I am free is turning my brain with joy,' he confesses. + + 'I say it because I feel it. I am aware that it is in very bad + taste, but that doesn't make it the less true. Do you suppose people + are never glad when their relations die? They are--very often; they + can't help it; only they pretend they are not, because it seems so + shocking. I don't pretend--at least, I need not pretend to you. The + fault is not always--not all--on the side of the survivors, Hannah. + I don't think I am any worse than those who pretend a grief that + they don't feel. I was never unkind to her--never in my life, that I + can remember. I did not kill her; I would have kept her alive as + long as I possibly could. I think--I hope--that if I could have + saved her by the sacrifice of my own life, I should have done it + without a single moment's hesitation.' + + 'I am sure you would,' said Hannah. + + 'But,' he continued, with that unwonted fire blazing in his eyes, + 'since dead she is, I _am_ glad--I am, I am! I am glad as a man who + has been kept in prison is to be let out. It is not my fault; I + would be sorry if I could. Some day, Hannah--some day, when we have + been dust for a few hundred years--perhaps for a few score + only--people will wake up to see how stupid it is to drive a man to + be glad when his wife is dead. They are finding out so many things; + they will find that out too in time.' + +Probably it will still appear to many that Delavel's admission was at +least indelicate and inconsistent with his chivalrous nature. It is not +here possible to convey an adequate impression of his fiery spirit, his +long heart-hunger, and the magnitude of the loss which a wholly +uncongenial marriage must ever mean to such a man. When the full story +of his life and that of his quietly 'implacable' wife is read, his +conduct seems natural and excusable. It is as much a part of himself as +the tremulous tenderness with which he ministers to the comfort of the +frail Constance Bethune, after finding and bringing her home, or as his +fierce grief when she dies. + +Another very human spectacle that illustrates the author's method is the +reunion of Betty and Rutherford Ochiltree--the frank selfishness of +their mutual joy while the poor woman who had been an unconscious +barrier between them lies dead under their roof. It is a somewhat +painful episode, and precludes anything like high esteem for Rutherford, +but it has the quality of intense actuality. + +In like manner is Adam Drewe shorn of some of the merit of his devotion +to the heroine of _Fidelis_ by being shown in successive attachments to +other women during his long exile in Australia. The author recognises +that, 'the laws of literary romance being so much at variance with the +laws of Nature,' Adam is certain to suffer in the reader's good opinion +for having 'continued to hunger for feminine sympathy as well as his +daily dinner.' No doubt his stature as a hero lessens when it appears +that though the absent Fidelia was ever in his thoughts, and a daily +source of inspiration to him as a writer, he twice narrowly escaped +marriage--first with a servant girl at his lodgings, and afterwards with +the daughter of his landlady--and that at another period of his colonial +life he became involved in a disreputable kind of Bohemianism. But he is +not disgraced by these lapses to the extent that the author anticipates; +at all events, they make him more human than he could otherwise have +been. + +It is this power of infusing a robust humanity into her characters that +makes the distinctive feature of Ada Cambridge's best novels. In each, +whatever the quality of the plot, there are always two or three +personages who talk and act as real men and women do--now rationally or +in obedience to custom, now passionately or with that perversity which, +as the author once describes it, 'is like a natural law, independent of +other laws, the only one that persistently defies our calculations.' +They are mostly big people with big appetites. The beauty of the women +is the beauty of mind and of sound physical health. + +Susy Delavel was tall, well grown, straight and graceful, with an +intelligent, eager face, though 'her mouth was large, her nose not all +it should have been, and her complexion showed the want of parasols and +veils.' She was 'not handsome at all, but decidedly attractive.' + +Sarah French, the girl in _Fidelis_ whose comeliness so nearly drew the +hero from his old allegiance, has 'a strong and good, rather than a +pretty, face,' with a 'large and substantial figure.' Adam Drewe +concluded on first sight of her that she was a nice woman. Later on he +finds her 'looking the very incarnation of home, with her cheerful +healthy face, her strong busy hands, her neat hair, her neat dress.... +She might have sat for a statue of Motherhood--of Charity with a babe at +her ample breast, and others clinging to her supporting hand; Nature had +so evidently intended her to play the part.' + +Katherine Knowles has fine physical symmetry and a strong, frank face. +While lacking 'the airs and graces, the superficial brightness, of +conventional girlhood,' she is 'singularly vivid in her more substantial +way.' + +Betty Ochiltree's beauty, too, is of the kind that wears well. She has a +face 'frank and spirited, firm of mouth and chin, kind and sweet, as +honest as the day,' surmounting an ample body, and she carries herself +with dignity, 'as few Australian girls can do.' And how impressive and +consistent with her character is the noble, placid figure of Elizabeth +King, 'perfect in proportion, fine in texture, full of natural dignity +and ease!' + +The author is fond of showing the attractiveness of such women at the +age of thirty, or even more. 'In real life,' she once observes, 'the +supremely interesting woman is not a girl of eighteen, as she is in +fiction. Every man worth calling a man knows that. A girl of that age +... knows as much about love as does a young animal in the spring, and +not a bit more. And the human male of these days--so highly developed, +so subtly compounded--has grown out of the stage when that much would +satisfy him. I mean, of course, the human male who in real life answers +to the hero in fiction--a man who must have left, not only his teens, +but his twenties behind him.' + +When one comes to the heroes, it is easy to recall half a dozen +commanding figures who blunder in the most natural and amiable manner in +their affairs; who think a good deal more of their immediate personal +comforts than of religious or ethical abstractions; who like their own +way and try to get it; who, in short, are mostly what the author wishes +them to appear--'the men out of books that we meet every day.' Of little +men, in the physical sense, there are only two of any importance, but +even these are virile and masterful. A general aim of the stories would +seem to be to show the sexes what each chiefly admires in the other. It +is first a sort of apotheosis of the _mens sana in corpore sano_, and +after that an illustration of the independent attractions of sympathy, +gentleness, culture, and high character. + +Though in most cases the strongest attachments are formed between men +and women arrived at an age to discriminate beyond mere physical charm, +nevertheless physical charm is the most powerful, though not always +acknowledged, motive of their choice. 'Because of this,' says the +pathetic Hilda Donne in _A Marriage Ceremony_, touching her cheek, which +is terribly disfigured by a birth-mark, 'I have never had _love_. Can +you think what that means? You can't. Once I thought I was not going to +be quite shut out--once; but I was mistaken. I have found out that it is +for one's body that one is loved, and not for one's soul.' + +Hilda unconsciously exaggerates, for it appears that Rutherford Hope, +though at first affected with disgust by her disfigurement, and +convinced that no healthy man could consort with 'so unnatural a woman,' +had come at last to regard her as a possible wife--before he was +confronted with the sudden temptation to secure a fortune by wedding +Betty Ochiltree, in compliance with the conditions of her millionaire +uncle's will. Yet Hilda's comment is substantially sound. Even +Rutherford, with all the sense of his mature years, and all the culture +that enabled him to appreciate her poetic gift, would have had to argue +himself into a marriage with her. + +The ugliness of Adam Drewe, from which his mother turned in disgust at +his birth, and which in youth drove him across the seas in an agony of +sensitiveness from the woman he loved, was a less serious affliction +than that of Hilda Donne; but we know that he continued to be keenly +reminded of its disadvantages long after time had proved the sterling +qualities of his manhood, lessened his deformity, and brought him fame +and wealth. + +Compared with the previous illustration, however, his case is at fault +in failing to give a sufficient description of his deformity. But that +he himself long thought it an insuperable bar to his happiness is clear. +When he fell in love with Fidelia Plunket, she was temporarily blind. +His affection for her was returned, and he knew it, but dreading the +disillusionment that would ensue when her sight was restored, he fled to +Australia and determined to abandon all thought of her as a wife. Urged +to return, because 'when a woman _is_ a woman,' and really in love with +a man, 'there's no camel she won't swallow for him,' Drewe replied that +his camel was just the one camel that no woman had been known to +swallow, or, at any rate, to digest. And he remained--for twenty years. + +The plots of Ada Cambridge's novels are of the episodical order, and the +author, despite her openly-expressed scorn for the unnaturalness of the +average conventional novel, has not disdained employment of some of its +time-honoured methods. Occasionally she is at pains to explain the +feasibility of coincidences employed to secure dramatic interest. They +are certainly never of an impossible kind, and no one would deny the +truism that real life abounds in them. But has not a distinguished +writer aptly pointed out that there are matters in which fiction cannot +compete with life? As a rule, however, where a few such weaknesses +exist, they do not count for much with the average reader when the +principal scenes are as finely drawn as those in _A Marked Man_ or +_Fidelis_, or _The Three Miss Kings_. The latter story in some details +puts a greater strain upon the credulity than any of the other novels, +yet so well conceived and absolutely natural are the characters of the +three girls, and so humorously and pictorially presented the chief +incidents in their development, that the dubious points of the plot +become almost insignificant. The qualities of the novel as a whole are +similar to those which obscure the artistic defects of _Geoffry Hamlyn_, +and which for thirty-seven years have made it one of the most popular of +Australian stories. + +In the presentation of tragic or pathetic incidents lies Ada Cambridge's +chief power, as far as her plots are concerned. In _A Marked Man_ it is +accompanied by her highest achievements in portraying a variety of +well-contrasted character. _Fidelis_, which opens at the Norfolk village +of the earlier novel, and reintroduces the Delavels, contains fewer +developed characters, as may also be said of _A Marriage Ceremony_. But +the three novels are equal in the high standard of their emotional +quality. No quotation of moderate size could do justice to any of the +principal scenes of _A Marked Man_: the chivalrous sacrifice of Richard +Delavel's youthful marriage; the inward repentance of it for twenty-two +years; the revival of his love for Constance Bethune; his painful +anxiety for her health, hungry enjoyment of her companionship, and +anguish at her death; and his own death soon afterwards. In the more +briefly detailed tragedy that brings into such striking relief the +sprightly drama of _A Marriage Ceremony_, there is a scene giving a fair +example of the author's style in touching passages. When Hilda, deeply +in love with Rutherford Hope, hears of his union with another woman, she +takes the readiest means of effacing herself by suddenly marrying a +shallow coxcomb who seeks her for mercenary reasons, and going with him +to Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected by the sudden +reappearance of Rutherford, and by subsequent ill-treatment received +from her jealous husband, that an exhausting illness follows, and to +save herself from insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile the long +separation of Rutherford and Betty Ochiltree, which began on the day of +their marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda's death removes the final +impediment. Together they pay a last visit to the dead woman: + + Incapable of speech, he lifted a tress of hair--flowing free over + the rigid arms, because it was really pretty, and thus had to be + made the most of--and pressed it a moment to his bearded mouth. In + that gesture he seemed to ask her forgiveness for having been a man + like other men, as Nature made them. + + 'Kiss _her_,' Betty whispered, pushing him a little. She, too, felt + that it would be something, if not much, to put to the account that + was so frightfully ill-balanced--a kiss from Rutherford before all + was wholly over. + + He stooped and laid his lips--scarcely laid them--on the waxen + forehead. And he thought how he had nearly kissed her once, in the + scented spring dusk, at her father's gate, and been repelled at the + last moment by the thought of something that he could not see.... He + turned back the sheet and straightened it, and nobody but hired + undertakers had anything more to do with Hilda Donne. He put out the + lamps, leaving her in the dark, which, as a living, nervous woman, + she had always been afraid of; and he took Betty in his arms to + comfort her a little, before he opened the door upon the light and + life of their own transfigured world. + +There is a characteristic vein of realism in the subsequent view of the +lovers' self-absorption and short-lived sorrow, and the callousness of +Donne. + + No later than the same Saturday afternoon [Hilda was buried in the + morning], her Edward was cheering himself with his preparations for + New Zealand, whither he was easily persuaded to set off at once as a + means of distracting his mind from his domestic woes, and of + retiring gracefully from a Civil Service that was otherwise certain + to dismiss him; and there he shortly found a number of absorbing + interests, including--as Rutherford had predicted--a rosy-cheeked + second wife, who, as he wrote to Mrs. Ochiltree when announcing his + engagement, was all that heart could wish, and had apparently been + made on purpose for him.... No later than Saturday afternoon--and + early at that--Rutherford, having parted with the widower and seen + him off the premises, ran upstairs to his wife's door, with a spring + in his step and a light in his eyes that plainly showed his mourning + to be over. Hilda was dead and gone, but Betty was alive in her + splendid strength and beauty, and he was her husband and bridegroom, + and his hour had come! The grave had closed over that broken heart, + which had ached as long as it could feel, and ached most for him; + but the world was still glorious for him and his love, and never so + glorious as now. They began to bask in their happiness, as the house + in the sunshine that flooded it, now that the blinds were drawn up. + The shadow of death, close and terrible as it was, could not dim it + for them any more. + +In all the novels there are memorable scenes of tenderness, among the +best of which are those between Fidelia and Adam Drewe, first in their +brief meetings as girl and youth--she with her weak eyes bandaged, but +reading him through his voice and bashful deprecation; he yearning to +remain with her, but forcing himself away--and then in long years after, +when he returns to find her in widowhood and poverty, and to all seeming +hopelessly blind. + +The conception of the latter scene is quite the best to be found in the +whole of Ada Cambridge's work, and has not been equalled in its kind by +any other Australian writer. The simplicity and verbal reticence of this +chapter of intense feeling gives also a good sample of the author's +style of expression. Seldom ornate or much studied, it is ever a lucid +and easy style. As a narrative specimen, the following, from the same +novel, is conveniently quotable: + + It was not much of an accident, but it was enough. The engine buried + its fore-paws in the soft earth of the embankment, where engines + were not meant to go, and then paused abruptly in the attitude of a + little dog hiding a bone in a flower-bed; the embankment sloped down + instead of up, and the monster hung upon the edge of it, nose to the + ground and hind-quarters in the air, looking as if a baby's touch + would send it over. Several carriages, violently running upon it and + being checked suddenly, stood on tip-toes, so to speak, and fell + into each other's arms with a vehemence that completely overset + them; one rolled right down the bank, head first, and the others + tumbled upon its kicking wheels. It was all over in a moment; and + the dazed passengers, realising in a second moment that the end of + the world was still an event in the future, picked themselves up as + best they could. No one was killed, but some were badly shaken, and + most of them screamed horribly. The sound of those screams, mingled + with the clanking and crashing of riven wood and metal, and the + hissing of escaping steam, conveyed the idea of such an appalling + catastrophe as would make history for the world. + +Though not a satirist--she does not hate well enough to be that--Ada +Cambridge has occasionally a neat and forcible way of describing +character. Richard Delavel's first wife was 'a gentle and complaisant +being, soft and smooth, apparently yielding to the touch, but dense, +square, and solid as a well-dumped wool-bale.' When opposed in will or +contradicted in her opinion, she smiled resignedly, and, if it appeared +due to her dignity, sulked for a period. Yet generally she was 'the +evenest-tempered woman that ever a well-meaning husband found it +difficult to get on with.' A pattern of order and conscientiousness, +'governed by principles that were as correct as her manners and costume, +and as firmly established as the everlasting hills,' she might have made +an admirable wife for a clergyman, but was totally unsuited to Delavel, +as he to her. + +Still, she was very proud of the look of 'blood' in her Richard, and +when he became wealthy, and she a fashionable hostess in Sydney +society, nothing delighted her more than her opportunities of making the +aristocratic connection known. Her own origin as the daughter of a +farmer was quite forgotten. 'Annie might have been a Delavel from the +beginning, in her own right, for all the recollection that remained to +her of the real character of her bringing up.... Years and certain +circumstances will often affect a woman's memory that way--a man somehow +manages to keep a better grasp of facts.' + +Yelverton, the lover of Elizabeth King, an English aristocrat spending +some of his wealth in lessening the misery and vice of London, was 'not +the orthodox philanthropist, the half-feminine, half-neuter specialist +with a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with a mission to set the +world right; his benevolence was simply the natural expression of a +sense of sympathy and brotherhood between him and his fellows, and the +spirit which produced that was not limited in any direction.' + +His friend, Major Duff-Scott, 'an ex-officer of dragoons, and a late +prominent public man of his colony (he was prominent still, but for his +social and not his official qualifications), was a well-dressed and +well-preserved old gentleman who, having sown a large and miscellaneous +crop of wild oats in the course of a long career, had been rewarded with +great wealth, and all the privileges of the highest respectability.' + + + + +ADAM LINDSAY GORDON. + + +The strongest note of Adam Lindsay Gordon's poetry is a personal one. +When he represents Australia best, he best represents his own striking +character. Yet that character had clearly shown itself, as had also his +lyric gift, before he saw Australia. He is the favourite poet of the +country by a happy fortuity rather than by the merit of special native +inspiration. Those tastes of the people which he has expressed in manner +and degree so rare as to make a parallel difficult of conception were +also his own dominant tastes. From early boyhood they had controlled his +life, and in the end they wrecked it. + +That any man living an adventurous and precarious life, often in rude +associations and without the stimulus of ambition or of intellectual +society, should write poetry at all is a matter for some wonder. And +when several of the compositions of such a writer are marked by rare +vigour and melody, and some few are worthy to rank with the best of +their kind produced in the century, it must be held that the gift of the +author is genuine and spontaneous. It is impossible to believe that +Gordon would have been less a poet had he never lived under the Southern +Cross; that he would have cared less for horses and wild riding, for +manliness and the exhilaration of danger. Had he become a country +gentleman in England, or a soldier, like his father, should we not still +have had 'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde,' 'The Romance of Britomarte,' 'By +Flood and Field,' and 'How we beat the Favourite.' And do these not form +the majority of his best poems? A man apt alike for the risks of the +chase or the cavalry charge, with a delicate ear for the music of words, +with natural promptings to write, would in any conditions have found +time to celebrate the things which his daring and gallant spirit loved. +Had he not ridden as well as written the rides related by his 'Sick +Stockrider,' he might have been foremost in that more glorious one so +often present to his fiery fancy, and have wielded + + 'The splendid bare sword + Flashing blue, rising red from the blow!' + +Gordon was a true soldier in sentiment all his life, as he was also a +true Englishman, and it is the soldier and the Englishman in him far +more than the Australian that the people of his adopted country, +consciously or unconsciously, admire. It is yet difficult to consider +his work as a writer apart from his personality. And it is natural that +this should be so in the case of a man whose career was itself a +romance, who led as strange a double life as ever poet lived, and who, +through all, retained the marked essentials of a gentleman. + +In his character as a sportsman and a rider there is an element of the +ideal which largely helps to commend him to the majority of Australians. +Though his liking for horses and the turf became a destroying passion, +there was never anything sordid in it. He was not a gambler, for long +after he had won recognition as the first steeplechase rider in a +country of accomplished riders, he declined payment for his services on +the race-track, accepting it only when compelled at last by poverty to +do so; and the distaste with which he had always viewed the meaner +associations of the sport latterly became dislike and scorn. In the +period of disappointment that preceded his death he refused a +remunerative post on the sporting staff of a leading Melbourne journal +because he wished to dissociate himself completely and finally from +everything connected with the professionalism of sport. + +As a Bush rider he became noted for the performance of feats which no +one else would think of attempting. The Australians often speak and +write of it as courage absence of fear--but it surely had a large +admixture of pure recklessness. It is at least evident that danger had a +certain irresistible fascination for him. 'Name a jump, and he was on +fire to ride at it,' is the description given of this curious +predilection which made his company in a riding party a somewhat +exciting pleasure. The day in 1868 when he won three steeplechases at +Melbourne is still remembered; and at Mount Gambier, in South Australia, +a granite obelisk marks where once he leaped his horse over a fence +surmounting the headland of a lake, and then across a chasm 'more than +forty feet wide.' A single false step would have cast horse and rider +into the lake two hundred feet below. Of the same wild character was his +riding during boyhood in the hunting-fields of Gloucestershire. It would +be natural to suspect some measure of vanity or bravado in all this, but +no hint of either is given by any of his acquaintances; and the few who +knew him well are emphatic in placing him, as a man and a sportsman, +apart from and above the majority of those with whom the conditions of +his life brought him into contact. 'Gordon,' says one of his intimate +friends, 'was always a quiet, modest, pure-minded gentleman.... I never +knew such a noble-hearted man, especially where women were concerned.' + +The deep melancholy in many of Gordon's poems has been attributed to the +influence of Australian scenery, and to the loneliness of the earlier +years of his life in the colonies. This explanation, if not wholly +erroneous, is at least much exaggerated. It ignores the most obvious +elements of the poet's temperament. It takes no account of the history +of wasted opportunities and regrets, of defeat and discontent, of +self-wrought failure and remorse, that may plainly be read in 'To my +Sister,' 'An Exile's Farewell,' 'Early Adieux,' 'Whispering in the +Wattle Boughs,' 'Quare Fatigasti,' 'Wormwood and Nightshade,' and other +poems. The writer, as he himself says, has no reserve in the criticism +of his own career. + + 'Let those who will their failings mask, + To mine I frankly own; + But for their pardon I will ask + Of none--save Heaven alone.' + +Gordon's youth was wild and ungoverned. Before his twenty-first year his +folly had lost him home, friends, love, and the one profession that +might have steadied him, as well as afforded him distinction. He was +the son of Captain Adam D. Gordon (an officer who had seen service in +India) and the grandson of a wealthy Scotch merchant. Captain Gordon +settled at Cheltenham in the later years of his life, and intended that +his son should study for the army; but a mad wilfulness and passion for +outdoor sport had taken possession of the youth, and nothing could be +done with him. He rode to hounds with all the daring that marked his +horsemanship in later life; he rode in steeplechases, he frequented the +company of pugilists at country fairs and public-houses, and joined in +their contests; he was removed from two schools for unruly conduct, and +a more serious escapade, though innocent of any bad intention, nearly +caused his arrest by the police. At last it was agreed that he should +emigrate to Australia. He was glad to go, but bitter at the thought of +what his going implied. The knowledge that he suffered solely through +his own fault did not make less disagreeable to him the censure of +others, even that of the gallant father whom, in his wildest moments of +rebellion, he never ceased to love and admire. The unhappiness attending +this severance from the home that he felt he would never see again is +told in a poem to his sister, written (August, 1853) a few days before +he sailed. + + 'Across the trackless seas I go, + No matter when or where; + And few my future lot will know, + And fewer still will care. + My hopes are gone, my time is spent, + I little heed their loss, + And if I cannot feel content, + I cannot feel remorse. + + 'My parents bid me cross the flood, + My kindred frowned at me; + They say I have belied my blood, + And stained my pedigree. + But I must turn from those who chide, + And laugh at those who frown; + I cannot quench my stubborn pride, + Or keep my spirits down. + + 'I once had talents fit to win + Success in life's career; + And if I chose a part of sin, + My choice has cost me dear. + But those who brand me with disgrace, + Will scarcely dare to say + They spoke the taunt before my face + And went unscathed away.' + +The stanzas (there are ten more in the poem) have all the bitterness of +a youthful sorrow and all the vigour of a youthful defiance. But at the +moment of his deepest depression it is upon himself that the writer +casts the real blame. This is characteristic of his judgment of himself +throughout life. He has ever too much honour and spirit to shirk the +responsibility of his own acts. And the same qualities keep him from +doing injury to others. He is consoled by remembering this in bidding +good-bye to his native land. + + 'If to error I incline, + Truth whispers comfort strong, + That never reckless act of mine + E'er worked a comrade wrong.' + +As a colonist, Gordon might have justified his Scotch descent by making +a fortune. Wealth was to be gained in other and surer ways than by +groping for it in the goldfields. But he was indifferent, and allowed +himself to drift. Australia was attractive to him only as a place of +adventure, of freedom, of retirement, of oblivion. All but the latter he +found it. He readily adapted himself to the rough conditions of the +country, but could never overcome the thought that in those first false +steps he had lost all worth striving for. Time softened the gloomy +defiance of his farewell verses, but did not alter his determination to +efface himself, to be forgotten even by his family. He held no +communication with anyone in England, and heard nothing from his home +until ten years later, when a lawyer's letter notified him that both his +mother and father were dead, and that under the will of the latter he +was to receive a legacy of seven thousand pounds. Meanwhile, Gordon +appears to have made no attempt to win any of the prizes that were the +common reward of pluck and industry in the Australia of the fifties. He +joined the mounted police force of South Australia, but, impatient of +its discipline, soon left it, and for long afterwards was content with +the rough employment of a horse-breaker. + +A curious, pathetic figure he makes at this time. He broke in horses +during the day, and read the classic poets at night. Think of the +refined Englishman in blue blouse, fustian, and half-Wellington boots, +seated among the boisterous company of a 'men's hut' on a Bush station, +reading Horace by the aid of a rude lamp, 'consisting of a honeysuckle +cone stuck in clay in a pannikin, and surrounded with mutton fat!' Or +sitting at some Bush camp of his own, and imagining, as he so finely +did, the famous Balaclava Charge, which set Europe ringing with pity and +admiration a year after he arrived in Australia. How he would have liked +to be among the actors in that scene! + + 'Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride + Long years of pleasure outvie!' + +he exclaims, and wishes that his own end could be fair as that of one +'who died in his stirrups there.' + +Gordon seemed not only to be reconciled to his Bush life, but to have +become attached to it. He once declared it to be better in many +respects than any other. He was temperate, skilful in his work, and as +popular as one of reserved manner can be. Most of the squatters of the +period made it a practice to receive into their social circle any +companionable and educated man, whether their equal in position or not. +It was a generous custom, typical of the most hospitable country in the +world, and worked well on the whole. But Gordon, unlike Henry Kingsley +and others of the same class, took no advantage of it. That the +squatters did not themselves recognise the worth of one so unassertive +was not to be wondered at. He saw this, and never blamed them. They +could not, as he remarked on one occasion, be expected to know that he +was as well born as any of them, and perhaps better educated. One of +them saw there was 'something above the common' in him; but that was +all. At length he was discovered by a good-natured and scholarly Roman +Catholic priest (the Rev. Julian E. Tenison Woods), who, though he does +not say so, evidently took a pleasure during the five years of their +acquaintance in making the merits of the solitary Englishman known in +the colony. Their tastes accorded excellently. They talked 'horses or +poetry' as they rode together, or smoked by their camp-fires. Gordon's +reserve thawed for the first time. He had a well-trained memory, and +occasionally would recite Latin or Greek verse, or a scene from +Shakespeare, or passages from Byron and other modern poets. Greek he had +taught himself in lonely hours after his arrival in Australia, having +neglected it while at college. + +In the end his disposition left the good cleric, like many another, much +puzzled. Was there anything of foolish pride or misanthropy in Gordon's +avoidance of society that would have welcomed him? Both his recorded +speech and his poems are without evidence of either. Those who remember +his taciturnity and little eccentricities also speak of his kindness of +heart, generosity and trustfulness of others. Did he ever complain that +he was oppressed and saddened by his self-chosen life in the Bush? We +have seen the high estimate he once gave of it; and Mr. Woods, who has +recorded many proofs of close observation of his friend, testifies that +the melancholy of his poems found little or no expression in his +conversation. Gordon may have been shy (as Marcus Clarke noted), but he +early formed a fairly accurate judgment of his literary powers. He said +'he was sure he would rise to the top of the tree in poetry, and that +the world should talk of him before he died.' Coming from one who was +far from being vain or boastful, the remark suggests hope and ambition. +But neither, it would seem from his colonial career, was ever more than +a passing mood with him. Why did he remain in obscurity during several +of the best years of his life, doing rough and dangerous work, when he +might have obtained some remunerative post in one of the cities? Why did +he marry a domestic servant--one who could never be an intellectual +companion for him? + +It appears that he considered himself to have 'irretrievably lost +caste.' It is a fantastic idea, and could not have any justification in +a country where an Englishman of good manners and behaviour need never +want congenial society. Gordon was abnormally proud, independent and +sensitive: an unfortunate disposition for anyone who has his way to make +in an imperfect world. Such a man constantly misunderstands himself and +is misunderstood. He takes severe, unpractical views of his own +character and of life generally. Not necessarily morose or ungenial, he +is always apt to be thought so. Gordon's conclusion that he had lost +caste is a proof of supersensitiveness, and the deep effect produced +upon his temperament by the incidents of his youth. + +There is a touching and significant little story of an acquaintance +which he formed with a young lady at Cape Northumberland, and how he +ended it. We are delicately told that, having become a warm admirer of +his dashing horsemanship, the lady used to walk in early morning to a +neighbouring field to see him training a favourite mare over hurdles. +Something more than a mutual liking for horses and racing is plainly +hinted at as existing between them. But after they had met thus a few +times, Gordon asked abruptly whether her mother knew that she came there +every morning to see him ride. She replied in the negative, adding that +her mother disapproved of racing. 'Well, don't come again,' said he; 'I +know the world, and you don't. Good-bye. Don't come again.' Surprised +and wounded, the lady silently gave him her hand in farewell. 'He looked +at it as if it were some natural curiosity, and said, "It's the first +time I have touched a lady's hand for many a day--my own fault, my own +fault--good-bye."' + +For a brief period after the receipt of his father's legacy Gordon +looked towards his future with some interest and confidence. He spoke of +a proposal to undertake regular journalistic work at Melbourne, and to +make an attempt at writing novels. It was at this time also that he +foresaw that he would make a name as a poet. The people of Mount +Gambier, finding him presently settled as the owner of a small estate in +the district, made him their representative in the Legislative Assembly +of South Australia. In this new character he seems to have achieved only +a reputation for drawing humorous sketches. Having delivered a few +speeches highly embellished with classical allusions which failed to +make any impression upon the plain business men of the House, he +subsided, and was afterwards seldom heard. And when his seat became +vacant in due course, he did not seek re-election. He had been unable to +take his Parliamentary experience seriously. He is said to have always +looked back upon it as something of a joke. + +And now, with a revival of his former attachment to the excitements and +uncertainties of the turf, begin a series of misfortunes which pursued +him until his death. His property, mismanaged and neglected, had to be +sold, and he set out a poor man once more for the adjoining colony of +Victoria. Here, while suffering ill-health and poverty--starving in his +own proud way--after failing in a small business which he had +undertaken, Gordon learned that he would probably come into possession +of the barony of Esselmont in Scotland, then producing an income of +about two thousand pounds a year. But on further inquiry it was found +that his title to the estate ceased with the abolition of the entail +under the Entail Amendment Act of 1848. The excitement of his +ill-fortune and the effects of a recent wound on the head combined to +unhinge his mind, and in June, 1870, at the age of thirty-seven he ended +his life by shooting himself at Brighton, near Melbourne. In comparing +the impressions of Gordon's disposition given by his friends, it is +curious to note that among the few things in which they agree is an +absence of surprise at his suicide. + +It would not be difficult to imagine a more representative poet in the +provincial sense than Gordon. His description of the colonies as + + 'Lands where bright blossoms are scentless, + And songless bright birds,' + +would be strangely misleading were it not contradicted by other lines +from the same hand, showing a delicate appreciation of the rugged +features of Australian scenery. But he sees them only in passing, or as +a symbol of something he is pondering, or as a contrast to what he has +left behind 'on far English ground.' No sight or sound of Australian +Nature is a sole subject of any of his poems. His 'Whispering in the +Wattle Boughs' does not express the voices of the forest, but the echoes +of a sad youth, the yearnings of an exile; his 'Song of Autumn' is not a +song of autumn, but a forecast of his own death--a forecast that was +fulfilled. If he ever felt any enthusiasm for the future nationhood of +Australia, he did not express it. And such few native legends as there +were, he left to other pens. + +In all of his best poems, there is some central human interest, +something that tells for courage, honour, manly resignation. When a +story does not come readily to his hand in the new world, he seeks one +in the old. He fondly turns to the spacious days of the old knighthood, +when men drank and loved deeply, when they were ready to put happiness +or life itself upon a single hazard. The subjects that Gordon best liked +were short dramatic romances, which he found it easier to evolve from +literature than from the life and history of his adopted country. Beyond +the compositions upon the national sport of horse-racing, the only +noteworthy Australian subjects in his three slender volumes are 'The +Sick Stockrider's Review of the Excitements and Pleasures of a Careless +Bush Life, and his Pathetic Self-satisfaction'; 'The Story of a +Shipwreck'; 'Wolf and Hound,' which describes a duel between the +hunted-down bushranger and a trooper; and some verses on the death of +the explorer Burke. 'Ashtaroth,' an elaborate attempt at a sustained +dramatic lyric in the manner of Goethe's 'Faust' and 'Manfred,' fills +one of the three volumes, and among shorter pieces in the other two are +more than a dozen suggested by the poet's reading, by his recollections +of English life, and, in a notable instance, by one of the most +memorable of modern European wars. + +In a dedication prefixed to the _Bush Ballads_, Gordon suggests some of +the local sources of his inspiration. He obviously overstates his +obligations to the country. Some of the best of the poems in this, the +most characteristic collection of his work, have no association with it +whatever. 'The Sick Stockrider,' 'From the Wreck,' and 'Wolf and Hound' +are colonial experiences, finely described. But most of the remaining +poems, while they owe something to Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne, +are not in any sense Australian. + + 'In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles + 'Twixt shadow and shine, + When each dew-laden air resembles + A long draught of wine, + When the skyline's blue burnished resistance + Makes deeper the dreamiest distance, + Some songs in all hearts have existence: + Such songs have been mine.' + +But where, save in the retrospect of 'The Sick Stockrider' and a verse +or two of 'From the Wreck,' shall we find any of the air of the lovely, +transient Australian spring? It is rather absurd to place with _Bush +Ballads_ the 'Rhyme of Joyous Garde,' a recital of the old tragedy of +Arthur and Launcelot; the story of seventeenth-century siege and +gallantry in the 'Romance of Britomarte'; the dramatic scenes from the +'Road to Avernus;' 'The Friends' (a translation from the French); and +the psychological musings of 'De Te' and 'Doubtful Dreams.' + +And the galloping rhymes? Yes, there is indeed one galloping rhyme--'How +we beat the Favourite'--with a ring and a rush, a spirit and swiftness +of colour, not approached by the best verse of Egerton Warburton or +Whyte-Melville. Especially vivid and terse is the description of the +latter part of the race, where the favourite (The Clown) overtakes +Iseult, the mare leading in the run home. + + 'She rose when I hit her. I saw the stream glitter, + A wide scarlet nostril flashed close to my knee; + Between sky and water The Clown came and caught her; + The space that he cleared was a caution to see. + + 'And forcing the running, discarding all cunning, + A length to the front went the rider in green; + A long strip of stubble, and then the big double, + Two stiff flights of rails with a quickset between. + + 'She raced at the rasper, I felt my knees grasp her, + I found my hands give to the strain on the bit; + She rose when The Clown did--our silks as we bounded + Brushed lightly, our stirrups clashed loud as we lit. + + 'A rise steeply sloping, a fence with stone coping, + The last--we diverged round the base of the hill; + His path was the nearer, his leap was the clearer, + I flogged up the straight, and he led sitting still. + + 'She came to his quarter, and on still I brought her, + And up to his girth, to his breast-plate she drew; + A short prayer from Neville just reached me, "The Devil!" + He muttered--lock'd level the hurdles we flew.' + +After a glance at the crowd where, as seen by the rider, all 'figures +are blended and features are blurred'-- + + 'On still past the gateway she strains in the straight way, + Still struggles, "The Clown by a short neck at most!" + He swerves, the green scourges, the stand rocks and surges, + And flashes, and verges, and flits the white post. + + 'Aye! so ends the tussle--I knew the tan muzzle + Was first, though the ring men were yelling "Dead Heat!" + A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said "The mare by + A short head." And that's how the favourite was beat.' + +It was by this piece, according to Marcus Clarke, that the poet's early +reputation was made. 'Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shame +at the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who are +known to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly, +scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously to +magazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody +knew a couplet or two of "How we beat the Favourite" that he consented +to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a +verse-maker.' Even in this picture of the excitements of the turf, there +is nothing that would not be as true of Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick or +Flemington. Yet, it _is_ Australian in the sense that it expresses the +one taste which, of all those inherited by the people from their British +ancestors, seems never likely to be lost (as it was by the American +colonists)--which, on the contrary, has gained in ardour in the new +land. Gordon was a pronounced believer in the efficacy of field sports +as a means of maintaining the nerve and hardihood of the race. In one of +his minor pieces he vigorously affirms that + + 'If once we efface the joys of the chase + From the land, and out-root the Stud, + Good-bye to the Anglo-Saxon Race, + Farewell to the Norman Blood.' + +With him the fearless huntsman makes the fearless soldier. Both are to +be cultivated and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly, as at +Balaclava, we are to be none the less proud of him, + + 'As a type of our chivalry.' + +Of the longer poems, the two best in artistic quality are 'The Rhyme of +Joyous Garde' and 'The Sick Stockrider.' They afford a complete contrast +in subject, tone and treatment. The old Arthurian story is the finer and +more finished. There is a nobility in its expression not elsewhere +equalled by the author. But the other poem is more direct and simple in +its pathos, more easily understood. It tells something of familiar +experience in language irresistibly touching and musical. It would be +interesting and a favourite if only through the obvious fact that it +describes in part some of Gordon's own early life. + + ''Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass + To wander as we've wandered many a mile, + And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, + Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. + 'Twas merry 'mid the backwoods, when we spied the station roofs, + To wheel the wild-scrub cattle at the yard, + With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs; + Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard. + + 'Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang, + When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; + How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang + To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat! + Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, + Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed; + And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath! + And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!' + +'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde' loses in appreciation by assuming +familiarity on the part of the reader with all the details of the story. +It is too allusive. It is a description more of Launcelot's remorse +than of the crime which occasions it. As to the other classic themes, +they probably avail as little to the reputation of the author as did the +elegant quotations which he inflicted upon the South Australian +legislators. 'He talked of the Danai, whilst they were vastly more +interested in the land valuators.' + +Gordon's work was introduced to the English public by an article in +_Temple Bar_ in 1884, and in 1888 a short memoir of him, entitled _The +Laureate of the Centaurs_ (now out of print), was published. Since then +his poems have become known throughout the English-speaking world. Is +this because he is called an Australian poet--because people wish to +learn something of Australian life from his pages? Do English readers +ever ask for the poems of Harpur, or Henry Kendall, or Brunton Stephens? +No; Gordon's poems are admired for the human interest in them; for what +they tell of tastes and personal qualities dear to the pleasure-loving +and fighting Briton in whatever land he may be. It is the sort of +admiration that finds fit expression when an English officer and artist +makes a present to the publishers of a spirited and valuable set of +drawings to illustrate the poem of the Balaclava Charge. No other +Australian poet has yet found entrance to the great popular libraries of +England. Kendall, who almost deserves to be called the Australian +Shelley, tells more of Nature in one of his graceful pages than can be +found in a volume of his contemporary. But his thoughts are too remote +from the common interests of life; and of his own character he has +recorded only what is sad and painful. For the rest, his brief history +seems to prove that scarce any service may be less noticed or thanked in +Australia than the describing of its natural beauties or the writing of +its national odes. + +Gordon has more than once been misrepresented with respect to his +religious views. He has been called an agnostic, an atheist, even a +pagan. Passages in nearly a score of his poems must be read and compared +before an opinion can properly be given on the point. That he was a +doubter, and to some extent a fatalist, appears certain; but there is +nothing to support the charge of atheism. He shows a very clear +conception of the Christian ideas respecting right and wrong, and of the +Divine mercy, but hesitates to accept any theories of punishment in a +future state. His general attitude is one of hope, and of desire to +believe. He often thinks--too often--of the transiency of life, and of +the question to be solved 'beyond the dark beneath the dust.' But there +is no despair. And meanwhile his practical creed is + + 'Question not, but live and labour + Till yon goal be won, + Helping every feeble neighbour, + Seeking help from none. + Life is mostly froth and bubble, + Two things stand like stone-- + Kindness in another's trouble, + Courage in your own.' + +It conveys at once the highest and truest of the many views he has given +of his own character. Generous to others, he was too seldom just to +himself. It was well there remained among the friends he left behind a +few who knew him for what he was, and who were unwilling that qualities +often clouded during his life by an unhappy temperament should be +undervalued or forgotten. Kendall's 'In Memoriam' is a worthy tribute, +and finely summarizes the general impression of Gordon which one obtains +from his verse: + + 'The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived + That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps + The splendid fire of English chivalry + From dying out; the one who never wronged + A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged + The many anxious to be loved of him + By what he saw, and not by what he heard, + As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul + That never told a lie, or turned aside + To fly from danger; he, I say, was one + Of that bright company this sin-stained world + Can ill afford to lose.' + + + + +ROLF BOLDREWOOD. + + +English readers of Rolf Boldrewood's novels have often wondered why he +has ignored in his writings the modern social life of Australia. He has +a unique knowledge of the country extending over sixty years, but his +literary materials have been drawn only from the first half of this +period. No other purely Australian novelist has succeeded in making a +considerable reputation without feeling the necessity of fleeing to the +more congenial atmosphere of literary London. + +It is true that even he had to find acceptance at home through the +circuitous route of the press and the libraries of Great Britain, but he +was able to wait for his long-delayed popularity, and when it came and +found him in advanced age, he had no inclination to leave the land of +his adoption. Probably if literature had been to him more of a +profession and less of a taste and pastime, he would long ago have felt +inclined to turn his back upon the indifference with which the colonies +usually treat their own products in authorship until English approval +has imparted new virtues to them. + +Most of the other writers who have contributed to the portrayal of a +certain few aspects of Antipodean life have gone to London or elsewhere. +Many years absent from Australia, they know little of its later +developments. Boldrewood has spent a long and eventful life there. Of +the southern half of the continent he must possess a specially intimate +knowledge. Melbourne he has known in all the stages of its growth from a +canvas-built hamlet to the finest city in the Southern Hemisphere. When +he saw it first, the great golden wealth of the country lay unsuspected, +and Ballarat and Bendigo were not. + +Though English by birth, he is wholly Australian in training and +experience. In 1830, being then four years old, he was taken by his +parents to Sydney, and there educated. Early in youth he became one of +the pioneer squatters of Western Victoria, sharing with a few others the +danger of dispossessing the aboriginals, and soon acquiring considerable +wealth. But some years later, going back to New South Wales, and +venturing to establish himself there on a larger scale as a sheep-owner, +he was involved in a disastrous drought and lost nearly everything. + +In _The Squatters Dream_, which is understood to be partly +autobiographical, he has minutely recorded the varying fortunes of +pastoral life in the colonies. But the bitterness of failure never +caused him to forget the happiness of his young enthusiasm, or to speak +ill of a pursuit so much identified with the prosperity of the country. +He refers to it as 'that freest of all free lives, that pleasantest of +all pleasant professions--the calling of a squatter.' + +Abandoning his ambition to rank with the wool-kings, he entered the +Civil Service as a police magistrate and gold-fields commissioner. In +these combined offices he spent twenty-five years, and, while continuing +a good public servant, contrived, like Anthony Trollope, to find time +for substantial work in literature. Though during a period of about +twenty years he contributed several stories and other literary matter to +the Sydney and Melbourne press, it was not until the publication of +_Robbery under Arms_, at London in 1889, that his work obtained due +recognition even in the colonies. Ten years earlier he had made an +unsuccessful bid for an English reputation by the publication of _Ups +and Downs_, the novel which, under the more attractive title of _The +Squatter's Dream_, reappeared in 1890 as a successor to the famous +bushranging story. That the spirited opening chapters of _Robbery under +Arms_ should have been thought lightly of by Australian editors when the +serial rights of the story were offered to them is somewhat astonishing. +The author has related how these chapters were successively rejected by +a number of the leading journals, including two of the best weeklies. + +At length the manuscript was read by Mr. Hugh George, manager of the +_Sydney Morning Herald_ and the _Sydney Mail_, who promptly accepted it +for publication in the latter newspaper. + +Boldrewood at this time (1880) was well known to the Australian press. +It must, however, be pointed out in justice to the editors, whom his +story failed to impress, that his previous work had revealed little of +the dramatic sense that contributed so materially to his success in +presenting the careers of his highwaymen. But it is less easy to see +why, when the full possibilities of the story had been realised, there +should have remained a second difficulty, that of securing a publisher +to issue it in book form. 'An Australian house,' the author has said, +'refused to undertake the risk;' and he adds, 'as a matter of fact I had +to publish it partly on my own account in England.' This proof of his +confidence in the attractions of the story has since been justified by +its complete success throughout the English-speaking world. + +A writer with so much experience of Australia, and continuing to reside +in it, cannot be surprised if he is expected to take a large share of +responsibility for the fact that Australian fiction--the fiction +produced by writers known to the British public--only in a slight degree +reflects the most interesting features in the present-day life of the +country. At the same time, no such considerations can detract from the +sterling merits of Rolf Boldrewood's actual services to Australian +literature. It is hardly possible to believe that the English people +still prefer to look to Australia only for stories of adventure; but if +they do--and as the first to welcome and appreciate colonial writers +they are perhaps entitled to exercise a choice--it is well that such +stories be written from complete local knowledge, and thus at least +correctly describe the broader aspects of the country. + +If Boldrewood were asked to explain his silence respecting Antipodean +life of the present day, he might reply that the novel of modern manners +did not form any part of the work which he had chosen to do. At all +events, he could claim to be as much a historian as a novelist. It has +been his ambition to describe Australia chiefly as he saw it in his +youth, about forty years ago--as it was immediately before and after the +discovery of gold. That his record _per se_ is strikingly vivid and +faithful is the first general impression which his novels make upon the +reader, whether English or colonial. There is about them much of that +air of 'rightness' which Hall Caine has noted to be one of the most +enduring qualities of good fiction, whatever its literary style may be. +They are cheerful, virile, soundly moral, and take far more account of +the good than of the bad in human nature. There is no fondness of the +sensational for its own sake. The conditions of probability are observed +with a closeness which, in books dependent for their interest so largely +upon plot and incident, amounts almost to a fault. + +An English historian is said to have declared that he would willingly +exchange a library full of the poets for a single good novel of the +period in which he was interested. One can readily imagine that if a +generation or two hence there should be any Australian history left +unwritten, any unsatisfied curiosity concerning the simple annals now so +familiar to us, Rolf Boldrewood's novels might be found, within their +limits, a more satisfying source of information than all the rest of +contemporary Australian literature combined, the formal chroniclers +included, as well as the poets: that is to say, the general view they +would furnish of certain features of pioneer life would be fuller and +clearer, and, minor details apart, more reliable than could be gathered +from any other source. + +Where is there in the elaborate histories of Rusden, Lang, Blair, and +Flanagan, or in any of the numerous books of sketches and reminiscences +written by persons who have visited or temporarily resided in Australia, +a view of the picturesque variety, colour, and splendid energy of the +great first race for gold to compare with that given in the second +volume of _The Miner's Right_, or with the memorable account of what +Starlight and the Marstons saw at Turon during their temporary +retirement from the highway? + +Boldrewood, in these descriptions, has done what Henry Kingsley, with +his more eloquent pen, if slighter personal experience, unaccountably +neglected, and what Charles Reade, though he never saw Australia, +vividly imagined, and regretted his inability to fully employ. Reade saw +a theme for a great epic 'in the sudden return of a society far more +complex, artificial, and conventional than Pericles ever dreamed of, to +elements more primitive than Homer had to deal with; in this, with its +novelty and nature and strange contrasts; in the old barbaric force and +native colour of the passions as they burst out undisguised around the +gold; in the hundred and one personal combats and trials of cunning; in +a desert peopled and cities thinned by the magic of cupidity; in a huge +army collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore by one man's +constraining will, but each human unit spurred into the crowd by his own +heart; in the "siege of gold" defended stoutly by rock and disease; in +the world-wide effect of the discovery, the peopling of the earth at +last according to Heaven's long-published and resisted design.' + +If Boldrewood had not himself realized the literary value of the +stirring scenes in which his youth was passed, this summary of the +English novelist, published in 1856, might well have suggested it to +him. How far has he succeeded in commemorating those scenes, and in what +directions chiefly? + +In the first place, it is the pictorial, the literal, not the +philosophical, aspect of the subject which has most attracted him. There +is a personal zest in his remembrance of the general animation of the +scene, a keen sense of the pleasurable excitement, freedom and +good-fellowship of the life. His books are essentially men's books. This +is the universal report of the English libraries. Analytical subtleties +there are none. Boldrewood is not given to weighing moonbeams. His +nearest approach to psychology consists in noting the various effects of +robust, unconventional colonial life upon fortune-seekers and visitors +from the mother country. This has been a favourite theme with all +Australian writers, and one of which the female novelists have so far +made the most effective use. One could wish that Boldrewood had made +himself as far as possible an exception to the rule--that he had aimed +at a praiseworthy provinciality by matching with the elaborate +minuteness of his local colour some finished and memorable studies of +Australian character. + +Maud Stangrove in _The Squatter's Dream_, and Antonia Frankston in _The +Colonial Reformer_, who seem to offer the best opportunities to typify +Australian womanhood, are gracefully described; but, save for an +occasional longing to relieve the monotony of their lives by a taste of +European travel and culture, they are indistinguishable from such purely +English types as Ruth Allerton and Estelle Challoner. Very pathetic, and +marked by some distinctively Antipodean traits, is the sister of the +bushrangers in _Robbery under Arms_. Aileen Marston has the strong +self-reliance and independence which are born of the exigencies, as well +as of the free life, of the country. She and her brothers represent +much of what is best in Boldrewood's portrayal of native character. +Maddie and Bella Barnes and Miss Falkland in the same novel, Kate +Lawless in _Nevermore_, and Possie Barker in _A Sydneyside Saxon_, are +also Antipodeans, but are only lightly sketched. + +Boldrewood claims that in his writings he has always upheld the +Australian character. It is a fact that he has incidentally done this to +a considerable extent, but not by any notable portraiture. In the period +with which the novels deal the population of the colonies was largely +English; it was, therefore, perhaps only natural that the stranger and +adventurer from the Old World, so often well born and cultured, should +prove a more attractive study than the sons of the soil. Moreover, the +latter, in their monotonous and circumscribed life, lacked much of the +mystery and romance so vital to the novel of adventure. But when this +has been admitted in Boldrewood's favour, there still remains a broader +charge to which he is liable. + +He has been accused, and it must be confessed with a good deal of +justice, of paying too little attention in later novels (taking the +order of their publication in London) to the development of even those +characters most concerned in his plots. The fault is purely one of +judgment. It is hardly possible to suppose any lack of ability in a +writer who has produced the bright and suggestive dialogue scattered +through the pages of _Robbery under Arms_ and The _Miner's Right_. +Giving rein to his passion for reminiscence and descriptive detail, he +has paid the inevitable penalty of a loss in human interest. So obvious +is this loss in the stories of pastoral life, that one is almost fain to +assume it to be the result of deliberate choice. How far the author, in +this section of his writing, has neglected the social and dramatic +possibilities of country life, can be judged by noting Mrs. Campbell +Praed's work in _The Head Station_, _Policy and Passion_, or _The +Romance of a Station_. But the best contrast to Boldrewood's style is +furnished by the author of _Geoffry Hamlyn_. + +Henry Kingsley decided the movement of his characters with a loving +care. Their interests were paramount to him. They made their own story; +the story did not make them. Their author cared little for the externals +of Australian life except in so far as they helped to tell something, +especially something good, of his leading personages. His interest in +them was not semi-scientific, like that of Thackeray or Jane Austen, +Howells or Henry James, in their studies of human nature; it was that +mainly of a sympathiser and a partisan. + +His frequently expressed anxiety about the impression they were making +upon the reader was not always an affectation. There is a real +solicitude in the confidences concerning William Ravenshoe upon his +sudden promotion from the stable to the drawing-room of Ravenshoe Manor. +'I hope you like this fellow, William,' he says in one place, and then +there is a naive enumeration of some of the ex-groom's social +deficiencies. This, at best, is a useless interruption of the story, but +it helps, with other signs, to show Kingsley's constant interest in his +characters. + +Nearly everything in his descriptions of Australian squatting pursuits +is intended to have a definite and notable bearing upon them. Thus, the +view we get of the drafting-yard at Garoopna, with Sam Buckley in torn +shirt, dust-covered, and wielding a deft pole on the noses of the +terrified cattle, is not presented as a piece of station-life so much as +a picturesque means of leading Alice Brentwood into an involuntary +display of her affection for Sam when he is struck down before her eyes. + +Again, the description of the kangaroo-hunt, given in the same novel, is +remembered chiefly on account of the picture of Sam and Alice in the +frank enjoyment of their first love as they loiter in the tracks of the +sportsmen, and, relinquishing the chase with happy indifference, go home +and sit together under the verandah. + +Kingsley avoided the fault, common to his successors, of exaggerating +the interest which readers are supposed to take in the general aspects +of life in a new country. He had a keen sense of the value of +picturesque environment, but wisely contrived that nothing should +withdraw attention from the progress of his drama. He was ever on the +watch for opportunities to sketch in lightly and humorously small traits +of character, and to emphasise salient ones. 'She had an imperial sort +of way of manoeuvring a frying-pan,' he says, in allusion to the +cheerful adaptability of the high-bred Agnes Buckley, that fine model of +English womanhood, during her first rough experiences in Australia. When +Hamlyn comes to Baroona from the neighbouring station to spend Christmas +with his old friends, he finds the same lady 'picking raisins in the +character of a duchess.' Considered apart from the story, these +Dickensian touches might seem merely humorous exaggeration, but to those +who have traced the development of Mrs. Buckley's character, how happy +and pregnant they are! + +_Robbery under Arms_ not only contains Boldrewood's most dramatic plot, +but his most skilful and sympathetic treatment of character. It is a +distinct exception to the rest of his work. In the later stories the +characters are brightly sketched, but with so casual a touch that they +leave no permanent impression with the reader. The best excite no more +than a passing admiration, whereas Kingsley's win lasting admiration and +love. There can be no surer test of art and truth: it furnishes the one +indubitable proof of clear vision, sympathy, and correct expression. +Where the weakness of some of Boldrewood's characters is not due to +deficiency of interest in them on the part of the author, it is the +result of an attempt to copy life with an accuracy which sacrifices +picturesqueness. + +The attempt to preserve absolute truth in every detail of the life-story +of John Redgrave, the hero of _The Squatter's Dream_, seems distinctly a +case in point. In no other novel is there so complete a description of +Australian squatting life--its varying success and failure, its solid +comforts and wholesome happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave is one +of the most elaborately drawn of all the author's characters; there is +the fullest sense of probability in every incident; the entire story is +plainly a direct transcript of life; nothing at first seems wanting. But +when the book is laid aside, the reader realises that he has scarcely +been once moved by it. He has felt a transient pity for the hero's +misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at his modified ultimate +success--nothing more. + +The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive of +Redgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aim +is no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and when +he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly given +to the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for Maud +Stangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennobling +influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression +of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type; +no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour +with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay. +There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even +the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it +impracticable to dispense. + +An illustration of how little Boldrewood was inclined to idealise either +his characters or their surroundings is afforded by the account of +Redgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours on +the Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period where +drunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to the +stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed with +corrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandy +plain.' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at the +back of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptacle +for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking +pigs lay in the verandah or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate +vicinity of the front-entrance. 'What, in the name of wonder,' inquired +Jack of himself as he rode away, 'can a man do who lives in such a +fragment of Hades _but_ drink?' + +The home of the Stangroves, though less depressing, bears painful +evidence of its isolation. The settler's wife little resembles Agnes +Buckley--she is too typically colonial for that. 'She was young, but a +certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore +silent witness to the toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants or +none at all; to the want of average female society; to a little +loneliness and a great deal of monotony.' + +The visitor meets another member of the household, Stangrove's unmarried +sister, a beautiful and spirited young woman whose impatience with her +colourless life is outwardly subdued to ironical resignation. 'Another +eventful day for Mr. Redgrave,' she remarks on his return after a day's +riding over the station with her brother; 'yesterday the sheep were +lost--to-day the sheep are found; so passes our life on the Warroo.' + +The best argument against Boldrewood's usual treatment of character is +furnished by the great bushranger chief who is the central figure in +_Robbery under Arms_. The author here submits for the first and only +time to that fundamental law of fiction which demands a certain +judicious exaggeration in the characters of a story depending for its +interest mainly on the charm of circumstance. Starlight is at once the +most real and least possible personage to be found in any of +Boldrewood's novels. He becomes real because his character and actions +are conceived in harmony with the romance and pathos of the story. +Though it is obvious enough that there never could have existed a +bushranger with quite so much of the _bel air_, or with a private code +of honour so admirable, the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He is of +a stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploits +being often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense of +reality is maintained. + +Starlight seems to be a compound of several characters. He has Turpin's +ubiquity, Claude Duval's _sang-froid_, the personal attractiveness of +Gardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbing +gold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and the +humorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notoriety +in the same colony a few years later. + +Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed with the dictum of Turpin, that +it is necessary for a highwayman, at all events a captain of highwaymen, +to be a gentleman. But Starlight, unlike Turpin, does not become vain +with success, and is far from being enamoured with his profession. +Indeed, he is quite with the orthodox view of it. He is a bushranger, +apparently, because he no longer hopes or desires to resume his rank in +certain aristocratic circles from which, by occasional hints, we are +informed that he has fallen. He indulges in no lugubrious +moralisings--he is far too agreeable a person for that--but exhibits +just the required touch of romance by letting you know that in his past +there is a sadness which a career of excitement and danger is necessary +to enable him to forget. Having been won over as a sympathiser and +admirer, the reader is ready to believe that at worst the dashing +outlaw could never have been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author has +carefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessness +of which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typical +bushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing and highway robbery as supervised +by Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious, in so far as they +afford him opportunities to practise some facetious deception on the +police. Such raids are not crimes, but comedies. + +There is excellent fun in his posing as 'Charles Carisforth, Esq., of +Sturton, Yorkshire, and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs, N.S.W.,' while +awaiting the arrival at Adelaide of the 1,100 head of stolen cattle, or +as the 'Hon. Frank Haughton,' one of 'the three honourables' on the +Turon gold-field. The rash daring and cleverness of these disguises +furnish a combination of amusement and dramatic interest not approached +in anything else that Boldrewood has written. Starlight's presence at +dinner with the gold-fields commissioner and police magistrate at +Turon, when 'in walked Inspector Goring,' the officer who had been so +long and patiently seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance at Bella +Barnes' wedding, after a reward of a thousand pounds has been offered +for his capture, are scenes which remain vivid in the memory long after +the more commonplace adventures of the lords of Terrible Hollow have +lost their distinctness or been forgotten. + +Next to his humour and courage, the qualities which most endear this +picturesque marauder to the reader are the happy fierceness with which +he commands the respect of his retainers, and his politeness and +gallantry to women. When a robbery is to be effected, the plans are laid +with sound generalship, but there is no unnecessary violence or loss of +good manners. His conduct at the plundering of the gold-escort is fully +equal to the traditional suavity of Claude Duval. 'Now, then, all +aboard!' he calls out to the passengers when the contents of the coach +have been removed. 'Get in, gentlemen; our business matters are +concluded for the night. Better luck next time! William, you had better +drive on. Send back from the next stage, and you will find the mail-bags +under that tree. They shall not be injured more than can be helped.' + +The bushranger of real life, as known to the pioneer colonist, would +have bagged his booty with much fewer words. That Starlight should have +'treated all women as if they were duchesses,' and have made it a point +of honour to keep his pledged word with them, in however slight a +matter, seems only natural. Not even the women-folk of his enemy are +allowed to want a protector. When Moran and his gang of ruffians take +possession of Darjallook station during the absence of the male members +of the household, Starlight and the Marstons ride twenty miles across +country and rescue the ladies before the worst has been done. Starlight +bows to them 'as if he was just coming into a ball-room,' and, retiring, +raises Miss Falkland's hand to his lips like a knight of old. + +These passages are only a few of the many which might be cited to show +how far the author, fired with the spirit and romance of the story, +gave freedom to his imagination in shaping the proportions of his +leading character. Starlight, though he is not, and cannot be, a +portrait of any single colonial outlaw of real life, is sufficiently +natural to consistently represent in both his conduct and adventures +much that was typical of Australian bushranging forty years ago and +later. + +Some of his characteristics, and at least one of the concluding episodes +of the story, were suggested by the career of a New South Wales +horse-stealer who became known as 'Captain Moonlight.' So much is +certain. Boldrewood has himself narrated to a contributor of the +Australian _Review of Reviews_ his recollections of Moonlight and his +end: 'Among other horses he stole was a mare called Locket, with a white +patch on her neck. We had all seen her. This was the horse that brought +about his downfall, and he was actually killed on the Queensland border +in the way I have described in _Robbery under Arms_. Before that, +Moonlight had had some encounters with Sergeant Wallings (Goring); and +this day, when Wallings rode straight at him, he said: "Keep back, if +you're wise, Wallings. I don't want your blood on my head; but if you +must----" But Wallings rode at him at a gallop. Two of the troopers +fired point-blank at Moonlight, and both shots told. He never moved, but +just lifted his rifle. Wallings threw up his arms, and fell off his +horse a dying man. As Moonlight was sinking, the leader of the troopers +said: "Now you may as well tell us what your name is." But he shook his +head, and died with the secret.' He was 'a gentlemanly fellow,' probably +one of that unhappy class of young Englishmen of good birth and no +character who are exiled to the colonies for their sins, and there often +acquire new vices or sink into obscurity. + +When Archibald Forbes was in New Zealand a few years ago, he met a +peer's son who was earning his 'tucker' as a station-cook. A Chinaman, +aspiring to better things, had vacated the billet in his favour! It is +interesting to note the use Boldrewood makes in his novel of the +suggestion afforded by the bushranger's concealment of his identity. +When Starlight is overcome in his last attempt at escape, the curiosity +long felt concerning his past life seems for the third time in the story +about to be gratified. But the reader is once more and finally +disappointed. The bushranger has given his last messages, and is dying +with some of the indifference to existence which has characterised him +throughout the story. + + 'I say, Morringer, do you remember the last pigeon-match you and I + shot in, at Hurlingham?' + + 'Why, good God!' says Sir Ferdinand, bending down, and looking into + his face. 'It can't be! Yes; by Jove! it is----' + + He spoke some name I couldn't catch, but Starlight put a finger on + his lips, and whispered: + + 'You won't tell, will you? Say you won't.' + + The other nodded. + + He smiled just like his old self. + + 'Poor Aileen!' he said, quite faint. His head fell back. Starlight + was dead! + +Boldrewood's characters, as he has said himself, are constructed from +many models. And the Marstons are, it seems, the only personages he has +drawn solely from life. Gardiner, with whom some readers have +identified Starlight, was, it is recorded, 'a man of prepossessing +appearance and plausible address, who had many friends even among the +settlers never suspected of sympathy with criminals, while many of the +fair sex regarded him as a veritable hero.' + +That the romantic life of this noted criminal furnished Boldrewood with +some material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushranger +is far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one. In +Starlight's relations with women, for instance, there is nothing but +what is manly and honourable, whereas one of Gardiner's exploits was the +seduction of a settler's wife, a beautiful woman whom he induced to +elope with him to a remote district in Queensland. And, further, none of +the sensational incidents connected with his capture--his escape under a +legal technicality from the death-penalty suffered by some of his +associates, his imprisonment for twelve years and subsequent exile--are +made use of in the novel. + +The narrative method adopted in _Robbery under Arms_ has so much +contributed to the success of the story as to be worthy of some +comparison with the ordinary style of the author. The limitations +imposed by the choice of a narrator with no pretensions to education or +sentiment, and writing in the first person, proved in this case salutary +rather than disadvantageous. They repressed Boldrewood's usual tendency +to excessive detail, and kept his attention closely fixed on the drama +of the story. + +The occasional deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the +grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy +piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in +Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life +from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this +view is presented lies the strength and lasting merit of what might +otherwise have been little better than a commonplace series of +sensational episodes. + +Starlight and the Marstons, as we see them, are reckless and dangerous +criminals, but they are not exactly the 'bloodthirsty cowards' and +'murderers' known to the press and police of the period. The little they +can plead in excuse for their lives is plainly stated, while no +complaint is urged against their fate, or attempt made to obscure its +obvious lesson. Grim old Ben Marston's career illustrates one of the +results of the stupidly cruel system of transporting persons from +England to the colonies for petty offences which in these days are +punished by a slight fine, and his sons are types of a class who were +far from being as irreclaimable as their offences made them appear. 'Men +like us,' Dick Marston is once made to say, 'are only half-and-half bad, +like a good many more in this world. They are partly tempted into doing +wrong by opportunity, and kept back by circumstances from getting into +the straight track afterwards.' + +The examples given in the story of the aptness of this remark are often +very touching. The poor Marston boys are indeed only half bad. Their +better natures, seconded by the influence of a good mother and sister, +are continually urging them to reformation, but for this there is no +opportunity. The decision of their fate by the turn of a coin when the +first great temptation comes is symbolical of the trifling causes to +which the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the early days of squatting +was traceable. + +The personal observation strongly marked in all Boldrewood's novels has +in _Robbery under Arms_ its fullest, as well as most skilful, +expression. As a squatter, the author had seen the practices of the +cattle-thief, and learned his language. He had observed the extent to +which idleness and a love of horseflesh combined to fill the gaols of +the country, and in later years this knowledge was confirmed in the +course of his long experience as a magistrate. The judgment with which +he presents the case of the young Marstons as types of a class is +excelled only by the literary skill employed upon the character of their +chief. + +But there was no need to make Dick Marston so often emphasise the +comfort of living 'on the square,' and the folly of ever doing +otherwise. The story bears a self-evident moral. Humour there is in +plenty, but the pathos of tragedy is the dominant, as it is the +appropriate, tone of the book. In no respect has greater accuracy been +attained than in the reproduction of the Australian vernacular, that odd +compound of English, Irish, Scotch, and American phrases and inflexions, +with its slender admixture of original terms. Visitors to Australia have +praised the purity of the English spoken there by the middle classes. +Mr. Froude, as late as 1885, found that 'no provincialism had yet +developed itself,' but he wrote chiefly of what he had heard in the +towns. It is in the country that the colonial dialect--if speech so +largely imitative can yet be called a dialect--is most heard. + +Among other interesting features in Dick Marston's narrative is the +curious half-impersonal view which the outlaws take of the efforts made +by the Government to capture them, and their strong dislike, on the +other hand, to the private persons who competed with the police for the +large rewards offered. This detail is as true to life as the example of +the sympathy and assistance accorded the bushrangers by settlers in the +neighbourhood of their mountain retreat. + +It was sympathy of this kind, combined with bribery, which so protected +the Kelly gang as to involve the Government of Victoria in an outlay of +about one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds before their destruction +could be accomplished. Effective literary use will be made at some time +in the future of the exploits of this last and most daring of all the +bushranging gangs, but many years must elapse before the sordid aspects +of their career shall have been forgotten, and only its romance be left. +And nothing short of genius will be required to refine the rude +proportions of Ned Kelly into something like the gentlemanly exterior of +the dashing captain, the smooth gallant, the humorist, philosopher, and +quick-change artist of _Robbery under Arms_. + +In _The Miner's Right_, which ranks second in popularity among +Boldrewood's novels, the personal narrative style is again adopted, but +with little effect of the kind produced by Dick Marston's vivid +directness in the earlier novel. Hereward Pole, the hero, is a cultured +Englishman, sensitive and sentimental, who keeps an eye upon humanity at +large, as well as upon the business of making a fortune which has +brought him to the colonies. Half of his record, though a striking +picture of the gold-fields, is not an inherent part of the story of his +own career. Confined to their strictly just limits, the events which +combine to prolong his separation from the sweetheart whom he has left +in England could have been told in fifty pages. But this would not have +been all the author wished. He was satisfied with a slender plot and a +_denouement_ which can be guessed almost from the outset as soon as he +saw that they would carry the glowing scenes and episodes of diggings +life with which his memory was so richly stocked. One cannot believe but +that, in this case, his slender attention to the long-drawn thread of +the story was the outcome of choice. Else where was the need for +elaborateness in such details as the dispute over the Liberator claim +at Yatala, the trial of Pole and the inquest on Challerson, with their +rendering of witnesses' depositions in the manner of a newspaper report, +the riot at Green Valley and Oxley, and the scene at the funeral of the +agitator Radetsky? Yet, though these episodes are given at great length, +and do not form any essential part of the story of Hereward Pole and +Ruth Allerton--the vindication of a man's honour and the triumph of a +woman's invincible devotion--they are told with so much intimate +knowledge and strength of colouring as almost to supply the absence of a +plot, and to make the story, apart from artistic considerations, a +really fine piece of work. + +It has a popularity in the English libraries which is itself a proof of +the service done by the author to those who would know something of the +careers of varying success and bitter failure, of hardship and romantic +adventure, upon which so many of their kinsmen set out forty years ago. +_Nevermore_ and _The Sphinx of Eaglehawk_ give other views of the +gold-digging days, chiefly of their seamy side, but these stories offer +nothing that equals in interest the splendid panorama of pioneer life +revealed in _The Miner's Right_. + +Boldrewood has more than once insisted with evident pleasure upon the +general good behaviour and manliness of the miners, and, having been one +of those all-seeing autocrats, the gold-fields commissioners, he is an +authority to be believed on the subject. In _Robbery under Arms_ the +names are given of thirty races represented on the Turon field, and +Hereward Pole, recounting his early impressions of Yatala, says: 'I was +never done wondering of what struck me as the chief characteristic of +this great army of adventurers suddenly gathered together from all seas +and lands, namely, its outward propriety and submission to the law.' +Elsewhere he likens the sensible reticence which they observed +respecting their own affairs and those of their neighbours to the +demeanour and mode of thought which prevails in club life. + +A passage from Dick Marston's account of what he saw at Turon is worth +reproducing here as characteristic of the author's representation of a +gold-fields community and as a sample of his humour. The 'three +honourables,' of whom the disguised bushranger captain is one, are +together in a hotel. + + 'The last time I drank wine as good as this,' says Starlight, 'was + at the Caffy Troy, something or other, in Paris. I wouldn't mind + being there again, with the Variety Opera to follow--would you, + Clifford?' + + 'Well, I don't know,' says the other swell. 'I find this amazing + good fun for a bit. I never was in such grand condition since I left + Oxford. This eight hours' shift business is just the right thing for + training. I feel fit to go for a man's life. Just feel this, + Despard,' and he holds out his arm to the camp swell. 'There's + muscle for you!' + + 'Plenty of muscle,' says Mr. Despard, looking round. He was a swell + that didn't work, and wouldn't work, and thought it fine to treat + the diggers like dogs.... 'Plenty of muscle,' says he, 'but devilish + little society.' + + 'I don't agree with you,' says the other honourable. 'It's the most + amusing, and, in a way, instructive place for a man who wants to + know his fellow-creatures I was ever in. I never pass a day without + meeting some fresh variety of the human race, man or woman; and + their experiences are well worth knowing, I can tell you. Not that + they're in a hurry to impart them; for that there's more natural + unaffected good manners on a digging than in any society I ever + mingled in I shall never doubt. But when they see you don't want to + patronise, and are content to be as simple man among men, there's + nothing they won't do for you or tell you.' + + 'Oh, d----n one's fellow-creatures! present company excepted,' says + Mr. Despard, filling his glass, 'and the man that grew this + "tipple." They're useful to me now and then, and one has to put up + with this crowd; but I never could take much interest in them.' + + 'All the worse for you, Despard,' says Clifford: 'you're wasting + your chances--golden opportunities in every sense of the word. + You'll never see such a spectacle as this, perhaps, again as long as + you live. It's a fancy-dress ball with real characters.' + + 'Dashed bad characters, if we only knew,' says Despard, yawning. + 'What do you say, Haughton?' looking at Starlight, who was playing + with his glass, and not listening much, by the look of him. + +In his latest novels Boldrewood reverts to his familiar themes. _The +Sphinx of Eaglehawk_, the shortest of all his works, might have been an +excerpt from The _Miner's Right_; and the scene of _The Crooked Stick_ +is an inland station in New South Wales in the days of bushranging and +disastrous droughts. + +The materials employed in the latter story reproduce the principal +features of almost a score of other Australian novels published within +the last few years. The love-affairs of a beautiful, impulsive girl, +sighing for knowledge of the great world beyond the limits of her narrow +experience; the influence upon her of a fascinating and gentlemanly +Englishman, with aristocratic connections and a dubious past; the manly +young Australian, whose loyalty, undervalued for a time, is rewarded in +the end--these are some of the items which go to the making of a class +of story already somewhat too common. The fact that Boldrewood continues +to make such subjects interesting is due largely to the pervading sense +of scrupulous truth, the evident element of personal experience, and the +general cheerfulness of tone, which are never absent from any product of +his pen, and which constitute his highest claims to rank in Australian +literature. + + + + +MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED. + + +To Mrs. Campbell Praed belongs the credit of being the first to attempt +to give an extended and impartial view of the social and political life +of the upper classes in Australia. While she has not ignored whatever +seemed picturesque in the external aspects of the country, her chief +concern has been with the people themselves. Some of the best of her +works--_Policy and Passion_ and _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_, for +example--might fairly be named as an answer to the somewhat common +complaint of a deficiency of dramatic suggestion in colonial life. + +In a preface to the first-named novel, Mrs. Praed explains it to have +been her wish to depict 'certain phases of Australian life, in which the +main interests and dominant passions of the personages concerned are +identical with those which might readily present themselves upon a +European stage, but which directly and indirectly are influenced by +striking natural surroundings and conditions of being inseparable from +the youth of a vigorous and impulsive nation.' + +The point of view here taken by the author at almost the beginning of +her literary career has been maintained in most cases throughout her +later work. The same preface might almost, in fact, serve for all her +Australian stories. They describe broadly, in an attitude of +good-natured criticism, the leading facts in the intellectual life of +the people; their proud self-reliance, tempered by an acute sense of +isolation and its disadvantages; their susceptibility to foreign +criticism and example; their frank, natural manners in social customs of +native origin, contrasted with their quaintly-rigid observance of +conventionalities which have long since been relaxed in the mother +country whence they were copied. + +Mrs. Praed has turned to account more fully than any other writer the +little affectations of that small upper crust of Antipodean society +which is sufficiently cultured to have developed a taste for +aristocratic European habits, along with an uncomfortable suspicion of +'bad form' in anything of purely local growth. This is the class which +maintains an air of portentous solemnity in public ceremonials, and is +liable at any moment to be convulsed by a question of precedence at a +Government House dinner. + +From a lively appreciation of comedy to caricature is an easy descent +which the author has not always resisted, but her exaggeration is so +obviously resorted to in the interests of fun that it is unlikely to +mislead. There is certainly no need to repudiate as untypical of +Australian political society the Pickwickian spectacle of a drunken +Postmaster-General fearfully trying to walk a plank after a Vice-regal +dinner, in order to win three dozen of champagne wagered by the leader +of the Opposition, while the Premier looks on and holds his sides with +merriment; or the case of the Premier's wife, who, on being told by a +newly-arrived Governor--a musical enthusiast--that he hoped to be able +to 'introduce Wagner' at the local philharmonic concerts, said: 'I'm +sure we shall be very pleased to see the gentleman.' + +Considering, however, the opportunities which colonial life, and +especially colonial politics, afford for ridicule, the author has been +commendably careful to avoid, as far as possible, giving real offence. +Yet her criticism is sufficiently free to be piquant, and, on the whole, +as salutary as it is entertaining. 'Why need Australians always be on +the defensive?' asks more than once an Englishman in one of her novels. +The author seems to have put the same question to herself as an +Australian, and to have decided that ultra-sensitiveness is a worse vice +than affectation, and that her compatriots, by giving way to it, do both +themselves and their country an injustice. For it implies a too low +estimate of what is fresh and strong and of real merit in the +independent life of the nation. + +Colonists need a little more of the philosophic and common-sense spirit +which can look upon deficiencies and crudities merely as phases in the +natural evolution of society in a new land. This is what Mrs. Praed has +endeavoured to teach in some of her stories. The lesson is often +surrounded with a good deal of bantering discussion; it may not always +be apparent to an English reader, but it can hardly be overlooked by an +Australian. There is rarely anything so pointed as the conversation +between Miss Jacobsen and her lover, Chepstowe. The former has been +wondering what the cultivated Englishman thought of a recent noisy and +rather vulgar reception tendered to a new Governor for whom he is acting +as private secretary. Chepstowe is suspected of being secretly amused at +his surroundings. But his view of them is purely rational and +matter-of-fact. + + 'You know, I fancy you colonists think rather too little of + yourselves, and we in England rather too much. Or I'll put it in + another way. I fancy you colonists think too much about yourselves, + and we in England think too little.' + + 'You said just now that you think too much.' + + 'Yes; it's the same thing put in a different way. We think too much + of ourselves, and for that reason too little about ourselves. You + are always thinking somebody is laughing at you; we have made up our + minds that we are the admiration of everybody. We are often very + ridiculous, and don't know it. You often think you are ridiculous + when you really are not.' + + 'I think we must have seemed very ridiculous the day you landed.... + I know you are astonished at some of our public men.... You will + write home and say how rude and rough and vulgar some of them are.' + + 'If one wants to see the ridiculous, one can see it everywhere. We + have some public men at home who are rude and rough, and vulgar and + ridiculous.... One has to make allowances, of course, for training + and habits, and all that.... When our fellows are rough, there is + less excuse for them. The more one goes about the world, the less + one sees to laugh at, I think....' + +English self-complacency is, of course, a growth of centuries, but +perhaps a deliberate and intelligent effort to acquire some of it in +Australia would be the best specific for that consciousness which, +colonists should not forget, is the mark of insignificance. It has been +said that Australians already have too much to say for themselves and +their country. The assertion is only applicable to a small boisterous +class who have never seen anything beyond their own shores. + +A much commoner element of Antipodean life, one which some of Mrs. +Praed's characters notably illustrate, is the desire for wider +experience and culture produced among educated people by their constant +use of British and European literature. James Ferguson, the young +squatter in _The Head Station_, represents those Australians who, though +stout believers in their own country, feel its intellectual +deficiencies--perhaps too much; who are more English than the English +themselves in their veneration for the historic associations of the +mother land; who, when they go to London, are curiously at home in +streets and among sights that have been more or less definitely outlined +in their imagination from early childhood. + +While three of his English-bred companions are exchanging reminiscences +of London life, Ferguson listens with an eager interest, 'putting in a +remark every now and then which had the savour, so readily detected, of +acquaintance with the thing in question by means of books rather than +personal experience.' In Mrs. Praed's stories, as in real life, a +personal acquaintance with other countries gives the Australian a truer +appreciation of the good in his own. The man who has taken part in the +artificialities of a London season, or has been a spectator of its petty +rivalries, returns joyfully to a simpler life; the woman who is prone to +deify the smooth-spoken Englishman, learns through him to value the more +homely virtues of colonial manhood. + +In the difficult task of rendering attractive the restricted life of the +squatting class, who form the country aristocracy of Australia, Mrs. +Praed has combined humour and a terse cultivated style of expression +with a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merely +commonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnish +materials for bright little sketches immediately associated with some +romantic episode in the story; there is no vague straining to create +'atmosphere,' or anything that a judicious reader would skip. + +The beautiful Honoria Longleat reclining in a hammock under the +vine-trellised verandah at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlight +imparting a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing withe of orange +begonia touching her shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of guavas +on the ground beside her; Elsie Valliant waiting for her lover on the +rocky crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two giant cedars and +outlined cameo-like against the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdy +little belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves at her churn, pretending +unconcern when she is surprised by her English visitors--these are some +of the pictures in which the author commemorates much that is noteworthy +in the warmth and colour of tropical Australia and in the daily life of +its inhabitants. This fondness for posing her heroines is one of the +minor features of her work. Its results in some of her later novels are +not, however, always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the history of +the unhappy Judith Fountain in _Affinities_ are painful, and the +portrait, in _The Brother of the Shadow_, of Mrs. Vascher as she lies in +the mesmerist's blue-silk-lined room is an unnecessary ghastly +elaboration. + +The hardships suggested by the beginnings of pastoral life amid the +giant forests and intense loneliness of Australia are never allowed by +Mrs. Praed to give a gloomy colour to her stories. It is one of their +distinct merits that they present the humorous incongruities rather than +the trials of pioneering, though the latter are by no means ignored. In +the first three chapters of _The Romance of a Station_ some excellent +humour is provided by the young bride's account of her home-coming to +the rude mansion on her husbands mosquito-infested island station, and +the ludicrous privations she encountered there. There is nothing of the +kind more amusing in the whole of Australian fiction. The description of +the household pets, and the vermin--including a lizard with an uncanny +habit of 'unfastening its tail and making off on its stump when +pursued'--rivals the famous verandah scene in _Geoffry Hamlyn_. An +intimation in the preface that these experiences are a faithful record +from the early life of the author herself sufficiently explains their +graphic quality. Amusing also are the sketches of the aristocratic +settlers in _Policy and Passion_ and _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ who try to +apply the principles of aestheticism to the crude surroundings of their +new-made homes in the backwoods--Dolph Bassett with his ornamental +bridges and rockeries and his grand piano; Lord Horace Gage explaining +with his maxim, 'If we can't be comfortable, let us at least be +artistic,' a neglect to fill up the chinks in his slab hut. + +Queensland, the scene of Mrs. Praed's colonial experience and the +'Leichardt's Land' of her stories, differs notably from the rest of +Australia only in climate; its social and political conditions are +essentially the same in character as those in the rest of the country. +The Englishman acquiring colonial experience, the squatter living in +various stages of comfort or discomfort, the gentleman spendthrift from +whom his family has parted with the affectionate injunction, 'God bless +you, dear boy; let us never see your face again!' and the political +parties which go in and out of office 'like buckets in a well' (to use +the author's own expression), are, or have been, common features of +every colony. Like several of her heroines, Mrs. Praed alternated life +in the country with the gaieties of the capital. + +The position of her father, the Hon. T. L. Murray-Prior, as a member of +the Legislative Council, brought her into contact with those political +and vice-regal circles of which she has given entertaining and +occasionally derisive accounts in _Policy and Passion_, _Miss Jacobsen's +Chance_, and elsewhere. Her description in the former story of the +wealthy landowners, who adopt a passive and somewhat disdainful attitude +towards party strife, applies to a class already large in the colonies. +Whether such an attitude is consistent with 'the truest conservatism to +be found in Australia,' which they are said to represent, may be +questioned. It seems rather to indicate selfishness, petulance, and lack +of patriotism. + +It is not, however, upon the business of politics or the humours and +makeshifts of colonial life that Mrs. Praed has expended her best +efforts as a writer. Some study of the human emotions is the primary +interest in all her novels. There is nearly always love of the +passionate and romantic kind, prompted on the one side by impulse, +ignorance or glamour, and on the other by passing fancy or +self-interest: the love of an innocent, unsophisticated woman for a man +experienced in the pleasures and some of the darker vices of life; and, +in contrast, the blunt respect and devotion of the typical Australian +man for the same woman, and her light estimate of his worth. The +tragedies of marriage--the union of the refined and imaginative with the +coarse and commonplace, the high-souled with the worldly and cynical, +the pure with the impure--are correlative themes of some of the +strongest of the novels. In these, pathos is the prevailing tone. We +have the spectacle of the woman's blind, illogical trust abused, her +helplessness in self-inflicted misery, or the tenacity with which, in +temptation, she clings to the safeguards of conventional morality. In +most cases this tenacity, which the author accounts an instinct rather +than a virtue, is either allowed to triumph, or is placed by death +beyond the possibility of a supreme test. In the loves of Hester +Murgatroyd and Durnford in _The Head Station_, of Mrs. Lomax and Leopold +D'Acosta in _The Bond of Wedlock_, and of Mrs. Borlase and Esme +Colquhoun in _Affinities_, it is the woman who directly, or by +implication, insists upon respect of the marriage tie so long as it +remains a legal obligation. + +But it should be made clear that Mrs. Praed is not in any sense a +propagandist on the subject of marriage. She illustrates, often +impressively, its difficulties and anomalies, but leaves the rest to the +judgment of the reader. The romantic, ignorant girl who marries on +trust, or is ready to do so, has numerous representatives in these +novels. Though it is a woman's view of her trials and unhappiness that +is given, there is nothing in the shape of a crusade against male vices. +It is not the faults of men that are dwelt upon so much as the +inevitably lenient, the pitifully inadequate estimate which women make +of men themselves. + +The most striking illustration of this feature is probably contained in +the last scenes of _The Bond of Wedlock_, where the heroine learns at +once the hypocrisy of her father and the dishonour of her lover. The +father, in a fit of resentment, has revealed the mean plot by which she +has been enabled to divorce her husband and marry Sir Leopold D'Acosta. +The latter, seeing that Mrs. Lomax would never consent to an elopement, +has paid another woman--a former mistress of his--to incriminate Harvey +Lomax, while the audacious old humbug, his father-in-law, does the +business of a detective. Ariana's dream of happiness is dissipated. She +hardens into indifference. The revelation completes the disillusionment +which had already begun. 'I had set you up as my hero, and my ideal, and +I have found you--a man.' This is the summary of her life's experience, +which in effect is also that of Esther Hagart, Ginevra Rolt, Christina +Chard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of Mrs. Praed's unhappy +heroines. Married life, as they illustrate it, is usually a compromise. +Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not quite a failure. Her husband does not +attempt to conceal the fact that she no longer interests him, but with +that commonly-accepted philosophy which recognises a wife as at least an +adjunct to conventional respectability, he reminds her that, after all, +their union has some advantages: + + 'I would much rather have you for a wife than any other woman I ever + knew; and if I sometimes think a man is better who hasn't a wife, it + is only when you are in one of those reproachful moods, and seem as + if you were anxious to make me out a heartless sort of miscreant. In + Heaven's name, why not make the best of things? Why need we be + melodramatic? We are man and woman of the world. We must take the + world as we find it, and ourselves for what it has made us.' + +Ariana's answer was given later on when she realized the full extent to +which she had been self-deluded: 'I am not going to be melodramatic. We +can be very good friends on the outside. We need never be anything +more.' + +A strong bias towards analysis is the chief characteristic of Mrs. +Praed's studies in character. As in her illustrations of the perplexing +uncertainties of married life it is the woman's point of view that is +most impressively presented, so in each story there is at least one +woman whose personality stands out in pathetic relief and claims +paramount attention. She is usually a cultivated woman of romantic +tendency, living in a restricted social environment, and displaying the +craving of that class of her sex for change, pleasurable excitement, and +sympathy. In the satisfaction of her yearnings or ambitions are seen, +perhaps more often than is typical, the gloomy aspects of marriage, and +the incompetence of women to manage their own lives. + +The average Australian girl of real life is neither very romantic nor +fastidious. She is cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to be +thoughtful, and has a decided inclination towards married life. Its +material advantages and status attract her--and, for the rest, she has a +vague confidence that everything will come right. Nowhere is the horror +of elderly spinsterhood more potent. The influence of independent +professional life fostered by the large public schools is still +infinitesimal. + +The type upon which Mrs. Praed has bestowed her most elaborate work +belongs to a class both higher and far fewer in numbers. It is the class +that Mr. Froude had chiefly in view when he noted the absence of 'severe +intellectual interests' as a deficiency of society at Sydney. + +Honoria Longleat, the principal study of Mrs. Praed's second novel, may, +with a few obvious deductions, be taken as a fair example of the +colonial woman educated beyond sympathy with her native surroundings, +and unprovided with any employment for her mental energies. With the +distractions and interests of her narrow circle exhausted, and the +knowledge that her future--her only possible future--must soon be +decided by marriage, she is consumed with an intense and reckless desire +for new emotional experience. Her unrest is like that of the large class +of American women who are educated above the purely commercial standard +of their fathers and brothers, and are impelled to satisfy their +intellectual cravings by frequent European travel. + +'This is only a state of half-existence,' said Honoria in reference to +her country life in Australia. 'Books are so unsatisfying! I read them +greedily at first, then throw them aside in disgust. They never take one +below the surface.... I want to grow and live.... What is the use of +living unless one can gauge one's capacity for sensation?' Gretta Reay, +in whom the same discontent is reproduced, exclaims: 'Ah, we Australians +are like birds shut up in a large cage--our lives are little and narrow, +for all that our home is so big.' + +By these and other characters of the same type, the cultivated +Englishman, who offers them the prospect of change and emancipation from +monotony, is distinctly preferred in marriage to the man of colonial +birth and experience. 'Don't you know,' says Gretta to one of the +latter, 'that an Australian girl's first aim is to captivate an +Englishman of rank and be translated to a higher sphere--failing that, +to make the best of a rich squatter?' + +The heroine of _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ differs from Gretta only in being +more emphatic in her preference for the doubtful stranger, and +irrational in her objections to her tried Australian lover, Frank +Hallett. Once, in a riding-party, 'she had moodily watched his +(Hallett's) square, determined bushman's back as he jogged along in +front of her, and compared it with Blake's easy, graceful, rather +rakish, bearing. Why was Frank so stolid, so good, so commonplace?' + +A trifling superficial defect of the same sort turns the tables against +the gallant young explorer, Dyson Maddox, in his first suit for the hand +of Miss Longleat. The half-dozen analytical studies of female character +in the principal novels of Mrs. Praed are far from flattering to her +countrywomen, and might be somewhat misleading if we permitted ourselves +to forget that in every case it is only one phase of a colonial girl's +life that is being given. + +The whims, the countless flirtations, the greed for new sensations, the +inconsistencies and the apparent mercenary attitude towards marriage, +are not more permanently characteristic of the women of Australia than +of Englishwomen with equal opportunities. The impulses of the former are +under few conventional restraints; they have a greater control of their +lives: that is the only material difference. The matrimonial creed of +Gretta Reay expresses rather the exaggerated cynicism of a coquette than +a fact generally true of the class to which she belongs. The experiences +of herself and of other leading characters in these stories correctly +show that, although Australian women have an undoubted preference for +the gentlemanly product of an older civilisation, it is a preference of +sentiment in which self-interest and prudence are scarcely considered. + +Even Weeta Wilson, the professional beauty so strikingly portrayed in +_The Romance of a Station_, has a soul above her own avowed commercial +view of marriage. It had been systematically planned that she should +contract an aristocratic alliance; for years she had co-operated with +her parents in elaborate preparations, half pathetic, half ludicrous; +she had been guarded and nurtured like a hothouse-plant. At last, when +her opportunity came, she relinquished her lover on finding that there +was another who had a prior right to him. + +The subtle skill with which some of the nobler qualities of her women +are brought out, especially their capacity for self-sacrifice and +devotion, marks Mrs. Praed's highest point of achievement in the +portrayal of character. Her knowledge of the mental complexities of her +own sex is both deeper and better expressed than her observation of men. +In the most inconsistent, the most cynical, or the shallowest of her +women, there is a latent tenderness, a soft womanliness, which conquers +dislike. Thus, it is impossible to lack sympathy for Christina Chard, or +accept her own estimate of her selfishness, after reading the +finely-written scene in which she is found kneeling by the bedside of +her dying child, from whom she has been so cruelly separated, while her +recreant husband stands apart in awe and humiliation; or, again, in the +interview with Frederica Barnadine, when the claims of both women to +the love of Rolf Luard are discussed. + +The absence of similar redeeming qualities in several of the principal +male characters leaves them almost wholly without definite claim on our +regard, and also lessens the effect of the author's frequent endeavours +to impartially contrast the unconsciously low moral standard of the +average worldly man--the standard which society accepts--with the high, +impracticable ideals of inexperienced womanhood. + +The heroines in nearly all of Mrs. Praed's stories have the life of +sentiment and passion revealed to them by men older in years, and +skilled in those small arts and graces of refined society which are ever +attractive to women. But, in fulfilling this design, the men themselves +are often placed in a strained and artificial pose. The presentation of +the purely emotional side of their nature inevitably tends to produce an +appearance of weakness and effeminacy. + +There is hardly a single admirable quality in Barrington, the base lover +of Honoria Longleat; or in George Brand, who deserts Esther Hagart in +her poverty and loneliness, and years afterwards, on finding her +recognised as the niece of an English baronet, persuades her into an +unhappy marriage; or in Brian Gilmore, the profligate in _Moloch_, who +seeks to rejuvenate his jaded passions with the love of an innocent +girl, after abandoning another woman whose life he has spoiled. Sir +Bruce Carr-Gambier forsakes Christina Chard and her child for cowardly +reasons similar to those pleaded by Brand. When they meet, long-after, +he offers his devotion again, but only because her developed beauty, +position, and reputed wealth attract him. + +It is true that these characters fairly fulfil the author's intention, +so far as they bring into vivid juxtaposition the polished life of the +old world with the simplicity of the new, and help to give the necessary +dramatic point to the several stories; but there is so much of the cad +in their nature and conduct, that it is difficult to accept them as +representatives of any conceivable type of the Englishman of birth and +refinement. This result, however, does not imply any actual inability on +the part of the author to realise the standard of true manhood in all +its varying strength and foibles, its tenderness and honour. Where there +has not seemed any necessity to bend the character to the requirements +of the story, admirably life-like sketches of men have been +produced--such as Rolf Luard in _Christina Chard_ and Bernard Comyn in +_An Australian Heroine_ among Englishmen; and Dyson Maddox, Frank +Hallett, and James Ferguson among Australians. + +Though it is plain that Mrs. Praed has generally found colonial men +wanting in interest in proportion as they themselves lack the polish +that travel and extended experience of social life impart, she has not +overlooked the rugged dignity, the truth and virility, which are their +highest characteristics. Alluding to Ferguson as one type of his +country, she observes that, 'underlying the rough-and-ready manners and +the prosaic routine of bush-life, there is an old-world chivalry, a +reverence for women, a purity of thought, a delicacy of sentiment.... +This is partly due to the breezy moral atmosphere, and partly to the +influence of books, which become living realities in the solitude and +monotony of existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is an +odd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student who +learns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to its +pronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or society +slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits; +but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to the +soul, he has made his own.' + +Ferguson himself echoes the same estimate in pleading his suit with Miss +Reay. 'It seems to me,' he says, 'that there's a kind of chivalry which +can be practised in the bush here better than in great cities--the +chivalry Tennyson writes about--the knighthood that isn't earned by +sauntering through life in a graceful, smiling sort of way, with your +heart in your hand, but in simplicity and faith; by love of one woman, +and reverence of all women for her sake.' + +Compared with the fascinating aristocrats and adventurers, the +Australian man seems crudely provincial. Yet he is never shown in an +incorrect or merely satirical light. There are, to be sure, occasions +when he appears too tame and Dobbin-like in acceptance of his lady's +caprices; but this is partly an evidence of that mixture of stiff native +pride and independence which forbids servile appeal even to one he +loves. + +The deficiency of which the reader is most often conscious in +endeavouring to make a general estimate of Mrs. Praed's work is a want +of breadth in her scope--a presentation too constant and too tense of +certain phases of the passionate life of men and women, to the +comparative exclusion of those softer and higher attributes which even +Charlotte Bronte (whose touch that of Mrs. Praed occasionally resembles) +did not neglect. In other words, we are not given enough to admire. +There are few pictures--and none that can be called memorable--of happy +married life to contrast with the vivid tragedies of mistaken unions. +An inclination towards humorous disdain characterizes the references in +the stories to conjugal relations of the ordinarily satisfactory kind. +And when those of a filial nature are brought into prominence, they, +too, often have only a pathetic or painful aspect--love on the one side +repelled by indifference; an uncouth parent offering rough sympathy that +irritates instead of soothes; a sensitive girl writhing under the +brutalities or _gaucheries_ of a drunken father. + +A survey of the author's female characters will recall over a score of +names of discontented girls experimenting in life--flirts, minxes, +unhappy wives, and shallow society women; while after passing over half +a dozen of the _ingenue_, the amusing and the neutral types, there +remain only about four to represent the highest and most lovable +qualities of womanhood. A similar division might be made between the +male characters, though here the preponderance of the bad would not be +so great as in the first case. + +The descriptions of English society which are amongst Mrs. Praed's best +work are marked by the same clear vision of the darker side of human +nature that is displayed in the treatment of English character in her +Australian novels. Her view of the 'smart' section of English society is +somewhat severe. After reading several of her novels, one could almost +imagine her defending her literary preference in the words of Esme +Colquhoun, in _Affinities_: 'What is our mission--we writers--but to +distil the essence of the age? The critics tell us that we are complex, +that we are corrupt, that we are anatomists of diseased minds. We reply: +The age is complex; the age is corrupt, and the society we depict is the +outcome of influences which have been gathering through centuries of +advancing civilization ... the reign of healthy melodrama is over; the +reign of analysis has commenced. We make dramas of our sensations, not +of our actions.' The same view is expressed in an article contributed by +Mrs. Praed to the _North American Review_ in 1890. 'Analysis, not +action,' she notes as the prevailing characteristic of the fiction +produced by female writers, 'as it is also of our modern social life.' +But, 'to dissect human nature under its society swathings needs,' she +adds, 'the skill of a Balzac or a Thackeray, while the feminine +counterpart of a Balzac or a Thackeray is difficult to find.' + +That indefinable power which includes sympathetic insight and does not +overlook whatever is good even in the most repulsive character is, +perhaps, what the describers in fiction of modern society need even more +than skill in dissection. To observe and dissect what is corrupt is +easier than to make the record of corruption presentable. Mrs. Praed's +own tale _The Bond of Wedlock_, with all its undoubted cleverness, its +realism and dramatic strength, fails in its due impression as a picture +of latter-day English morals because it is too sordid, too completely +devoid of any of the better qualities of humanity. + +To see Mrs. Praed in her most agreeable and natural moods one must +revert to the novels in which the scenery and people of her own country +are described. In _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_ we have her liveliest +example of humour and caricature, in _The Head Station_ her most +cheerful pictures of country life, and in _Christina Chard_ some account +of the society with which colonists of wealth surround themselves in +London. The latter story has several finely dramatic scenes and is a +sample of the author's mature work. Hers is the most comprehensive view +that we have of the social and political life of the Antipodes, and for +this and for her minutely recorded knowledge of her own sex she will +long continue to hold and deserve a foremost place in Australian +literature. + + + + +TASMA. + + +Between the writers who profess not to see anything individual in the +life of Australia and those others who confine themselves to describing +a few of its principal scenes and types of character, Tasma holds a +middle and independent place. She is absolutely without predilections +and hobbies. Her materials are chosen for some quality of +picturesqueness rather than for the purpose of illustrating any phase of +life at the Antipodes or elsewhere. So little are some of her novels +concerned with the external appearances of the country that the scene of +their action might easily be transferred to almost any part of Great +Britain or America. + +Incidentally she has given a few strongly-sketched views of places--of +Melbourne in midsummer, with its buildings of sombre bluestone and +stucco, and streets swept by dust-laden hot winds; of Riverina, arid and +drought-stricken; and of the peaceful beauty of rural Tasmania, the home +of her own youth--but these and other descriptions from the same pen are +slight compared with similar work in the stories of Kingsley, +Boldrewood, and Mrs. Campbell Praed. + +Tasma, as one of the younger writers, has rightly seen that, for the +present at all events, more than sufficient use has been made in fiction +of the natural peculiarities of Australia. Her novels are, moreover, all +character studies, and little dependent upon local colour for their +interest. Her quiet, satirical humour and power of rapidly and mordantly +sketching a portrait, do much to justify a comparison which her friends +sometimes make of her writings with those of George Eliot and Jane +Austen. Rolf Boldrewood, after the publication of her first three books, +hailed her as the 'Australian George Eliot,' and the title is certainly +more fitting than the praise implied by the other comparison. She has +much of George Eliot's conscientious literary expression, direct +masculine way of looking at life, and unsparing criticism of her own +sex. While reminding one, as she often does, of Jane Austen's humour, +Tasma does not approach any nearer to that writer's supreme gift of +describing character in dialogue than scores of others who have followed +the same model during the last seventy years. + +Like most of the chief contributors to Australian literature, Tasma is a +colonist in experience only. She was born at Highgate, near London, and +taken during childhood by her father, Mr. Alfred James Huybers, a Dutch +merchant, to Hobart, in Tasmania, about forty years ago. She displayed +literary talent at an early age, read extensively, and published +criticisms in the _Melbourne Review_, and short stories and sketches in +the lighter colonial periodicals. + +In 1879 Tasma went to live in Europe, and has since known Australia only +as an occasional visitor. Becoming interested in social questions during +a residence in France, she wrote in the _Nouvelle Revue_, suggesting +emigration to the colonies and engagement in the fruit-growing industry +there as a means of relieving some of the poverty of the Old World. She +afterwards lectured on the subject in French at the invitation of the +Geographical Society of Paris. So successful were the lectures that she +was induced to repeat them in various provincial centres, as well as in +Holland and Belgium. This work occupied from 1880 to 1882, and Tasma was +presented by the French Government with the decoration of Officier +d'Academie. The King of the Belgians also honoured the lecturer by +receiving her in special audience to discuss means of improving +communication between Belgium and Tasmania. + +In 1885, after revisiting Australia, Tasma was married to M. Auguste +Couvreur, a distinguished Belgian politician and journalist (he has +since died), and four years later began her career as a novelist by the +publication at London of _Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill_, which proved to +be one of the most notable books of its season. + +This novel remains the best example of the author's humour and power of +describing character that she has produced. It has none of the marks of +a first effort. Written when Tasma was about thirty-two, it embodied +some of the best fruits of many years' keenly critical study of life, in +addition to the culture gained by travel and a wide course of reading. +Of plot there is little--there is still less in some of the later +novels--but sufficient variety of incident is given to afford scope for +unusually rich faculties of sympathy and philosophic observation. + +In her desire to present only real persons moving in a familiar world +she merits, in _Uncle Piper_, praise almost equal to that accorded by +Nathaniel Hawthorne to the novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke of +them as being 'as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the +earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going +about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made +a show of.' It is, however, less of Trollope than of Howells that Tasma +reminds the reader in this first story. The character of the wealthy +_parvenu_ uncle, sensitive, boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yet +tender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls _Silas Lapham_, that +wonderfully natural and sympathetic presentment of a commonplace man. +There are numerous points of resemblance between the two, especially +when they are shown contrasted with their aristocratic friends. The +delightful comradeship of Lapham and his wife, with its curiously dry +New England expression, has its counterpart in Piper's affection for his +sister and their pride in each other. + +The half-acknowledged social ambitions of both men, qualified by their +secret contempt for the pretensions of the upper classes, is shown in +various similar ways, as is also their love of display. They differ only +as their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives in the American +merchant and his wife, and unconsciously sways their lives. Uncle +Piper's conception of the Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has a +religion of generosity and love which in the end nothing can +repress--which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematic +coldness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son and +step-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind--the tractable +section of them--there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy and +reserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tenderness +which is irresistible. + +The superiority of Silas Lapham as a realistic portrait is not difficult +to affirm; still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that the +characters thus far approximate. Uncle Piper is under all the +disadvantage that a figure in fiction suffers in being described largely +in plain statement by the author instead of being gradually revealed in +piquant dialogue. + +Readers of _Silas Lapham_ will remember the rapid series of witty +touches with which the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in the +office of his warehouse, surrounded by samples of the mineral paint that +he is so pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a dignified +indifference as he answers the rather flippant curiosity of the local +press interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is introduced, as +all of Tasma's characters are, in sundry solid-looking pages of direct +narrative. It is true that their humour and epigram make bright reading, +but they are necessarily without the power of pithy dialogue to create a +vivid impression of character. + +Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian plutocracy need hardly be +discussed. Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every community has its +proportion. It may, however, be said that the owners of luxurious villas +in the suburbs of Melbourne have individually a good deal more grammar +and less generosity than he who was described by one of his fashionable +English guests as possessing 'the home of a West-End magnate and the +intonation of a groom.' The author herself would probably disclaim any +intention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt the +existence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and she +certainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them. + +A passage in her third novel, _The Penance of Portia James_, gives her +views on this subject, and incidentally upon Australian character. A +description is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of an +Australian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a +_habitue_ of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron of +art and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices. + + To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of English readers as + thoroughly typical Australians would be as unjust a proceeding as + was that of Dumas _pere_ when he declared that all the inhabitants + of Antwerp were _roux_ because he had encountered two red-headed + girls on his way to the hotel. No one is thoroughly typical unless + he be a savage or a peasant. Portia and her relatives retained their + own underlying individualities none the less that they had been + influenced in their outward bearing and modes of expressing + themselves by a long sojourn in the backwoods of Victoria, in daily + contact with all sorts and conditions of men--broken-down gentlemen, + English yokels, bush-hands, and the like. After all, the moulding of + character by outward influences alone is not a work to be achieved + in one generation, or what would become of the theory of heredity, + upon which everything is supposed to depend, more or less, in our + present scientific age? If these people strike the English reader, + therefore, as differing in certain respects from those he is + accustomed to meet in his daily walk through life, let him remember + that the differences which will strike him most are the merely + superficial ones resulting from an occasional departure from the + conventional rules of speech and behaviour that guide his own + outward conduct, and that in all the main essentials they are, _au + fond_, neither more like him or more unlike him than though chance + had willed that they should be born and brought up on the selfsame + patch of earth as himself. A difference in the vocabulary of the + native-born Australian, or long resident in Australia, of the not + too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of + voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a + corresponding class in England, is one of those facts, however, + which 'nobody can deny.' I am not going to enter in this connection + upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs. + James would have called 'hoefisch' English, and the English that has + been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and + backwoodsmen. Suffice it to say there _is_ a difference, and Portia + was never more sensible of it than when she returned, as on the + present occasion, from moving among a London society crowd into the + Anglo-Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington house. + +Tasma's efforts to give variety to her work, and keep as far as possible +out of the beaten paths of the Australian writer, have not, however, +quite excluded from her novels characters which will be recognised as +typical. There is, for instance, the young pleasure-loving colonial man +who keeps racehorses, gets deeply into debt and love, and has sometimes +to encounter awkward parental alternatives. + +At least three excellent portraits of such men are given. The best is +that of George Drafton, in _In Her Earliest Youth_. In no other novel +are the rough good-nature and loose, slangy talk of the young Australian +sportsman of the upper-middle class more naturally expressed. The +author's knowledge of the cant terms and short cuts in the vocabulary of +the not necessarily ill-educated but supremely careless colonial young +man is almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who has been listening +to the talk of such men all his life. + +Uncle Piper's exasperating 'gentleman' son George is also a noticeably +clever creation in a book full of good portraits; and it is a tribute to +the author's skill that as the story progresses our sympathy for him +increases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding the needless agonies +of rage he occasions his father. + +The most vivid chapter to be found in any of Tasma's novels is that in +which Uncle Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between Laura Lydiat +and George, sends for the latter and threatens to cast him off if a +marriage of the pair should take place. Laura is an agnostic and a sort +of 'new woman' who maintains a constant attitude of disdain towards her +stepfather. She and George have spent much of their youth together, +discussed pessimistic theories in Piper's hearing, and generally ignored +him, and made him feel his ignorance in ways very trying to the temper +of a man who, 'now that his money-making days were over, had a passion +for dictating absolutely to everyone about him.' 'He'd talk' and 'she'd +talk,' as Mr. Piper would complain; 'and they'd spout their scraps of +poetry that hadn't an ounce of the sense any good, honest old rhyme +could show; and you'd think, to hear them, they were doing their Maker a +favour by condescending to go on living at all!' + +An alliance of this kind between the two people for whom he had done +most with his wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was determined +that it should not become a closer one. Was this not one reason for his +importation of an entire family of impoverished relatives, that they and +his little pet daughter, the angelic Louey, should readjust the balance +of household power in his favour? + +It was on the eve of the arrival of his aristocratic connections, the +Cavendishes, that he determined to put a stop to his son's courtship. +George, at the outset of the momentous interview with his father, +speculated inwardly on his chances of being able to soften the old man +to a favourable view of 'the only wish that he had ever framed with a +feeling that savoured of intensity.' + +Before entering the ornamental tower where his father awaited him, +George had composed his face to its usual expression of laziest +indifference. His imperturbability always 'had the effect of a goad upon +his father's temper. His face never changed colour when the old man's +was purple. His voice never lost its measured drawl.' + + As Mr. Piper turned and faced him you would never have traced the + sonship in George. There was nothing in common between the sallow, + indolent face of the younger man, and the spreading, heated face of + the elder. George looked like any club-lounger--not unwilling to let + it be seen that he is slightly bored, yet ready, with perfect + acquiescence, to go through with an hour or a forenoon of the + infliction of boredom, as conveyed by a father's presence.... Mr. + Piper watched him as he continued tranquilly to pare his nails, the + baffled sense of helplessness that exasperated him at the outset of + an interview with his son creeping over him as he watched. If George + could only once have lost his head and sworn, or only once implored + or threatened! But he never did. The apathy and unconcern of his + attitude--the veiled disrespect it implied--spoke of an indifference + that was worse than the most open revolt. But surely he would be + made to feel now! Mr. Piper had never tried to reach 'my gentleman' + through his 'young woman' yet.... A slight elevation of an unruffled + brow just gave evidence that though his eyes were looking critically + at his almond-shaped finger-nails, his ear took in the sense of his + fathers words. Otherwise he might have served as a perfect model of + intentness upon his hands, as the statue of the boy who to all + eternity will be absorbed in the task of extracting a thorn from his + foot. + +Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute excitement. + + 'I'll see and put a stop to it!' he threatened. 'I'll take and pack + her off, and you at the back of her, "my gentleman"!' George knew + that the use of this expression signified especial bitterness on + his father's part. 'I'll have an end of this nonsense--a painted + jade like her!' + + 'Wait a minute, please,' said George, shutting the knife with a + little snap, and settling himself back upon the window-sill; 'you + are a little hard to follow, or I am slow at catching your meaning, + perhaps. I understand that you had some object in sending for me. + Are you explaining it to me now? I am quite prepared to listen, as + you see.' + + 'You're very condescending, I'm sure,' said Mr. Piper, with such + withering sarcasm that George stroked his moustache and smiled. 'You + put yourself about for your father a deal too much, "my gentleman," + there's no doubt of it.' Then, with a sudden break in his voice: + 'No, George; it's not much of a son you've been to me, and no one + can say I've stood in your light. I'd like you to show me another + young man who could carry on top ropes like you. There's not many + fathers 'ud have stood it. Most fathers 'ud made you turn to long + ago.' + + 'Do you want anything done for you?' interrupted George, with the + air of a man who is laying himself out to oblige--'another tour of + inspection in the north?' + + Whenever Mr. Piper made allusion to George's want of occupation, it + was the young man's policy to refer to this tour of inspection--a + memorable tour, seeing that it had given him employment for at least + three months.... + + If there was anything humiliating in being rated as an 'able-bodied + young man who wasn't worth his salt,' as a loafer who was hardly fit + to 'jackaroo' on a station, as a 'lazy lubber' who would 'go to the + dogs if it weren't for his father,' George never betrayed that he + felt humiliated by so much as the twitching of an eyelid. + Persistently stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of + profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as Mr. Piper + stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing an inclination to + yawn. + + 'I dare say it's all very true, governor,' was all he said in reply. + 'It's very nice and complimentary, I'm sure, and I ought to be very + much obliged to you. But, _a propos_ of your compliments, may I ask + if it was only to treat me to them in full that you brought me up + those confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that case, I + wouldn't have minded waiting, you know. It's hardly fair upon a man, + is it, to put him to the treadmill before he's well awake in the + morning?' + + 'If you were like other young men,' retorted Mr. Piper, 'you'd be up + and down them steps twenty times a day' (George shuddered); 'but oh + no! my gentleman can crawl on to the lawn and carry on with a----' + + 'Stop there!' cried George, in a tone that made his father silent + through sheer astonishment (George had never been known to raise his + voice before). 'Do you know the relation in which Laura stands to + me?' + + He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and seeing the + ghastly change that came over the face as he looked, he felt that he + had been over-hasty. For the glass through which Mr. Piper had made + a feint of looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips + worked in a distorted fashion over his discoloured teeth; the blood + rushing away from his florid cheeks left them streaked with thready, + sanguineous veins, mottling the ash-coloured patches; and rushed + back again with a force that seemed to swell the veins round his + temples to bursting.... + + 'What's the matter, father?' said George at last, not with any of + Louey's vehement alarm, but eyeing him rather gravely and curiously. + 'Do you object to my looking upon Laura in the light of + a--_sister_?' + + 'Eh?' said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly + returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable. + + 'Of a sister,' repeated George slowly, 'and a friend.' + + 'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak + distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine, + thank God! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see + how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn + it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got + a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill + again!' + + 'You mistake the position of affairs,' said George calmly. 'Laura + wouldn't have me if I wanted!' + + 'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful. + 'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?' + +The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will not have +Laura as a daughter-in-law 'at any price,' and that if George choose to +marry her it must be as a pauper, and unrelieved of his heavy burden of +turf debts. Piper's stormy, almost speechless anger, like his craving +for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His +personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara +Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation +of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle +Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her +other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in _In Her Earliest +Youth_, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the same class, in the short +story _Monsieur Caloche_, are shown only in a satirical and repulsive +light, which necessarily makes them appear somewhat unreal. + +As a vivid study, combined with excellent comedy, the portrait of Sara +Cavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishness +concealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly +excessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat, +are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a passenger by +the ship which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gave +his weekly sermons during the voyage, Miss Cavendish was always present, +and looked at him with her large eyes to such purpose that they 'seemed +to be absorbing his meaning into the soul of their possessor.' + +But there was nothing ethereal in Sara's thoughts. 'She had a fancy for +imagining becoming dresses. She would build up a delightful wardrobe in +the air, entering into as many details of her airy outfit as though it +could be instantly materialised. And she liked to imagine a becoming +background for her own beautiful person, in which a husband with the +essentials of good birth and unlimited money, and the desirable +qualifications of an air of distinction and great devotion to her, +filled a reasonable space.' Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreams +such as it would have seemed to him almost a sacrilege to disturb, +'though it is probable that the only notion he would have been guilty of +upsetting had reference to the shape of an imaginary velvet train.' + +The insight and completeness with which Sara's character is depicted in +the course of the story make it impossible that the reader should +entirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. She +is one of that large class of women, with a limited capacity for +affection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don't +be shocked,' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessful +suit of her clerical lover; 'I never intended to be a poor man's wife.' +As a contrast to the cold personality of the beautiful Sara, the author +gives a charming picture of the elder sister's affection and +thoughtfulness for others. + +Margaret Cavendish and Eila Frost, in _Not Counting the Cost_, are good +women of a perfectly possible and natural kind, and it is surprising to +think that the same hand which drew them also found patience to draw the +unhappy, metaphysical heroines of _In Her Earliest Youth_ and _The +Knight of the White Feather_. Tasma is seldom so pleasing as when +describing the characters of children, of whom several figure +prominently in her novels. There is a delightful picture of romping +childhood at the opening of _Not Counting the Cost_. The scene is a farm +in the shadow of Mount Wellington, near Hobart, the city where the +author spent many of her own early years. 'Chubby,' the eight-year-old +uncle of the heroine of _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Louey Piper are +lovable creations, though, it must be said, more quaint than natural. +One remembers the expansive dignity of the former on his first meeting +with Pauline's lover, George Drafton. 'How do you do, little man?' says +the latter condescendingly. 'How do you do, sir?' replies the little man +stiffly, raising his garden hat. 'You are an acquaintance of Paul--of +Miss Vyner's, I believe. I have the honour to be her maternal uncle.' No +wonder George bursts into a loud guffaw, notwithstanding the tragic +intensity of his love protestations of five minutes before! + +Louey Piper's relations with her father are idyllic. She is more +necessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual +negotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could not +have displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world +changeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers of +uncertain testamentary inclinations.' In her limited knowledge of things +outside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presented +themselves to her in the light of shocking and mysterious man-traps.... +The wistful, yearning look that gave her eyes so touching an expression +in the setting of her small freckled face never gave place to such a +fulness of satisfaction as when her father, her brother, and her sister +were all, as it were, under her eye, and safe to remain indoors for the +night.' + +The general praise won by _Uncle Piper_ for its author as a delineator +of character appears to have decided her to give increased attention to +her ability in this direction. The immediate result was scarcely a happy +one. The analytical bias disclosed in the first story was largely +extended in the second, with the usual accompaniment of a decrease in +action and humour. Pauline Vyner, the central figure of _In Her +Earliest Youth_, a sensitive and speculative girl, marries without love +a man who has saved the life of a child to whom she is much attached. In +tastes and intellectual bent the pair are almost without anything in +common. The story--an unusually long three-volume one--is mainly a +minute study of Pauline's disillusionment during the early period of her +wifehood: how she escaped the temptations placed in her way by a man who +had formerly attracted her; and how, with the birth of her first child, +she experienced the dawn of affection for its father. + +The story is excessively expanded for the small amount of dramatic +movement it contains. Only three characters are prominently described, +and these too seldom through the medium of dialogue. The central motive, +moreover, is lacking in strength. It is difficult to appreciate the +tragic pathos of so common a matrimonial error as Pauline's, especially +as George, though uncongenial in his tastes, and not exempt from the +ordinary weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to her, and would +readily have improved under her influence, had she chosen to exert any. +Tasma's more recent work is better both in spirit and literary +construction. Very sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative, in +_Not Counting the Cost_, of the adventures of the Clare family in their +quixotic travels in search of the cousin who is to restore them a +long-lost heritage. In this story and _The Penance of Portia James_ the +author gives some interesting scenes of Paris life. But to get the best +samples of her humour, one must return to her first novel. The burlesque +of Piper's pompous, genteel brother-in-law is delicious. Mr. Cavendish +affects to be revolted by the necessity of being indebted to the +_ci-devant_ butcher, while secretly luxuriating in his munificence. +Finally, as a means of discharging some of his obligations, he conceives +the project of hunting up a pedigree for his plebeian relative, after +the manner of the enterprising person who opened a 'heraldry office' in +Sydney about fifty years ago, and announced his readiness to provide +clients with reliable information of their ancestors, together with +suitable coats of arms. + + True, Piper is not a name of much promise, but there _had_ been a + Count Piper somewhere or other some centuries ago, and the very + rarity of the name proved that every Piper must come from one common + stock. Fired by this generous idea, Mr. Cavendish gave himself up to + its pursuit with enthusiasm. He would spend whole hours in the + Melbourne Library poring over books of heraldry. Every chronological + or biographical document bearing upon the age in which Count Piper + was supposed to have lived was made the subject of long and minute + examination. When the monthly mail day came round there would sure + to be a budget of letters in Mr. Cavendish's handwriting, addressed + to the different colleges and societies at home and abroad, who were + to help in extracting all Pipers of any importance from the oblivion + in which they had hitherto been suffered to remain. + +Mr. Piper is at length informed of the progress of the inquiries, but +shows a provoking obtuseness and indifference concerning them. + + 'I am--hem!--I am pursuing a task of the utmost consequence to your + family interests,' Mr. Cavendish had told him one day. 'In fact, my + dear sir, I am engaged in a work of no less moment than that of + reconstructing your family tree.' + + 'My what-do-you-call-it tree?' exclaimed Mr. Piper, with a hazy + idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying some unwarrantable + experiments upon his lemon and orange bushes. 'Don't you take and + put any rubbish in the garden. I've got a new lot of guano, and I + don't want it meddled with.' + + 'Guano!' echoed Mr. Cavendish, with a tone of the most withering + compassion. 'I'm afraid you don't quite apprehend my meaning. I am + not alluding to coarse material facts at all. I am speaking of a + genealogical tree--a ge-ne-a-lo-gi-cal tree, you understand? I am + trying to rescue your ancestors from the dust of oblivion. I am....' + + 'You'd better leave 'em alone,' interrupted Mr. Piper, with the + sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not been altogether + allayed. '_They_ won't do you any good--no more than they've done + for me. You've got some of your own, I expect; that's enough for any + man, I should think.' + + Mr. Cavendish shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. If the + matter had not become a hobby by this time, he would have abandoned + it then and there. As it was, he contented himself by deploring the + sad effects of low association upon the undoubted descendant of a + count, and pondering upon the possibility of introducing a hog in + armour instead of a stag at gaze into the coat-of-arms that he + foresaw would be the result of his researches. + +Equally comical is the spectacle of Mrs. Cavendish, on the eve of the +first meeting of the two men, humbly wondering how she could soften the +heart of her discontented lord towards the low-born brother--'how lead +him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor for having dared to benefit +him,' and the subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not only was +wealth an acknowledged power, 'even though pork-sausages should have +been its alleged first cause,' but that, after all, 'politic members of +the great ruling houses in the old world had been known to make +concessions to trade,' and he 'was prepared to make concessions too!' +Accordingly, he resolved that the meeting with his relative should bear +the semblance of cordiality. + + 'This is a real pleasure, my dear sir,' he said, with ten white + fingers--the fingers of thoroughbred hands--closing round Mr. + Piper's plebeian knuckles. No onlooker could have supposed for an + instant that he had come, with the whole of his family, in an + entirely destitute condition, to live upon his wife's brother. + Besides, we know that among well-bred people, to receive a favour is + virtually to oblige a man. You only accept cordialities from people + you esteem.... + + 'You're welcome, sir,' said Mr. Piper. + + Then there was a pause, during which Mrs. Cavendish wiped her eyes, + and Mr. Piper said very heartily, 'You're welcome, the lot of you.' + +Cavendish is the only character that the author has treated in a +consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in +_Not Counting the Cost_ is made ridiculous in his harangue on the duties +of the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception, +little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regards +broadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with her +somewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if not +less pungent, is of a quieter kind. + +Next to their humour and skilful presentation of character, the most +noteworthy feature of these novels is their lucid and polished language. +The style is, perhaps, scarcely easy enough for fiction. Its qualities +and culture are those that equip the essayist or critic rather than the +novelist. Indeed, judged by some of her early work in the reviews, and +by the little philosophic exordiums with which she opens so many of her +chapters, Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist. To a large class +of thoughtful readers it will always seem that what her novels lack in +dramatic interest is fully compensated for by their more than usually +faithful sketches of both men and women, and by their intimate and +sympathetic view of our common life. + + + + +THE END. + + + + +BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. + +_G., C. & CO._ + + + + + +---------------------------------------------------------------+ + | | + | Transcriber's note: | + | | + | Inconsistent hyphenation (book-form/book form, gold-fields/ | + | goldfields, horse-racing/horseracing, race-horses/racehorses) | + | has been retained. | + | | + | Minor typographical corrections are documented in the source | + | code of the html version of this e-book. 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