AUSTRALIAN WRITERS

by

DESMOND BYRNE

LondonRichard Bentley and SonPublishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen1896

[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 questionas to what length of time ought to be allowed for the development ofdistinctive national characteristics in the literature of a youngcountry self-governing to the extent of being a republic in all butname, isolated in position, highly civilised, enjoying all the modernluxuries available to the English-speaking race in older lands, and witha population fully two-thirds native. The common saying that a countrycannot be expected to produce literature during the earlier state of itsgrowth is too vague a generalisation. There are circumstances by whichits application may be modified. It certainly does not apply with equalforce to a country whose early difficulties included race conflicts, war with an external power and political labours of great magnitude, andto another whose commercial and social development, carried on undermore modern conditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous, has beenfacile, unbroken and extraordinarily rapid. 

Nor can paucity of literary product, where it exists, be satisfactorilyexplained by the unrest that continues in a new land long after it hasattained material prosperity and the higher refinements of life. TheAmericans are a type of an extremely restless people. They have been sothroughout the greater part of their history, and the characteristic isnow more marked than ever. It is a fixed condition of their nationalbeing, an expression of the cumulative ambition that is the source oftheir varied progress. Yet from time to time men have arisen among themwho not only have given intimate views of a new civilisation, but haveadded something to the permanent stock of what Matthew Arnold used tocall 'the best that is known and thought in the world. ' Even when theindependent nationhood of the United States was still but an aspiration, Benjamin Franklin had familiarised Europe with much that has since beenrecognised as inherent in the modes of thought and manners of theWestern race. 

The bulk of the literature of America is, of course, still small inproportion to the culture and intellectual energy of the country; but ithas been and is sufficient to interpret in a more or less distinctiveway all the leading phases in the evolution of the national thought andsentiment. The subtle influence of the deeply-grounded religious feelingwhich, implanted by the Puritan pioneers, has survived generations ofintense absorption in material progress and the distractions that modernlife offers to the possessors of newly-acquired wealth; the pride of thepeople in their independence, and their natural tendency to overrate itin comparison; with the conditions of other countries; the contrastsfurnished by a society fond of reproducing European habits, yetretaining a simplicity and freshness of its own: these and otherfeatures in the progress of the United States for over a century may befound expressed in its literature from the native standpoint, and notmerely from that of the intelligent outside observer. 

An American writer in discussing, a few years ago, the quality of theliterature produced before the War of Secession, when wealth and leisurewere abundant among the planters and in the principal New England towns, observed that 'there would seem to be something in the relation of acolony to the mother-country which dooms the thought and art of theformer to a hopeless provincialism. ' If a comment so largely fancifulcould be made respecting Australasia and Canada, it would practicallymean--at all events from the American point of view--that as long asthey remain dependencies of Great Britain, and therefore lack thestimulus of an active patriotism, so long will much of whatever isindividual in their social development and national aspirations bewithout expression. In the case of the Australasian colonies it wouldfurther mean (apart from any consideration of their future independence)that a people far removed from other communities of the same race andalready giving promise of being the greatest power south of the equator, must continue for an indefinite period to be wholly sustained and swayedin matters of thought and art by a country over twelve thousand milesdistant that happens for the present to offer the most convenientmarkets in which to buy and sell. The point need hardly be discussed, but it suggests some facts in the intellectual life of Australia that itwill be of interest to name. These may not be found to explain why thereis yet no sign of the coming of an Antipodean Franklin or Irving, orHawthorne or Emerson; but they will help to show why the literature ofthe country grows so unevenly, why it is chiefly of the objective orderand leaves large tracts of the life of the people untouched. 

Perhaps the paradox that a people may read a great deal and yet not beinterested in literature could hardly be applied to the Australians, but it is a fact that they make no special effort to encourage thegrowth of a literature of their own. By no means unconscious of theirachievements in other directions--in political innovations, in sport andathletics--they appear not to take any pride in or see the advantage ofpromoting creative intellectual work. Will this be considered naturaland reasonable, as already they are supplied with books and plays andpictures from England and Europe, or as a proof of thoughtlessness andneglect? '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 andhogsheads?' Are the Australians of these days asking themselves asimilar question? It would seem so. In 1894 they imported books, magazines and newspapers from the United Kingdom to the value of£363, 741: this, too, at a time when most of the colonies were understoodto be rigidly economising in consequence of a financial crisis. A decadebefore the amount was not far short of a hundred thousand poundshigher. 

Foremost in his list of the salient intellectual tendencies of thenative population of the United States Mr. Bryce places 'a desire to beabreast of the best thought and work of the world everywhere, and tohave every form of literature and art adequately represented andexcellent of its kind, so that America shall be felt to hold her ownamong the nations. ' And he further attributes to them 'an admiration forliterary or scientific eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that can becalled genius, with an over-readiness to discover it. '

Artistic talent in America has from an early period in the history ofthe country enjoyed the stimulus of local respect and attention. Mr. Henry James has testified to the 'extreme honour' in which writers andartists have always been held there. Literature is now a subject ofspecial systematic study in all the important schools; literaryorganisations are numerous, including no fewer than five thousandcircles for the study of Shakespeare; authorship has become somethinglike a craze in fashionable society; the intelligence of the criticismin the weekly press is on the whole equal to that in English journals;and several of the magazines are largely devoted to the more artistickinds of writing. If the results of these incentives to production seemcomparatively small, as they undoubtedly do, it must not be forgottenthat the profession of letters in America long suffered, and is stillsuffering, from the absence of international copyright law. Before theyear 1891 the markets were filled with cheap reprints of British andEuropean works (often of an inferior class), and even now authors haveto encounter competition with a vast quantity of foreign matter of whichcopyright, owing to the peculiar conditions of the law and of thepublishing trade, is often obtained at prices much below its real value. 

It is not, however, the native literary product of America that isnoteworthy so much as the widespread and conscious taste for literatureamong the people, and the means which they adopt to promote it. Thebest friend of Australia could not credit it at present with anymarkedly active desire 'to have every form of literature and artadequately represented and excellent of its kind. ' In this respect theresults of the high standard of education attained in the Governmentschools and the subsidised Universities are disappointing. TheUniversities of Sydney and Melbourne will soon be fifty years old, butneither is yet represented with distinction in the higher forms ofliterature and art. The Governments, at least, do their duty. Havingliberally provided for school education, they spend annually large sumsin making additions to picture-galleries, in maintaining libraries (ofwhich 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 endowmentof public institutions still rarer. 

Of societies or clubs devoted specially to the interests of literaturethere are very few--probably not half a dozen. Here and there among theupper classes there are little coteries whose members read the Englishand French reviews, and are well posted in all movements of interest inthe world of letters, but there is no actual organisation among them, and they do not seek to extend their influence. Their ambition isconfined to providing for their personal improvement and pleasure. Thereading of the people, though extensive, is not serious nor in any wayspecialised, unless a recent notably high average of borrowing in thehistorical departments of a few of the free libraries be taken intoaccount. The leading book exporters in London say that throughout theAntipodes the public demand is confined, as in England, mainly to the'general' literature of the hour. 'Whatever has succeeded in London willusually succeed in Australia' is the invariable remark of the exporterand the first principle that guides his tentative selection in the caseof all newly-published works. The circulation of the best British weeklyand monthly reviews by some of the principal subscription librarieshelps the reader to choose for himself, but if he should wish to buy anew book, however valuable, that has not become popular in the businesssense, he will probably have to send to London for it. 

The wealthy people seem to select their reading-matter chiefly with aview to entertainment. Not long ago the manager of one of the mostfashionable of the Melbourne circulating libraries said that aboutninety per cent. Of the female and seventy-five per cent. Of the malefrequenters of such libraries in Australia read only novels. But thisaverage is perhaps rather over-stated, being given at a time when therewas an exceptional demand for certain novels that had obtained notorietyby an audacious treatment of sex questions and English society. 

A glance at the fare which fourteen of the London publishers provide intheir colonial editions is of interest. Excellent value, of its kind, isusually offered in these issues, but here again we find proclaimed anexcessive preference for light prose literature. Of 264 volumes in one'colonial library, ' 238 are of fiction. Sketches, memoirs, reminiscencesand a few essays make up most of the balance. The taste of the workingclasses, so far as it can be ascertained from the records of theprincipal free libraries, is, curious as it may seem, decidedly sounderthan that attributed to the customers of the subscription libraries. Itmust be remembered, however, that the former are seldom tempted with newfiction, and never with fiction of the spicy or questionable kind. Someof the larger institutions are rigidly exclusive in regard to the lightkinds of literature. 

Authorship in Australia loses an important incentive in the absence oflocal magazines. All of the better kind have lacked sufficient publicsupport. Several of them, including the _Colonial Monthly_ (establishedby Marcus Clarke), the _Melbourne Review_, the _Centennial Magazine_, and the _Australasian Critic_ (the latter conducted by the professors ofthe Melbourne University) promised so well that their want of support isnot easily explainable. It has been attributed to an unreasoningprejudice, an assumption that being locally produced they mustnecessarily be inferior; but this probably does the reading public lessthan justice. Apparently from their contents, most of the magazinesfailed because they were made too Australian in character, too unlikethe English periodicals to which readers had been so long accustomed. There are many fine magazines in the United States, but their conductorsdo not make the mistake of trying to do without British and Europeancontributions. 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, theirenterprise, like that of the newspapers of the country, sometimes takesthe special form of securing cabled summaries of the opinions ofinfluential politicians in Great Britain and elsewhere for immediatepublication. 

A contributory cause of the failure of Australian magazines is the factthat the cost of their mechanical production has always been higherthan that of any of their imported competitors. This promises to be adifficulty for some years to come. Book-publishing, as a separatebusiness, is also practically impossible, for like reasons. TheAustralian reader attaches no special value to the possibilities of thelocal magazine, partly because its place as a literary and art record isconsidered to be fairly supplied by the weekly newspapers. Moreover, itis said he demands cheapness as well as high quality in his periodicals, and knows that both can be got in several English, American and Europeanmagazines. If this be so, the same predilection will no doubt accountfor the spectacle of leading London firms sending to the colonies tonsof their popular modern books in paper covers, and offering them atabout half the price charged in the United Kingdom, where they areobtainable only in cloth-bound editions. 

That no one has yet lived by the production of literature in Australiais not a matter for surprise. No one, indeed, would seriously think ofattempting to do so. Gordon was a mounted policeman, a horse-breaker, asteeplechase-rider--anything but a professional man of letters; MarcusClarke was a journalist and playwright, and wrote only two novels infourteen years; Rolf Boldrewood's books were written in spare hoursbefore and after his daily duties as a country magistrate; HenryKingsley returned to England before publishing anything; Kendall held aGovernment clerkship which he exchanged for journalism; Mr. BruntonStephens is in the Queensland Civil Service; Mr. B. L. Farjeon'scolonial work was mainly done in connection with the New Zealand press;Messrs. Marriott, Watson, E. W. Hornung, J. F. Hogan, Haddon Chambersand Guy Boothby, among younger writers, have taken their talents toLondon; and none of the half-dozen female novelists have been dependentupon literature for a livelihood. 

What, it may be asked, becomes of the best talent developed by theAustralian schools and Universities? It is employed, or tries to findemployment, in the practice of law, medicine, journalism and teaching. From law to politics is but a step in the colonies, and the chances ofattaining Cabinet rank, rendered frequent by the prevailing aggressiveform of party government, are often attractive to men of ability andambition. The journalists are more or less drenched with politics allthe year round, and they, too, occasionally find it an easy matter tovary their occupation by assisting in the active business of law-making. The tension of their daily lives, severer than that of the majority ofpress writers in Great Britain, leaves them little or no leisure forliterary work of the higher kind, and generally the prospect of beingcompelled to send whatever they might write to the other end of theworld for the chance of publication discourages effort. It may safely besaid that there are young men on the editorial and reporting staffs of adozen of the principal journals who possess ability that would securethem distinction in the wider fields of England or America. To theirskill and spirited rivalry is due the universally high quality of theAntipodean press. Mr. David Christie Murray, writing after considerableexperience of the colonies, and as one who had been an Englishjournalist, said that on the whole he was 'compelled to think it by farand away the best in the world. ' The remark is without exaggeration sofar as it applies to the large weekly journals. 

The extent of the favour shown by Australian readers to the works oftheir own novelists is, as a rule, exactly proportioned to that whichtheir merits have previously won in England. Booksellers and theirLondon agents, who of course treat all literature from a purelycommercial standpoint, are at all events unanimous in discrediting theexistence in recent years of any prejudice against colonial fiction ofthe better class. It is now very seldom sent out in two or three volumeform, they say, but neither are the most popular English novels, exceptoccasionally to subscription libraries. For representative Australianwork, then, there is a fair field but no favour. It is as though thefunction and existence of the authors apart from the rank and file ofEnglish letters were not recognised. There is an exception to this rulein the poet Gordon, as a portion of his writings, the Bush _Ballads andGalloping Rhymes_, irresistibly commemorate the national love ofhorseflesh and outdoor life. Every Australian now knows that _For theTerm of his Natural Life_ is a great novel of its class; but as aleading Victorian journalist (Mr. James Smith) once pointed out in anarticle in the _Melbourne Review_, Clarke's real merit was for yearsundervalued, because he was known to be 'only a colonial writer. 'Thousands of English, European and American readers had admired thenovel before they thought of inquiring who the writer was or whence hecame. It is true that the story attracted a good deal of interest inAustralia even during its first appearance as a serial, but fromelsewhere came its recognition as one of the novels of the century. 

The authors whose lives and writings are briefly sketched in this volumeare all noted in some degree for accuracy and sincerity in theirrepresentation of life in Australia. They have all written from abundantknowledge--from love, also, perhaps it may be added--of this great wideland with its brilliant skies, its opportunities and its wholesomepleasures. That they should fail to cover their field--that they telltoo much of country life and adventure and too little of the throb andenergy of the cities--is in a large measure explained by the fact thattheir books are of necessity primarily written for English readers. 

Somehow it is assumed that people in the mother-country continue to beinterested only in the picturesque, the curious and the unusual inAustralian life. The idea is in part a survival from earlier years whena host of military officers, Civil Servants, journalists and touristsdescribed in some form the more obvious peculiarities of the colonies:their giant, evergreen forests, strange amorphous animals, aristocraticgold-diggers, ex-convicts in carriages, and general state oftopsy-turveydom. There is quite an amazing variety of occasional recordsof this class in forgotten books, magazines and pamphlets. In at leasta score of well-known novels there are charming country scenes, true inevery particular; but there is a distinct limit to the power of fictionof this kind to interest remote readers, while much repetition of itmight well be misleading. 

A writer in the _Australasian Critic_ once rightly observed, respectinga batch of short stories of the conventionally Australian kind, thatEnglish readers might 'fancy from them that big cities are unknown inAustralia; that the population consists of squatters, diggers, stock-riders, shepherds and bushrangers; that the superior residencesare weatherboard homesteads with wide verandas, while the inferior onesare huts and tents. ' No foreign reader could understand from them that'more than half the Australian population have never seen kangaroos oremus outside a zoological garden, and that not one in a hundred, or evena thousand, has seen a wild black fellow. ' There is a well-known type ofAustralian novel to which the same remarks might apply with almostequal fitness. 

The lack of interest on the part of the novelists in the cities is themore noticeable because they contain one-third of the whole populationof the country, a proportion said not to have a parallel in any otherpart of the world. This neglect is surely a mistake, founded on anerroneous conception of the tastes of the English public, and resultingpartly from the absence of anything like a local literary influence uponthe writers. 'Have the stress and turmoil of a political career nocharm?' asks Mr. Edmund Gosse, in referring to the restricted scope ofthe English novel, and in making a plea for 'a larger study of life. '

The same question might with very good reason be raised concerning thepolitical life of Australia, which has been almost entirely neglectedsince Mrs. Campbell Praed used up the best of her early impressions andsettled in England. The majority of the writers of fiction who continueto live in the country are women, and possibly not interested inpolitics; but the chief reason why the romance is seldom written of theCabinet Minister who started life as a gold-digger or draper'sassistant, or of the democratic legislator whose first election wasannounced 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 thefar-off land whither all Australian books must go for the sanction oftheir 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 thesurface of Antipodean political life in two of her stories, has shown itto be not without humour, nor lacking in the elements of more seriousinterest. But she cannot be said to have exhibited any particular beliefin the political novel, and none of the more practised among hercolonial contemporaries has ever given it a trial. 

On the main question of a national literature it will perhaps beconcluded that Australia has yet scarcely any need to be concerned: thatnot much must be expected from a civilisation which, though it has beenrapid, began little more than a century ago; and that the existence ofwealth, and the possibilities of leisure and culture which wealthaffords, cannot produce the same effect upon art in a new country as inan 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 workalready done is the work of native writers--why the existence of much ofthe best of it may almost be considered accidental. And while a refusalto take the trouble of independently judging the worth of a localartistic product may or may not be an invariable characteristic of a newcountry, it was also right to contradict on the best available authoritythe assertion of a 'prejudice' against the work of Australian authors. 

A portion of the talent that cannot be absorbed in the alreadyovercrowded ranks of law and medicine might find employment in buildinga literature which should have something of national savour in it, ifmigration to England were no longer a condition of success to those whowould make writing a profession, as migration to New York or Boston issimilarly found to be a necessity to the young Canadian man or woman ofletters. It need not be wished that the colonial Governments would domore than they have done--certainly not that they would create a sort ofcivil pension list, as a section of the Legislative Assembly of Victoriacontemplated doing ten years ago in discussing a proposed grant to thefamily of Marcus Clarke. But the Universities might extend theirinfluence, and those who have leisure might combine to introduce some ofthe methods which have helped to create a living public interest inliterature and art in European countries. In other words, there isneeded an increased sense of responsibility in the cultured class: thosepeople, among others, who yearly help to fill the luxurious oceansteamships on their long journeys to the Old World, and who bring backso singularly little practical enthusiasm for their own land in theSouth. 

Meanwhile it is encouraging to note the high promise of the work of someof the younger writers. Mary Gaunt (Mrs. H. Lindsay Miller), thedaughter of a well-known Victorian judge, has, in _The Moving Finger_, raised the short story to an artistic level hardly approached by anyother Australian writer. And Mrs. Alick Macleod, author of _AnAustralian Girl_ and _The Silent Sea_, has given in the former novel--afine story, despite some irregularities of form--the most perfectdescription of the peculiar natural features of the country everwritten. For the first time the Bush is interpreted as well asdescribed. In the attitude displayed in this story towards thefashionable life of the towns there is habitual impatience andoccasional scorn. The sketches of Mrs. Anstey Hobbs' efforts to found asalon, the flirtations of Mrs. Lee-Travers--who 'chose her admirers tosuit her style of dress'--Laurette Tareling's solemn respect forGovernment House, and the generally satirical view of the 'incessantmimicking of other mimicries, ' are no doubt justified; they are oftendecidedly entertaining. But it would of course be a mistake to acceptall this as more than a partial view of Melbourne society. The book doesnot pretend to deal with it in other than an incidental manner. Mrs. Macleod's studies of character and often clever dialogue suggest thatshe might profitably adapt to the presentation of Australian life thequiet intensity of Tourguéneff, or the delicately observant style of theAmerican critical realists, Henry James, W. D. Howells and RichardHarding Davis. And here one wonders whether the Australian novelists whofind so little material in Sydney and Melbourne have seen what the newwriter, Henry B. Fuller, has done with the life of modern unromanticChicago?

According to Mr. Howells, America, through the medium of its ownparticular class of novel, 'is getting represented with unexampledfulness. ' The writers 'excel in small pieces with three or fourfigures, ' and are able conveniently to dispense with sensationalism--apoint not yet reached by Antipodean novelists. 'Every now and then, ' hesays, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfectcomfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman wouldgasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybodyelse; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, ora ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monsterof 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 Frenchmansaid of the meet for a fox-hunt. Yet it is all alive with the keenestinterest for those who enjoy the study of individual traits and generalconditions as they make themselves known to American experience. ' As theTransatlantic social conditions, of which the realistic novel with onlythree or four figures is understood to be the outcome, are being more orless repeated in Australia, a similar literary medium will probably befound best adapted to the portrayal of life there. At least it may beclaimed that there is no lack of material in the shape of individualtraits which have not yet been suitably described in any form. 

MARCUS CLARKE. 

In the peculiarity of his fitful talents, and in the character of hisbest work in fiction--a pathetically slender life's product--MarcusClarke is still alone in Australian literature. Others have shown thecheerful, hopeful, romantic aspects of the new land; he, not lesshonestly, but with a more concentrated and individual view, has picturedsome of the monotony of its half-grown society, the gloom of itsscenery, and the painful realities of its early penal systems. Reputedonly as a novelist, he possessed besides imagination some of the higherqualities of the critical historian. And had his life been prolonged, hemight almost have done for Australian city life what Thackeray did forthe London of seventy years ago. He could, at least, have written anovel of manners that would have credited the people of Australia withsome individuality: such a novel as would mark the effects whichcomparative isolation must produce in a people who are educated andintelligent beyond the average of the British race, intenselyself-contained and ambitious, and of whom two-thirds are nownative-born, --a novel that would have corrected the too languidlyaccepted judgments of omniscient elderly gentlemen, who, after a fewweeks or months spent among the smallest and most imitative section ofAntipodean society, gravely conclude that 'leaves that grow on onebranch of an oak are not more like leaves that grow upon another, thanthe 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 isnarrow in Australia, yet not too narrow for the writer who, foregoingthe taste for sensation, will be content to transcribe and interpretimpressions 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; whowill sacrifice something of dramatic effect in the endeavour to producea faithful and finished picture of colonial middle-class society. Asqualifications for such work, Clarke had exceptional courage, straightness of eye, and a decided taste for exposing shams, superaddedto a forcible and satirical style of expression. 

Whether he had the tact and temperate spirit that must form the basis ofthese qualities in the production of serious fiction is less certain, ifhe may be judged by the tone of such minor pieces as _Civilizationwithout Delusion_, _Beaconsfield's Novels_, and _Democratic Snobbery_. There is a certain violence in these which is more offensive than theirundoubted cleverness is admirable or their satire entertaining. Theyshow that the writer retained some of the impetuosity and prejudiceswhich were marked features of his youth. 

Clarke was an anti-Semite, therefore in the Beaconsfield novels he sawlittle beyond an expression of the author's personal exultation as thesuccessful representative of a maligned race. In the theologicalcontroversy of _Civilization without Delusion_, an even less effectiveand becoming performance, the young author revealed a deficiency which, in any writer, can only be regarded as a misfortune and a cause fortolerant regret. The spiritual side of his nature was an undeveloped, almost a barren field. Neglected in boyhood and sapped by early habitsof dissipation, it had no strength to resist the agnostic conclusionswhich were the product in later years of a coldly critical examinationof the general grounds of Christian belief. 

In dealing with religion, his characteristic independence developed intoa stiff intellectual pride, and from that into a recklessness whichdisregarded alike his public reputation and the feelings of others. Butthese forays into the preserves of theology were happily rare. Suchquestions obtained no permanent place in his thoughts: they were onlythe passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It isindeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense ofhumour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless fieldof religious contention at all. 

There are a few facts in the early life of Marcus Clarke which aresometimes so strongly, and even painfully, reflected in his brief careerthat they form a necessary preface to any consideration of his literarywork. Soon after his birth at Kensington (London) in 1846 his motherdied, and thenceforward through all his youth he seems to have receivedlittle advice or attention from relations. His father, a barrister andliterary man of retired and eccentric habits, exercised over him amerely nominal authority, and so he had liberty to gratify a spirit ofinquiry and curiosity notably beyond his years. At his own home hebecame the pet of his father's acquaintances, a set of fashionablecynics. 

In _Human Repetends_, a sketch of his published several years later, there is a passage which substantially records his experiences at thistime: 'I was thrown, when still a boy, into the society of men thrice myage, and was tolerated as a clever impertinent in all those wicked andwitty circles in which virtuous women are conspicuous by theirabsence. . . . I was suffered at sixteen to ape the vices of sixty. . . . Solong as I was reported to be moving only in that set to which my fatherchose to ally himself, he never cared to inquire how I spent theextravagant allowance which his indifference, rather than hisgenerosity, permitted me to waste. You can guess the result of such atraining. '

Left alone in the world at the age of eighteen, upon the death of hisfather, he emigrated to Australia. Failing to take any interest in abank-clerkship provided by an uncle for him at Melbourne, he was sent toa sheep-station near Glenorchy, one hundred miles inland. Here again hepaid little attention to the occupation chosen for him. All the day andhalf the night were dreamed away in literary thought. Just as hewandered alone over fern-hill and creek-bed, plain and mountain range, and absorbed impressions of a scenery at once repulsive and fascinatingto him, so he dipped into all kinds of literature without method or setpurpose. But he preferred fiction, and as the consignee of an endlesssuccession of French novels he became a marked man in the eyes of thevillage postmaster. 

Two years had thus been spent, when a Dr. Lewins, who was known as a'materialistic philosopher, ' visited the station and made the youngEnglishman's acquaintance. A warm mutual regard resulted, and soonLewins succeeded in obtaining a small post for Clarke on the Melbourne_Argus_. This was the beginning of the most brilliant journalisticcareer established on the Australian press. 

A less happy result of the same friendship was Clarke's conversion tothe arid and uninspiring doctrines of materialism, though perhaps itcould hardly be called a conversion in the case of one upon whom thedeeper principles of Christian faith had never obtained any real hold. 

Colonial democracy seems to have been to Clarke at once a source ofinspiration and of scorn. Coming from among the English upper classes, with the education and temperament of an aristocrat, he was yet readilyable to sympathise with the higher principles of the new society. Itsintelligence, virility and free intercourse broadened and interestedhim, as it does most young Englishmen. But for that common product ofa new country, the pretentious plutocrat, he had only contempt. 

It is the bitterness with which this feeling is expressed in hisjournalistic writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity forwork of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some ofthose who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldommuch studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer'scharacter. The same hand that in the famous _Snob Papers_ so savagely, and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of Englishsociety, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essentialfacts of life is the most conspicuous quality. So, too, might it havebeen in the case of the 'Peripatetic Philosopher, ' whose weeklycriticisms of Melbourne men and manners in 1867-68 has correctly beenjudged the best writing of its kind yet done in Australia. In thesearticles, remarkable as the work of one who was only in histwenty-second year, there is a closeness of observation and incisivenessof style which promised much more for their author than thecircumstances of his life afterwards permitted him to realise. 

The usual effects of an undirected youth and an undisciplined manhoodexplain Marcus Clarke's failure to render to his adopted country theservice which, as a distinctly gifted writer of the realist school, heseemed well fitted to perform. He was a Bohemian, who, while resistingthe worst vices of his class, shared its carelessness and improvidenceto a degree that left little energy for ambitious work. 

His was not an idle nature by any means: it was only erratic, fond ofvariety, impatient of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen years'literary work, his thoughts make excursions from town-life tocountry-life, from social satire to story-telling, from art toethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe! Here are the titles of a fewof his compositions: _Lower Bohemia in Melbourne_ (a sketch), _Plot_ (asensational drama), _Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy_ (magazinearticle), _The Humbug Papers_ (humorous and satirical), _The FutureAustralian Race_ (an ethnological study), _Goody Two Shoes_ (apantomime), _Civilization without Delusion_ (a theological discussionwith the Bishop of Melbourne), _The Power of Love_ (an extravaganza), _Doré and Modern Art_ (a review), _Cannabis Indica_ (a psychologicalexperiment). Almost the whole of Clarke's life may be said to have beendevoted to the supply of some temporary demand of the periodical pressor the stage. Even the two novels which represent his only sustainedwork were written for serial issue in Melbourne magazines. 

It does not appear in either case that he wrote with any special viewto establish a literary reputation; indeed, it would seem that the storyof convict life might not have been completed but for the strenuousimportunity of the firm of publishers with whom he had contracted towrite it. 

Journalism, the early occupation of so many eminent men of letters, hasusually been abandoned as soon as the young writer has once shownexceptional 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 almostentirely for the conscious literary culture of the whole Antipodeancommunity, ' he held a position which would have unfavourably affectedthe literary tone and ambition of a still more energetic and originalwriter. 

He had no predecessors in the special work he elected to do; he had toestablish his own standard of achievement; and he was without theconstant stimulus which intercourse with literary society, such as thatof London, affords. The demands of the newspapers were then, as now, more for purely ephemeral criticism or narrative than for matter worthyto rank as permanent literature. 

An alert, pithy style and a distinct gift of satirical humour such asClarke had, and developed by a wide range of reading, were just thequalities which are always in request on the keen, aggressive dailypress of Australia. One can easily imagine the flattering demands madeupon the young author's powers by the men who were his personal friendsas well as employers. 

Whenever he was deficient in taste of expression, or in urbanity ofcriticism (as in his treatment of the Jews), he showed the effectspartly of impetuous haste, and partly of his remoteness from thosecentres of literary opinion which always beneficially influence a youngwriter, be he ever so original or naturally artistic. It has beendoubted whether Clarke was ever fully convinced of his own powers; buthowever feasibly this may have applied to the first four or five yearsof his literary career, there was no ground for it after the unanimouslyfavourable reception accorded to _For the Term of his Natural Life_ uponits issue in book form in 1874. 

In England and America, as well as in Australia, this one novel gave himan immediate and distinct reputation. With it he might have speedilyestablished himself as one of the leading writers of the day, and, turning from the depressing realism of penal cruelties which can have nofurther parallel in British countries to something more within oursympathies--to the realism of modern Australian life, --have suppliedwhat is still conspicuously lacking in Australian fiction. Yet, duringthe remaining seven years of his life he produced no imaginative workworthy his name and ability. The ever-ready market of the localnewspaper press absorbed his best efforts, and such intervals as therewere he devoted to an attempt to establish himself as a writer andadapter 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 itslife from the purlieus of Little Bourke and Lonsdale streets to thepalace of his 'model legislator' on Eastern Hill. Like Balzac, one ofhis favourite novelists, he made observation a severe and regularbusiness, but he lacked the energy or the patience to take fulladvantage of its results. Balzac employed his accumulated materials inbursts of creative energy which, if terrible in their intensity andtheir drain upon his health, had at least method in them, and effectedtheir purpose. Poverty did not swerve him, nor prosperity sate him. 

That part of genius which consists in natural depth and accuracy ofvision Clarke had in abundance, but he was weak in the lesser gifts ofpatience and synthetic power, perhaps also in ambition. Moreover, anunfortunate extravagance, which led from chronic debt to bankruptcy, compelled him to continue the class of work which gave the surest andmost regular income. 

Repeated requests by the Messrs. Bentley for more fiction were neglectedfrom year to year, and similar indifference was shown to a flatteringinvitation to join the staff of the _Daily Telegraph_ in London, anopportunity that would have led to the establishment of Clarke in thoseliterary circles outside of which no purely Australian writer, with theexception of Rolf Boldrewood, has ever yet received adequaterecognition. 

Among Clarke's uncompleted writings are a few brilliant chapters of anovel which promised to be as permanent a record of his ability as thewell-known convict story, though of a different kind. But the author hadthe unlucky faculty of attending to anything rather than the work whichoffered him certain fame and fortune, as well as the most naturalemployment of his powers. At the time of his death he was only in histhirty-fifth year. Probably with advancing life he would have becomemore settled in his tastes and habits, realising that the work at whichhe was happiest in every sense was the writing of novels, and thatalone. 

The satire and cynicism so noticeable in Clarke's writings, especiallyin his critical sketches and essays, are liable to give an inaccurateconception of his temperament. They obscure, as such characteristicsnearly always do in literature, the gentler aspects of the writer'snature. His satire is, perhaps, too uncompromising. It often seems toreflect a personal bitterness, to take too little cognisance of thesprings of human weakness. Undoubtedly brilliant in force and keenness, it yet too seldom produces the kind of hearty laugh with which Thackerayand Swift, for example, relieve their fiercest scorn. His personalexperience of life had been discouraging. He had sounded its depths andsipped its pleasures; its rude facts found him deficient in self-controland fortitude. He had refused to learn the common logic of existence. 

There is an element of tragedy in the rapid change which the unhappycircumstances of his private life wrought in his temperament. Addressingthe disciples of Mrs. Grundy in an early essay defending theBohemianism of his youth, he tells them that they are ignorant howeasily good spirits, good digestion, and jolly companions enable a manto 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 howridiculous one's shifts and strugglings appear when viewed throughBohemian glass. . . . Life seems to you but as a "twice told tale, vexingthe dull ear of a drowsy man" seems but as a vale of tears, a place ofmourning, 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 hehad spent his slender patrimony, disappointed the successive efforts offriends to make a business man of him, and was about to begin theearning of a living by his pen. A dozen years later we see him withdeveloped 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 anature sensitive in the extreme, he writhed in their bondage. 

Improvidence had been not merely an unhappy incident, as it is in thelives of so many young men of artistic tastes; it had overweighted himmore or less for years, and 'the thoughtless writer of thoughtfulliterature, ' as the author of his biographical memoir has called him, sank beneath it while yet at the beginning of a career full of thebrightest promise. The sort of companionship that pleased his carelessyouth had latterly proved unsatisfying, and to some extent distastefulto him. Its effects upon his character were so unfavourable that somewho had been his companions in journalism felt it necessary, after hisdeath, to credit him with a greater capacity for kindly forbearancetowards humanity than is apparent in the bulk of his writings. 

'My friend, ' says one writer, 'was one of those many geniuses who appearto be born to prove the vast amount of contradictory elements which canexist in the same individual. In his case these contradictions were soapparent--and, if I may use the term, so contradictory--that, unless oneknew him, it was impossible to believe what his nature was. On the onehand, he was recklessly generous, impulsively partisan, morbidlysensitive, and highly chivalrous; on the other, forgetful ofobligations, defiantly antagonistic, unnecessarily caustic, andaffectedly cynical. . . . His life was one of impulse, and the direction ofthe impulse depended solely on surrounding circumstances. . . . He haspassed 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 aheart of gold--a heart tender and pitiful as a woman's. ' This estimateis amply justified by the power of pathos and the often tender analysisof human feeling in _For the Term of his Natural Life_, however absentthe same qualities may seem in many of the shorter stories. 

An interesting picture of Clarke's personality is given by a writer inthe Sydney _Bulletin_: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humourdelicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly. . . . Hisface was a remarkable one--remarkable for its singular beauty. LikeColeridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes, " andone had but to look into them to perceive at once the light ofgenius. . . . He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like CharlesLamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to hiswitticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliantthings, and scattering _bons mots_ with apparent ease, so that inlistening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such booksas Horace Walpole's correspondence and those of the Frenchmemoir-writers. . . . He knew not how to care for money, yet he had noneof those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, andare cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, "He had no enemy buthimself. "'

In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus Clarke scarcely more thanpointed to the material which the life of such cities as Melbourne andSydney 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. MarionCrawford. There is now an opportunity, and, one might almost say, aneed, for fiction which shall also, in effect, be salutary criticism. The Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact that a single decade willsometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire peoplein a new and rapidly-developing country. 

Thus, with the struggle for subsistence now keen to a degree which couldnot have been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a few years ago; withParliaments, hitherto safely democratic, threatened with Socialism bythe increasing practice of electing artisans and labourers to do thelegislative work of their respective classes; the crash of fortuneswhich never had substantial existence; the pauperising to-day of thepaper millionaire of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old men, afteroverreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of lifeafresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the falteringnovice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secureand cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business ofgovernment, --with these and some social aspects still less agree able tocontemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may havethe disposition and ability to carry on the work which Clarke hadindicated, but scarcely begun, before he died. 

_Long Odds_, Clarke's first story, deals with English life, and bears noresemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name ischiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a _mésalliance_, andhorseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complicationsof gambling and intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less todo with sport than the title suggests. The plot is mainly concerned withthe selfish, cruel, and infamous in human nature--a singularly darktheme for a young beginner in fiction to choose. Except at rareintervals when the business of characterisation is momentarily setaside, as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster Steeplechase andthe Matcham Hunt, there is little suggestion of youthful spirit orfreshness. 

The outlines of plot and incident are attractively arranged, theexpression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. Thereare traces of Dickens' burlesque without his sympathy, and the highcolouring of Lytton with less than Lytton's wit. Disraeli's satire, too, is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whoseexperiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book, is allowed no opportunity to show the better, and rarely even theordinary, 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 manya liberty taken with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if the writerkeeps a constant eye upon his villain, and deals honestly by him. In_Long Odds_ there are two villains, and at least two others villainouslyinclined. Between the four of them the easy-going hero has no chance. 

It is natural that, in the construction of a novel which aims atdramatic point before anything else, the 'simple Australian, ' as hisauthor is at last constrained to regard him, should seem less usefulthan the polished and unprincipled man of the world. But in thisinstance the balance of interest is too unequal. Dramatic quality hasbeen secured at the expense of tone and proportion. Of the two malecharacters whose exploits in rascality it becomes the real business ofthe story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more natural and entertaining. 

There is an attention to detail in his portrait which suggests that thelineaments of the conventional society villain may have been filled inwith the help of a little personal knowledge, perhaps of some of thosemorally doubtful individuals already mentioned as having been among theacquaintances of Clarke's early youth. Dacre is the chief cynic of thestory, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of thesmall stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is bothhis 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 nominalhero. If throughout three-fourths of the story Calverley is made theplaything of circumstances that favour only rogues, he is at lastallowed a triumph in love and sport which, though unsatisfying from anartistic point of view, is calculated to soothe a not too fastidioustaste for poetic justice. 

Conscious of the conventional character of his principal theme, theauthor apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. Theresult of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidentsthat might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; theconceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviouslyimprobable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverleyand Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness whichthe reader carries away from the study of so much of the bad side ofhuman nature. 

In connection with criticism of this kind, it ought, however, to benoted that other hands besides the author's are known to havecontributed to the novel. Shortly after it began to appear serially inthe _Colonial Monthly_, Marcus Clarke fell from a horse while hunting, and sustained a fracture of the skull which interrupted his literarywork for many weeks. How much of the writing had previously been doneseems to be a subject of dispute. It is, however, quite clear that, inorder to preserve continuity in the publication of the parts, Clarke'sfriends did write some portion of the story, but whether in accordancewith the author's _scenario_, supposing one to have existed, has notbeen stated. 

'Only a few of the first chapters' were the work of Clarke, says theeditor of the _Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume_, writing in 1884; but inan article published in the _Imperial Review_ (Melbourne) for 1886, thecontributed 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 ofthe months of July and August, 1868. '

From the absence of a prefatory explanation when _Long Odds_ waspublished in book form in 1869, it may be assumed that Clarke wassatisfied with the quality of the contributed work. At least, he waswilling to take the full responsibility of its authorship. But even withthis in view, it were well, perhaps, not to hold him too strictlyaccountable for the faults of the story. Not much must be expected froma first novel produced in the circumstances mentioned, and issued whenthe author was only twenty-three. In his haste to give it final shapeimmediately after the serial publication, he was probably ill advised. One can only regret that it was not set aside for a year or so, andwritten afresh, or, at least, largely revised. Perhaps this would havebeen expecting too much from so unmethodical a worker as Clarke. The farfiner dramatic taste and literary form of his masterpiece, issued fiveyears later, showed how little indicative of his talent was the earlierwork. 

In view of the large extent to which the life of the Australian landedclasses has been described in fiction during the last twenty years, itis curious to read the plea Clarke offered to his Antipodean critics forpassing over the literary material close at hand and preferring thewell-worn paths of the English novelist. 

During the serial publication of _Long Odds_ the colonial press raisedsome objection to the laying of the scene in England instead of inAustralia. The author replied simply that Henry Kingsley's _GeoffryHamlyn_ being the best Australian novel that had been, or probablywould be, written, 'any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting life ofthe colonies could not fail to challenge unfavourable comparison withthat admirable story. '

The excuse is just a little too adventitious to have convinced eventhose to whom it was originally addressed. None the less, it may at themoment have accurately represented the opinion of a beginner who at thattime could scarcely have known the extent of his own powers. 

Probably he had given the subject little thought. His colonialexperience was certainly less varied than Kingsley's had been. Aboveall, his tastes, and in some degree his temperament, differedmarkedly from those of his predecessor in the field. The judgment orinstinct that kept him from coming into direct competition withKingsley--assuming his own questionable belief that any effort of hiswould have been competition--at least erred on the side of safety. Thatthe immediate alternative should have been an imitative example of ahackneyed class of English novel, ineffective of purpose, book-inspired, and tainted with the deadness of cynicism, is somethingwhich 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 thoughtalso, How would Sam Buckley get on in England? My excuse, therefore, inoffering to the Australian public a novel in which the plot, thesympathies, the interest, and the moral, are all English, must be thatI have endeavoured to depict with such skill as is permitted to me thefortunes of a young Australian in that country which young Australiansstill call "Home. "'

Without this prefatory sign-post, the reader could never have suspectedsuch a purpose. Clarke may have had it definitely in his mind when hefirst sat down to the work; but if so, it was put aside, consciously orunconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favourof more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter, really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive ofthe story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anythingtypically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama ofpassion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be a passive spectatorof it. 

To say that he was good-natured, jovial, popular, 'the sort of man thatone involuntarily addresses by his Christian name'; that although he wasshy and awkward in the society of ladies, at ease with his own sex onlywhen cattle and horses were the subject of conversation, ignorant ofmusic, and unable to tell Millais from Tenniel, he 'could pick you outany bullock in a herd . . . Shear a hundred sheep a day . . . And drive fourhorses down a sidling in a Gippsland range with any man inAustralia, '--to say all this by way of preliminary, to add thatCalverley was no fool, and yet to show him in scarcely any other guisethan that of a trusting victim of rogues, is to go a very short distancein the portrayal of a typical Australian. 

In the slack-baked condition in which we find him, he merely repeats theordinary spectacle of green youth in the process of seeing life andbuying experience at the usual high figure. Compared with the realsquatter (who, ordinarily, is college-trained, and does not shear sheepnor risk his neck unnecessarily), Bob, the son of rich 'Old Calverley, 'and nephew of an English baronet, is as an exaggerated stock-figure ofthe stage to the commonplace blood and brain of everyday life. Achildlike trust in one's fellows, a reputation for good-nature, anuntamable taste for horseflesh and the pursuits of the Bush, belong toevery young squatter in a certain class of Australian fiction; they arequalities which may be applied indiscriminately, with always someeffect. 

The real squatter is a more civilised and reliable, if less picturesque, person. He likes both work and pleasure, provided they be suitablyproportioned. His work is in the personal management of his properties;his pleasure is taken in the large cities. He entertains no fantasticprejudices against urban life, in proof of which he often spends hislater years in some city hundreds of miles from the scene of his earlytoil and pastoral successes. 

As a young man in London, he can be found with rooms at the Langham, theMétropole, or some other of the half-dozen fashionable hotels known tocolonial visitors. There he will entertain his friends, joining withthem, in turn, the continuous movements of the society season. Hefrankly lacks much of the ease and polish of the young Englishman, buthis natural amiability and good spirits largely compensate for thesedeficiencies, while they preclude any feeling of discomfort on his ownpart. 

During his three or six months' stay in London (the combination usuallyof a little business with a very full programme of pleasure) he spendsfreely, and in his tour of the clubs plays here and there a little atcards--perchance loses. Worldly beyond his reputation, and somewhatChesterfieldian in his principles, he consents to be a Roman while atRome. He has inherited the British hatred of fuss and personalpeculiarity, and none shall call him mean. But, unlike many of hisEnglish friends at club and course, he has watched and taken some partin the hard process of making money, and knows the difference between alittle 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 isdecidedly no fool. 

These are only a few of the prominent outlines of the type of young manwho, his holiday over, returns unspoiled to work on his own or hisfather's estates. Those whose passion for a horse destroys allself-control, who spend thousands in gambling and betting, whoinnocently take every smooth gentleman at his own valuation, are merelyindividuals--persons who may as unfailingly be found in England orelsewhere as in Australia. 

Sam Buckley is a typical descendant of the British pioneer colonists, asevery Australian knows. In attempting to give an answer to his ownspeculation of 'How would Sam Buckley get on in England?' Clarkepresumably 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 thanthat shown in _For the Term of his Natural Life_. The author had thetwofold object of picturing the dreadful crudities and brutalities ofthe early system of convict 'reformation' in Australia, and ofpreventing their possible repetition elsewhere. The first of these aimswas attained with a fuller employment, and perhaps more moderatestatement of historical facts, than can be found in any other fiction ofthe same class; the second was ineffective, because, when it foundexpression, the abuses which had suggested it no longer continued at theAntipodes, and could not conceivably be repeated on the existingsettlements at Port Blair and Noumea. 

The story was written a quarter of a century too late to assist theabolition of convict transportation to Australia. Had it appeared at theright time, it might have done much where formal inquiries and thetestimonies 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 thecolonies themselves by the greed of a small class of private persons whogrew rapidly wealthy upon the strength of assigned convict labour, untilthe free emigrants by the authority of their numbers were able to insistupon its cessation. For so long as the colonies were willing to receivea population of criminals, so long was England only too anxious tosupply them and make a virtue out of it. It mattered little to theofficial mind that the system was incurably bad and immoral; the mainthing was to speedily and effectually transfer an awkward burden toother shoulders. The entire history of penal transportation from GreatBritain throws a sinister light upon the national character. Thepractice originated with banishment of convicts to the American coloniesunder conditions which constituted a form of slavery. 

The criminal on being sentenced became a marketable chattel of theState. His services were sold by public auction, the purchaser acquiringthe right to transport him and sell him for the term of his sentence toa 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 fortwenty-five pounds each. One of these dealers in convict labour, ingiving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, made amatter-of-fact complaint that 'the trade' was not so remunerative aspeople supposed. Artisans sold well, but the profit realised upon themwas often consumed by losses upon some of the others. One-seventh of hispurchases died on his hands, and in the course of business he had beenobliged to give the old, the halt and the lame in for nothing. When theWar of Independence closed the United States against the traffic, Britain was given a fresh opportunity to reconsider and place its penalsystem upon a more humane basis; but the temptation to adopt sweepingmeasures was once more too strong to be resisted. The promoters of theAustralian scheme were in so great a hurry to seize their chance thatthey despatched over seven hundred convicts before even the site for thefirst settlement was chosen. The hardships which this characteristic actafterwards entailed are too familiar in history to need repetition. After such recklessness, it is no wonder that, as Sir Roger Therry hasobserved, 'the first-fruits of the system exhibited a state of societyin New South Wales which the world might be challenged to surpass indepravity. '

A generation passed before the British Government reluctantly admittedtransportation to be a failure. Lord John Russell, as late as 1847, discovered that it had been 'too much the custom to consult theconvenience of Great Britain by getting rid of persons of evil habits, and to take that view alone. ' In planting provinces which might becomeempires, they 'should endeavour to make them, not seats of malefactorsand convicts, but communities which may set examples of virtue andhappiness. '

This mild, platitudinous rebuke came when all the damage was done. Itremained for the free inhabitants of Australia to point to a plainerprinciple in declaring that 'the inundating of feeble and dependentcolonies with the criminals of the parent State is opposed to thatarrangement of Providence by which the virtue of each community isdestined to combat its own vice. '

To illustrate in a single story all the most prominent and perniciousfeatures of the transportation system, Clarke had to invent a case ofcrime in which the criminal, unlike the majority of the worst offenderssent to the settlements, should always be worthy of the reader'ssympathy. It was necessary that the felon be a victim as well as afelon; that he should not regain his liberty in any form, but continueby a series of offences against the authority of his gaolers toexperience and display all the successive severities of MacquarieHarbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to beexhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might existbetween capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who, for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'Wemust treat brutes like brutes, ' says the prime martinet of the story:'keep 'em down, sir; make 'em _feel_ what they are. They're here towork, sir. If they won't work, flog 'em until they will. If theywork--why, a taste of the cat now and then keeps 'em in mind of whatthey may expect if they get lazy. '

The author chose to represent the extreme case of a man who, innocent ofa murder charged against him, allowed himself to be transported under anassumed name in order to prevent the exposure of a long-concealed act ofunfaithfulness on the part of a beloved mother. 

Richard Devine is the bastard son of an aristocratic Englishwoman who inearly youth was forced by her father into a loveless union with a richplebeian. The single fault of the mother's life is confessed aftertwenty years, when the husband in a moment of anger strikes herhigh-spirited and obstinate son. The latter consents to leave his homefor ever, and relinquish the name he has borne. On these terms the wifeis spared. Richard Devine goes on the instant. Crossing Hampstead Heath, he comes upon a robbed and murdered man, and presently is arrested forthe crime. The explanation that would save him would also cause thedreaded exposure of his mother, and so he withholds it, gives a falsename, and, having put himself beyond the means of defence and therecognition of friends, is convicted and sentenced to transportation forlife. 

In making all the subsequent career of Rufus Dawes abnormallypainful--that of a dumb sufferer who in sixteen years' confinement, ending only in a tragic death, experiences by turns every form ofpunishment and oppression--the author often touches, though it cannot besaid he ever exceeds, the limits of possibility. 

'Need one who was not a hardened criminal have suffered so much and solong?' is the question that continually recurs to the mind of thereader; but it is suggested by the prolonged and pitiful sense ofunsatisfied justice rather than by any doubting that the extremes ofpenal discipline as practised in the name of the British Governmentbetween forty and sixty years ago could have been successively appliedto a single human being. The writer adheres relentlessly to his centralidea to the end. Dawes' unameliorated servitude and unavenged fate wereintended to symbolise glaring anomalies of justice which never wereremedied. The 'correction' he is subjected to was that which the laws ofthe time permitted, and which in many cases goaded its victims to drawlots to murder one another in order to escape from their misery. 

Some of the least creditable features of convict transportation, ofwhich it was said by Earl Grey in 1857 that their existence had been adisgrace to the nation, came to an end only when the system itself wasabolished. But novelist and statesman alike struck at the abuses withoutfeeling it necessary to mention any of the good results of the system. Its inherent merits were strictly few, indeed; yet they ought to besought in history by anyone who would get a fair idea of the prisonpolicy of the period. It is, of course, inevitable that the criticismconveyed in a strong imaginative work should fail to give a full view ofresults so complex as those produced by the largely haphazard method ofthe Australian penal settlements. 

The practice of assigning prisoners to private employment, for example, produced notable effects upon society, of which Marcus Clarke's storygives but the faintest indication. If Rufus Dawes had been an ordinaryfirst offender, he might have regained liberty soon after his arrival inVan Diemen's Land. But, as we have seen, it was the purpose of theauthor to make him exhibit all the rigours of convict discipline. Hiscase must therefore be regarded as more exceptional than typical. As arule, only men inveterate in crime were detained in constant punishment. Transportation for life meant servitude only for eight years if theconvict conducted himself well, a condition which, of course, dependedlargely on the sort of master who secured his services. Major de Winton, an officer who served for some years on Norfolk Island, has mentionedthat a prisoner by good conduct received a ticket-of-leave after he hadbeen twice sentenced to death, thrice to transportation for life, and tocumulative periods of punishment amounting to over a hundred years!

An interesting view of Marcus Clarke as a literary workman is obtainedfrom the story of the conception and laborious writing of _For the Termof his Natural Life_. It affords the first, and unhappily the last, evidence of how far he recognised the claims of realism in fiction; andfrom the account of his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery ofkeeping to the strict line of history, we see the man as his friendsknew him contrasted with the conscientious artist known to the generalreader of his famous novel. 

The best of Clarke's minor writings display the results of much generalculture, 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 tolengthened toil and minute thoroughness when he saw them to be essentialconditions of his task. But the effort was a severe one. 

In 1871, when about twenty-five years of age, he was ordered to recruithis health by a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over three yearswriting extensively for the press, and joining in the gaieties ofMelbourne life at a rate which a constitution much stronger than hiscould not have withstood. The idea of writing a story of prison life hadsuggested 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 hadhitherto been only vaguely outlined. 

Printed records of the convict days there were in abundance atMelbourne, and from these alone such a writer could have made asufficiently striking story. But he concluded that he could make hispicture at once truer and more vivid when the surroundings of the oldsettlements had become a full reality to his mind. Messrs. Clarson, Massina and Co. Readily contracted with the young novelist for the firstpublication of the story in their monthly, the _Australian Journal_, andmade him an advance of money. Off he went with characteristicconfidence, and some weeks later returned ready primed and eager for thenew work. His enthusiasm soon cooled. The story commenced to appearafter the first few chapters were written, and the unbroken industrynecessary to maintain a regular supply of the parts was more than Clarkecould 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 ofthe journal that for a time its circulation was reduced to one-half theordinary issue. 

Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a sympathetic memoir of Clarke, has given an entertaining account of what followed: 'The author wouldbe frequently interviewed by the publishers, and would as frequentlypromise the copy. When moral suasion was apparently powerless to effectthe required object, payments in advance were made with somewhat betterresults; but as this could not go on _ad libitum_, copy would fall intoarrears again. At last it was found that the only way to get the authorto finish his tale was to induce him into a room in thepublishing-house, where, under the benign influences of a pipe, etc. , and a lock on the door, the necessary work would be done by the facilepen; and in such manner was _His Natural Life_ produced. '

In a note of apology to their readers in January, 1871, the publishersprint a somewhat comical letter which they had received from thedelinquent author. Forwarding a single chapter of the story, he tellsthem that they must make shift with it as best they can, and he will letthem have a larger supply during the following month. The letterconcludes nonchalantly as follows: 'This is awkward, I admit, and Isuppose some good-natured friend or other will say that I haveover-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself in honour of the so-calledfestive season, but I can't help it. '

The story as first published was much longer than the form in which itappears 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 soextensively curtailed:

'As one of the trustees to the public library (Melbourne), I saw Clarkeconstantly, and had always a friendly, and sometimes a confidential, conversation with him. He visited me now and then at Sorrento, and onone of these occasions he spoke of a story he had running through aMelbourne periodical about which he was perplexed. He asked me to readit, and tell him unreservedly what I thought of it. I read the storycarefully, making notes on the margin, and wrote him frankly theimpression it had made on me. 

'After twenty years I can recall the substance of the letter, which isprobably still in existence. A powerful story, I said, but painful as itis powerful. The incidents, instead of being depressing, would be tragicif they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But there was no one in thestory whom he could have intended us to love or honour. The herounderwent a lifelong torture without any credible, or even intelligible, motive, and on the whole was a _mauvais sujet_ himself. To win thereader's sympathy, all this must be altered. I strongly advised that thelatter part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak was describedunder a leader whom he named Peter Brawler, should be omitted; and Iobjected to the publication of a song in French _argot_ with a spiritedtranslation, as the latter would naturally be attributed to the authorof the novel, whereas I had read it in an early _Blackwood_ before hewas born. 

'Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and said he would adopt all mysuggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection ofhis mother's good name the motive of the hero's silence, and he omittedboth the things I had objected to. '

Ending, as it began, with a tragedy, the artistic unity of the novel isthus preserved, and the dominant aim of the author emphasised. Many ofthose who read it in the serial parts strongly disapproved of theexcisions, but there can be little doubt that the story is the strongerfor their having been made. 

It was as the work of a vivid historian, rather than of a socialreformer, that Marcus Clarke's masterpiece won its popularity, and, forits dramatic and substantially accurate view of the worst (always theworst) aspect of convict life, it will continue to be read while anyoneremains to take an interest in the unhappiest period of Australianhistory. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken theintelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practicalmethod of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity andinhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers wasfond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how farEnglish gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion andinvested 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 theoriginals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, withall his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himselfeven to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-facthistorians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their greatprivileges to describe. For example, there were times during the firstthirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of theofficials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations withthe female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions theyheld. 

Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but madeno use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait ofDawes' passionate and licentious cousin. 

In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessarythroughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specificallyput upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the goodeffects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to thecolonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so oftenwrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system. His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during histerm of transportation, ' and to show the futility of a prison systemloosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at theother by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, totheir undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate. 

The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series ofpunishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest, consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to thehighest, consisting of long and tedious torture. ' It was with the latterpart of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose torepresent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and NorfolkIsland as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and SirGeorge Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by theexperienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the Houseof Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corruptingthose 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 impetuousreformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishmentknown as the 'silent system, ' the English novelist obtrudes his moralwith a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendideloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australiannovel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtainedby quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, andby occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lessonto the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously calm andimpersonal 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, thereis no importunate author to force it upon him. In either case he willfind the story an absorbing one. 'It has all the solemn ghastliness oftruth, ' said Lord Rosebery, writing to the novelist's widow in 1884. Heconfessed 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 hespent some time in viewing the scene of the old settlements andexamining the reports upon which the novel is so largely based. 

That there are some exaggerations in the treatment of facts need hardlybe stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, andoutbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modifythe description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fullydepicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, _HisNatural Life_ is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that mostyoung writers would have been tempted to commit. Clarke was too good anartist to think of pleading the sanction of facts for any misuse of theprivileges of good fiction. To maintain a strong impression on thereader, his touch is occasionally strong and fearless, like that ofKipling. But this object attained, he uses his materials with an almostunnecessary reticence. The episode of the cannibalism of Gabbett and hisfellow-convicts is exceptional. Yet it purposely falls short of theterrible original, which is happily hidden away from general viewbetween the covers of an old Parliamentary report. 

It has been said of Clarke, by one of his friends, that in his estimateof motives he was invariably cynical. Though the assertion goes too far, it seems to suggest the best explanation of his notable preference fordelineating the dark side of human nature. He appeared ever to see vicemore clearly, or at any rate to find it more interesting for thepurposes of fiction, than the good or the neutral in character. But hiscynicism--if it really formed a settled feature of his character--wasnot of the kind that implies any indifference to injustice ordishonesty. In this particular, both his fiction and essays have nouncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke that his bad charactersare in most cases wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a life ofdebauchery under the influence of a pure woman's affection, but theeffect is afterwards destroyed by evidences that the attachment on theman's side is sensual and based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prisontyrant and base denier of Dawes' heroism remains unexcused. 

Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only important representatives ofthe ordinary virtues in _Long Odds_, are little more than dim shadowscontrasted with the clearly-marked personalities of half a dozen othersin the story who are rogues, or the associates and instruments ofrogues. 'The human anguish of every page' of _His Natural Life_ whichLord Rosebery found so compelling to his attention, need not have beenso continuous and unqualified. 

The author seems purposely to have ignored the opportunity afforded bythe story for the introduction of a character who, while asserting theclaims of Rufus Dawes and the broader interests of humanity, need nothave defeated the main motive of the plot. It was a decided error not togratify in this way the combative instinct of the reader. The Rev. JamesNorth--'gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest'--might have been anactive opponent of cruelty like Eden, the clergyman in _It's Never TooLate to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmedand self-accusing drunkard. 

The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity anddramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalitiesamong its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, isdistinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, ahopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which becomealmost monotonous in their unvaried severity. 

But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, theclever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality ofan invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? orthat of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humouredconvict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths ofcriminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else?

How naturally from such a person comes that savagely humorousdissertation upon the treatment of prisoners! 'There is a sort ofsatisfaction to me, by George! in keeping the scoundrels in order. Ilike 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 generallyunderstood to have been a study from life. But as the official whosename has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerablymore humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus Dawes, it mustbe 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 hasprobably a better representative in Major Vickers, the Commandant. Vickers is not an unkind man, but does not trust himself to do anythingunprovided 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 havesometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than thechain-gang and the cat. ' But he never gives intelligence, much lesskindness, a fair trial. 

Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture of a good woman to be foundin any of the author's stories. Taken in childhood by her parents to thepenal settlements, and separated there for years from youthful society, familiarised with the constant aspects of crime and suffering, andhabitually in the society of her elders, she early develops into aquaint, matter-of-fact little creature, such as might well disconcert apeacock like the Reverend Meekin. 

To Frere, whose knowledge of other women has been mainly immoral, herinnocence and wilfulness, and her instinctive dislike of him, serve as astrong attraction. Though he becomes her husband by means of a cruelfraud, he never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement sotragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as arelief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers, despite the gloomy environment of her youth, is throughout an intenselywomanly woman, the delicate conception of whose character surely placesher 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 occasionalskilful varying of its painful realism with a colouring of romance, asin the relations between Dawes and Sylvia: his absorbing devotion whenshe is so strangely made dependent upon him at the deserted settlement;his long-continued confidence that she will effect his vindication anddeliverance; and, finally, the dominant motive of securing her safetyagainst North with which he escapes from the gaol at Norfolk Island, andjoins her in the doomed schooner on its last voyage to Van Diemen'sLand. 

What Oliver Wendell Holmes called 'the Robinson Crusoe touches' in thestory--including the experiences of the marooned party at MacquarieHarbour, and those of Rex in his escape through the Devil'sBlowhole--also help to leave with the reader of the novel anineffaceable memory. 

HENRY KINGSLEY. 

What are the special qualities that constitute the permanent charm ofHenry Kingsley's early novels? Some English critics, judging him byprinciples of literary art, have said that his best work is in manyplaces of slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic power, andimitative in expression. A series of episodes, they observe, supply theplace of a plot in _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_; the centralmotive of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ is an impossible story of ayoung 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 thanmay appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freelycredited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of stylefar too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirersin his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position abovethat of his more celebrated brother. 

The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, withKingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished ahobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds asit is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which ofthem is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only inone particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatevermay be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned astory without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certainof a permanent place in the literature of the young country where heencountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life. 

The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having beenrecorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interestmight be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point ofview, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckleyand Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of thethree best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons fortheir enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds ofthe favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, toleave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _GeoffryHamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but inmost respects they are the highest, because the least artificial, expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their morenoticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to thequestion which opens this essay. 

Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen ofeducation and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fieldsof Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases withready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxfordwithout a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried offto the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensationalperiod of their development, and attracting people from all parts of theworld. It was the time when the ordinary business of the colonies couldscarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexedemployers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urgedGovernor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibitmining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible topersons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed. ' In thecountry districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in thetowns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it halfdone; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews haddeserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content tostand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being foundup-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt tostop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings, ' was thereply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners. 

Ex-military and naval officers, professional men, convicts from VanDiemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexicanmines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbedshoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in thecrowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo. In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of themwere toiling in Victoria alone. 

Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist hisfirst practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge thathe accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life andthe towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile fromEngland. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and theythought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles wascontinued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even tohis wife. 

An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new editionof Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literarycareer, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spentin the colonies. There is a single reference to the period whichsucceeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a lessprecarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policemanin New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, hewas so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust. ' Then, like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel the countryin search of work on the sheep and cattle stations. 

A well-known pastoralist of the western district of Victoria, the lateHon. Philip Russell, was accustomed to describe to his friends thearrival at his station many years ago of a party of 'sundowners'(_i. E. _, tramps), among whom was Kingsley, looking 'very much down onhis luck. ' Soon found to be no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest atthe station, where he remained for several months. The most agreeableglimpse obtainable of his colonial life is given in _Old MelbourneMemories_, a little collection of sketches published by Rolf Boldrewoodtwelve years ago. 

At the period which they recall, Boldrewood was a young man, and makingthe experiment in squatting which, though disastrous in its ultimatecommercial results, was afterwards turned to a rich literary account byhim. A friend of his named Mitchell occupied a station in westernVictoria named Langa-willi, and there on one occasion Boldrewood metKingsley. The passage in which he gracefully records the event is worthquoting in full. 

'Why Langa-willi, ' he says, 'will always be a point of interest in mymemory, 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 guestof Mitchell's. 

'It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffry Hamlyn_, that immortal work, thebest Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In thewell-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one canimagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting downcomfortably after breakfast to his "copy, " when his host had riddenforth with his overseer to make-believe to inspect the flocks, but inreality to get an appetite for lunch. 

'I like to think of them both spending the evening sociably in their ownway, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing away till he had coveredthe regulation number of sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps whenthe bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell reading steadily, or writingup his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with theglasses at ten o'clock; then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke on theverandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, happy, unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not strong, andfor his talented guest, who was not always so profitably employed. Isuspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they oftenlooked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, therestful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi. '

At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being amongthe happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley'scareer after he returned to England may be summarised here in a fewwords. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the firstfour or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest ashe lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, andbecame 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 theFranco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being withoutthe necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he hadmuch opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. Thewriting of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemedalways to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which heemployed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy. Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of hislife bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness ofwhich he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels. 

It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous wordof the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of itsriches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and thedisillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggersduring the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in anyof his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the moststriking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60. 

The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centreat which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, adaily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters wasprimitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulationof wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperitycreated by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memorieswhich it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, hesucceeded with singular completeness. 

Save the technical knowledge of geology shown by Trevittick in _TheHillyars and the Burtons_, and by the encyclopædic Dr. Mulhaus in hislecture at the picnic in the grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there isnothing to suggest that the author had any personal acquaintance withmining in the colonies. The experience that was so fresh and abundant inhis mind is put aside in favour of a set of facts and pictures not evenincidentally connected with life on the gold-fields. 

As if to emphasise the motive of his choice, if motive there was, heselected the pre-auriferous period for the Australian parts of hisstories. His squatters become wealthy by a comparatively slow process, extending over some sixteen years. The squatters of the gold periodwould certainly seem better adapted to the purposes of fiction. Thereis, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance in the sudden burst offortune which within the first few years after 1851 raised so many ofthem from positions of struggling uncertainty to affluence, with incomesvarying from ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some few cases ashigh as thirty thousand pounds, a year. 

The first and last use Kingsley made of his gold-fields experience isseen in the sketch of mining of the successful sort in the third volumeof _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but this is so slight that it mighthave been imagined by a writer who had never handled a shovel or awashing-cradle in his life. 

The Australian people have so often been the subject of flippant andill-natured criticisms, that they can readily appreciate any liberalestimate of themselves in whatever form it may be placed before theirkindred 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 morethan adverse comment itself, is the circumstance of its often proceedingfrom persons who have accepted without warning their too prompt andtrustful hospitality. 

To anyone but the incorrigibly confident and good-natured Antipodean, the lesson would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished visitorshould be petted less, and left more dependent upon his own devices inthe collection of materials for the inevitable book or magazine article. Though the result might be the same, there would be no ingratitude, andthe critic would be less able to pose as an impartial inside observer ofAustralian society. 

Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight ofimagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsiontowards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' ormonths' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himselffrom the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point. 

It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casualwriters, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whetherthese kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surroundthem. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists donot relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with acomplaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is wellto be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shallsay that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable?

By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning thecolonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of thepioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate(since largely realised) of the future of the country, find moreenduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing inordinary circumstances. 

The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ wouldearn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itselfspirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which thisfirst novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might beunfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at leasttold nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generousone, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort. 

It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting topreserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrantcolonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Someof the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, anddelicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; andthen there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broaderexpanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, agreater trust in human nature. 

As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, thisdifference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable inthe light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly exists. Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley'syoung Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of thecharacteristics of their British parents. But, still, they showthemselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds ofrepresentatives 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 withina month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work forfour years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained themanners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as adeer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot. ' Ofcourse, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minuteobservation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content tofly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softestsofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin, ' he might haveseen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptlycalled the working aristocracy of Australia. 

The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, andpicturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian, Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and therest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardshipswhich have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil, loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. Theaspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one. 

There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he hasmade squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic. ' Had Kingsleybeen himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might haveobtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect thehistorical value of his work is less than it might have been. But thecompensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author'schoice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he wastelling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group ofemigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and itsdifficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with theexception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketchesrather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was thefirst to describe in fiction the rural life of the country, to recognisethe beginning of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate thepervading spirit of cheerful confidence to which so much of the rapidearly development of Australia was due. 

It may well be regretted that one who had so keen an eye for all thatwas best in the social life of the country, at one of its mostinteresting periods, should not have written a volume or two ofreminiscences, but no colonial reader would wish _Geoffry Hamlyn_ or_The Hillyars and the Burtons_ to have been made the vehicle of moredescriptive matter than they contain. Kingsley was more sparing in theuse of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the youngerwriters are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may beconsidered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper toHamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking ofCaptain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the storyof the lost child. The latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus' geologicallecture, has the merit of being one of the best pieces of prose theauthor ever wrote, and gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford anopportunity for a dramatic settlement of the order of their suit for thehand of Alice Brentwood. In the main narrative the periods of 'dullprosperity' are expressly avoided. After that first beautiful picture ofthe pioneer settlement, 'the scene so venerable, so ancient, so seldomseen in the old world--the patriarchs moving into the desert with alltheir wealth to find a new pasture land'--the action of the story israpidly advanced to the later days of their success. The estate whichhas been the home of Major Buckley's forefathers for generations nolonger providing a competence, he has resolutely left it for the landwhere he is to find 'a new heaven and a new earth. ' Unlike so many ofthe 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 oldcountry in long years after, when, with some of the wealth garnered onthe rolling prairies of Northern Australia, his son has proudly boughtback the family domain of Clere in all the completeness of its originalacres. Within a few brief chapters the colonists are discovered in thesecurity of assured wealth. Sitting under their station verandahs, theycan contemplate almost with calmness the death of their cattle byhundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They havearrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in thecellar, and race-horses in the paddock. ' Meanwhile, the old Devonshirelife is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create anew Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homesamong the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourseapproaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--oflife as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softeningglow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of idealfriendship, 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 theproportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the worldover. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all hisnovels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it springtheir most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, ' which Matthew Arnoldassigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and rightfeeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silentand kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. Thenames alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall sceneafter scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind toreturn. 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; TomTroubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty anddidactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention topolitics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spendher life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic, passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; CaptainBrentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who issighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young loversso nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers camedown'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humouredroar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who iseverybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except GeorgeHawker, of whose 'tom-cat' skull he has made that amusingly audaciousexamination at the beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful tofind all the faces familiar in the old land reappearing in the new, eventhough the coincidences which attend their coming seem too good to betrue. 

But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness of the story incontemplation of the swift succession of happy scenes created for him. In these there is nothing dubious or artificial. They are sketchesstraight 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 ratherthan mere interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes, ofconversations, rides, pleasure-excursions, and other intercourse, whichin another book might prove wearisome, becomes here the best enjoymentof the reader. With what vivacity and gusto the author describes thevisits exchanged between the home stations, and the comforts andhappiness which they reveal! Half the book is made up of them, and yetthe majority remain sufficiently clear in the memory to be recalledseparately. Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away, buys a stationnear at hand, he and Buckley having become inseparable, and now Baroona, Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles apart. 'There was always ahostage from one staying as a guest at the other. ' The visits weregenerally unannounced, and the visitors stayed as long as they feltinclined to. The effects of this custom are once amusingly illustratedat the home of Captain Brentwood. It is when the members of the littlecolony hear of the arrival of his beautiful daughter from Sydney, whereshe has been at school. 'That week one of those runs upon the Captain'shospitality took place which are common enough in the Bush, and, although causing a temporary inconvenience, are generally as muchenjoyed by the entertainers as the entertained. Everybody during thisnext week came to see them, and nobody went back again. So by the end ofthe week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all uninvited, and apparently bent on making a long stay of it. ' They help one anotherwhen there is work to be done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously. Kingsley has properly made eating and drinking a noticeable part of thehearty full-bodied existence of his squatters and their friends. 

There is no class of people who have a better capacity for enjoying thematerial comforts of life than the country gentlemen of Australia. MajorBuckley is just the sort of person one might have expected to holddecided views on the subject of dining as an art. To dine in the middleof the day was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the gifts ofProvidence. 'I eat my dinner not so much for the sake of the dinneritself as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows--a feeling thatyou have nothing to do, and that, if you had, you'd be shot if you'd doit. '

On another occasion the author himself preaches a similarly agreeabledoctrine, concluding with the advice: 'My brother, let us breakfast inScotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives end. '

Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in midsummer forgotten. Anyone inan armchair under a broad Australian verandah, who fetched anything forhimself, would, in the author's opinion, 'show himself a man of weakmind. ' Niggers were all that a Southern gentleman wanted to complete hiscomfort when the sun was at baking-point. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's teachingsundergo a playful deprecation. Did she know the exertion required forcutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount ofperspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle ofBass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking twolumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? TheSouthern gentleman undertakes to affirm that she didn't. 

In the conversation of Kingsley's colonists, the business of thesquatter, his hopes, fears and struggles, find no place, and the idea ofhard work is never obtruded for its own sake. The talk is the talk of acultured class who live wholesome lives and have no cares. The twelvethousand miles that separate them from the centre of their intellectuallife are obliterated. The men preserve their individual tastes, togetherwith that comradeship and mutual considerateness which have their originin the best traditions of college life. The same loyalty and chivalryare prominently reproduced in the characters of _Ravenshoe_ and _Silcoteof Silcotes_. But in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ these qualities are perhaps morenoticeable (at all events to a colonial reader) than in the laternovels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentiallycompetitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attachedto mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'anOxford man, ' is 'an inveterate writer of songs, ' a pastime which onlythe annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley isintent on the education of his son, in which he is careful to providefor a knowledge of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor Mulhaus finds the newcountry an even better field than the old one for his researches as anaturalist and geologist. In telling his story, Kingsley seems, inshort, to have treated pioneer squatting in Australia as the brighteraspects of English country life have been treated in fiction forgenerations past. He expends his best efforts in showing the picturesquesurroundings and interior comfort of Australian homes. Neither theirtables 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 ofthe beauty of their strange fauna and flora as can be found in _GeoffryHamlyn_. He would have allowed the budding civilisation of the countryto be swallowed up in sombre desolate forests, or appear as lonelyspecks on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he might intend thecontrary, that, substantially, would be the final impression left onthe mind of the reader. Australian scenery awed and depressed him. Withall his powers of graphic expression, he could seldom write of itwithout exaggeration. It was the fascination of the grotesque ratherthan the picturesque that he felt. Kingsley, though scarcely so gracefuland vivid a describer, had a keener and more constant sense of naturalbeauty. His vision was unclouded by the peculiar susceptibility oftemperament which narrowed the view of his brilliant contemporary. Hecould not have indulged in rhetorical flourishes at the expense ofaccuracy, as in the familiar passage professing to give the Australianview of 'our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birdswho cannot fly, our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on allfours. ' A comparison of Marcus Clarke's too often quoted descriptionwith the sketches of landscape given in, say, the twentieth, twenty-eighth and thirty-sixth chapters of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and at thebeginning of the third volume of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_curiously illustrates how far the appreciation of Australian scenerydepends 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 naturalexpression of a happy disposition, just as is the boyish fun with whichhe surrounds the love-making of his characters. 'Halbert kicked Jim'sshins under the table, and whispered: "You've lost your money, oldfellow!"' when Sam Buckley, flushed and happy, rejoined his friends inthe sitting-room at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in the garden. Jim Brentwood had peevishly bet his friend that the lovers would go onshilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert, with keener vision, hadforeseen the very hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of five poundson the event. More comical still is the spectacle of Hamlyn duckingunder the bedclothes to escape the boot that is about to be flung athim, for laughingly discrediting the story of which his bosom-friendStockbridge has tragically unburdened himself concerning theevaporation of his love for Mary Hawker. 

Whether in recording the actions and dialogue of his characters, or indescribing scenery and the habits of the birds and animals which figureso often in his first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his ownhappiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of puremirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one'sinterest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundanceof farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approachan unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and ifthey cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least goodfellows, any one of whom might serve as a model of manliness. 

Kingsley's knowledge of household pets was of the kind exhibited bypersons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, withonly the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer oftheir peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsicalexaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found atGaroopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with AliceBrentwood is almost unique in Australian literature. 

Buckley's ride to rescue his sweetheart from the bushrangers is one ofthe most moving and dramatic incidents in the book, and a good specimenof Kingsley's graphic narrative style. A band of the outlaws who werethe terror of pioneer colonists fifty years ago have risen in thedistrict, and, after committing outrages at one station, are reported tobe riding on to another twenty miles distant. At the latter, CaptainBrentwood's home, Alice happens to be alone. When the terrible newscomes to her young lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest roadis ten miles from Brentwood's. What start have the bushrangers had, andwill 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 novelistis chiefly judged, ' Henry Kingsley's future reputation will be found todepend almost solely on what he accomplished in _Geoffry Hamlyn_, _TheHillyars and the Burtons_ and _Ravenshoe_. In the first two of thesethere is an abundance of original observation and little conscious studyof character. The vivid Australian scenes of the one, and the Chelsealife of the other, are transcripts of the author's own memories. Hisknowledge of the squatters he got by working for them and living withthem; what he knew of police and convicts and bushrangers he learned indoing police duty; the life of the Burtons, as told in 'Jim Burton'sStory, ' was that which the author saw during his boyhood round hisfather's old rectory on Chelsea Embankment. 

'He seemed to me, ' says Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie, 'to have lived his ownbooks, battled them out and forced them into their living shapes, tohave felt them and been them all. ' Hardly all--one feels bound to say. The remark is entirely true of nearly everything in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ andof three-fourths of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but to _Ravenshoe_it applies in a more limited degree, and to some of the later novelsscarcely ever. Either through carelessness (of which one often suspectshim) or deficiency of judgment, Kingsley more than once allowed theexigencies of his plots to destroy all consistency in his characters. 

Thus, Squire Silcote, the clever old ex-lawyer, is made to retire fromthe world and brood for many years, and on quite insufficient grounds, in the belief that his first wife had been unfaithful, and had tried topoison him. Nothing short of a condition of semi-insanity could explainhis conduct. In other respects the character is finely conceived. EmmaBurton, too, is a perfectly natural and charming person until she isemployed to revive the old problem of how far a sense of duty cantriumph over the power of love. Her devotion to her deformed brother iswrong, because it is unnecessary. But even if this were not the case, itwould be irrational in a woman so eminently sensible and unromantic asshe is shown to be in the first half of the story. Almost at thebeginning of her voluntary service she is represented as realising 'thehideous fate to which she has condemned herself in her fanaticism. ' Itis quite impossible to make the reader believe that, loving Erne Hillyaras she did, she could for years persist in rejecting him, and that herbrother 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 disgustthe _blasé_ aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is moreinconceivable than the 'coo-ee-ing' which Mr. Hornung's 'Bride from theBush' employed to attract the attention of a colonial acquaintance ofhers in Rotten Row. 

But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and thecaricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults ina story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty, audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burtonand his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson. 

Even in _Silcote of Silcotes_ there are intermittent glimpses offinely-conceived character which almost outbalance the eccentricities ofthe Dark Squire and his sister, the fantastic meddler in foreignintrigue. Kingsley's skill lay chiefly in his portrayal of men, especially of young men, such as the dashing Charles Ravenshoe and hisphilosophic friend Marston (a study of the George Warrington type);Lord Welter, Lieutenant Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, recklessprofligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank Maberly, the athleticcurate; and Sam Buckley, the type of an Australian country gentleman. With old men he was less successful. Lord Saltire, the placidgood-natured cynic of _Ravenshoe_, is, however, a clever exception. 'Allold women are beautiful, ' says Kingsley in one of his stories, and henever portrayed one that was not. His best are Miss Thornton and LadyAscot. The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker and Adelaide Summers, are rather slightly drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat indistinctpersonage compared with the Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed andAda Cambridge. 

The superior position usually accorded to _Ravenshoe_ among Kingsley'snovels is merited more by the soundness of its plot than by thenaturalness of its characters. It was the author's first essay in pureromance, and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character from imaginationwas always largely, sometimes extravagantly, to idealise. He loved topeople old country houses with walking mysteries, to unravel tangledgenealogies, and discover secrets of youthful folly, to apportionproperty to rightful heirs, and endow his characters with a superhumangenerosity. When Charles Ravenshoe is recovering from the long illnesswhich terminates the full series of his misfortunes, he sends forWelter, the man who might be considered his arch-enemy, who not so longbefore that had seduced Charles's sister and stole his _fiancée_. Ravenshoe is represented as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs, and thinking only of Welter as his favourite schoolfellow and youthfulcompanion. Anticipating doubts as to the feasibility of this, the authorproceeds to discuss the point with the reader, as he does in manysimilar instances throughout the story. He appears to have a constantanxiety about the impression he is making, and his comments andconfidences certainly become distasteful. But this foible goes only asmall 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, especiallythat produced by the adventurous female writer of these latterdays--began to display so marked an interest in the work of AdaCambridge, that one not acquainted with the circumstances of the casemight have credited them with a friendly--possibly a patriotic--desireto give due place to a newly-risen native genius. And when, in thefollowing year, another story from the same pen appeared, the popularityof the author was firmly established. 

The neat red volumes were on every stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gavethem a place of honour in his show-window, and the leading criticalreview said that the second story possessed a charm which ought toinduce even the person who ignored fiction on principle to make anexception in its favour. It was the kind of gratifying recognition thatthe public always believes itself eager to offer the deserving youngwriter. Yet Ada Cambridge's literary work had extended over no less aperiod than fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay in securingrecognition might have been avoided. Probably in England she could havewon a substantial reputation in a third of the time, and with half thelabour expended by her in contributing to the Australian press. But, asthe wife of a country clergyman, she had other matters besidesliterature to occupy her attention, and was content to write when therehappened to be leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of theleading colonial newspapers. 

About half a dozen novels were issued in this way, besides occasionalarticles and poems. The publication of the longer stories in the_Australasian_, a high-class weekly journal, ought in itself to havemade a name for the author, and possibly would have done so, were theynot in most cases so obviously a local product, and therefore not to beseriously considered. It was a repetition of the experience of RolfBoldrewood. In the end, as usual, it was the English public that firstaccepted her novels for what they were worth. 

Ada Cambridge is a native of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaintvillages of which are a picturesque background of some of her beststories. 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 othercountry towns of this colony, they settled in 1893 at Williamstown, awaterside suburb of Melbourne. 

A novel entitled _Up the Murray_, dealing with life in the colonies, waspublished by Ada Cambridge (the author continues to issue her work underher maiden name) in the Melbourne press in 1875. Others of the samecharacter followed at irregular intervals. Two were issued in book-formby a London firm of publishers, but did not attain to much more than alibrary circulation. 

When the author again came before the English public, it was with anovel in which the purely Australian interest was rigidly subordinatedto dramatic quality and a richly sympathetic study of character. _AMarked Man_ is the story of a younger son of an old English countyfamily who, while sharing the pride and indomitable spirit of hisancestry, develops a hatred for conventional prejudices and religiouscant, and, after making a final assertion of independence by marrying afarmer's daughter, emigrates to New South Wales to establish a name andfortune on his own account. 

The first half of the action takes place in England, the remainder inthe colonies. The natural beauties surrounding the home of the Delavelsat Sydney are not less delicately and poetically described than thevillage life they have left behind in the mother country--thepatriarchal rule of an old-fashioned, rather pompous house, over apeople retaining the hereditary respect of vassals for their feudallord; but the view given of Australian society is, in keeping with therelation to it of Richard Delavel and his household, of the slightestkind. 

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 hisearly _mésalliance_, live in a world so much and so necessarily theirown, that one is grateful for the good taste which excluded from it thebustle and commoner interests of colonial life. The novel met withgeneral, and in several instances cordial, favour in England, and sincethen the author has yearly increased her reputation. 

Three out of five of the later novels are, like _A Marked Man_, madecomparatively independent of the distinctively local interest to whichwe have been accustomed in the works of most Australian authors. It isnot possible, for example, to point out anything in the shape of anessentially 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 theworld, and terrorises her with his unwelcome attentions, would have meta violent death, or himself have murdered someone, in his own country orelsewhere as inevitably as in Australia; and the man who killed himwould not have found Katherine Knowles less faithful during the longyears of his imprisonment had her sacrifice been under the dailyobservation of Hammond's family and her own strait-laced aunts in theirEast Norfolk home. 

In _A Marriage Ceremony_, the only advantage secured by taking the storyfrom London to Melbourne--instead of to New York, let us say--seems tolie in whatever added strength the sense of greater distance imparts tothe temporary appearance of a final separation between Betty Ochiltreeand her strangely-wedded husband. The marriage that was a condition oftheir inheritance having been performed, bride and bridegroom part inaccordance with a previous agreement. The former reappears as aprominent figure in the society of modern Melbourne--the Melbourne of1893, when the failure of banks and land companies was a regular subjectof morning news. 

Here, it might be supposed, was an opportunity for one or two vivid andinstructive sketches of the sensational period that witnessed the proofof so much folly and its punishment, and wrought so many more effects onall classes of Australian society than could be noted in the commonrecords of the time. But the great crisis is almost ignored in thenovel. There are merely a few passing references to its progress, and amention of the loss on the part of Mrs. Ochiltree of some of the wealthwhich she is beginning to regard as having been rather spuriouslyacquired. 

Even the very successful story of the _Three Miss Kings_ and _A MereChance_ tell little of the city life of Australia, though their actionis placed in it almost exclusively. The latter is a tale of match-makingintrigue and money-worship in Toorak, but the main interest of the plotapart, the account of fashionable Melbourne is a singularly colourlessone. As for Mrs. Duff-Scott and her Major, the amiable pair who in thecharacter of leaders of Melbourne society undertake to find husbands forElizabeth King and her sisters, and whose benevolent intentions are soeffectually forestalled, they are as conventionally English as thoughthey belonged to the pages of Miss Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood. 

Again, though during half of _Fidelis_ we are given occasionalimpressive and delightful glimpses of Nature under southern skies, theprincipal characters are English, and in England is centred first andlast the dominant pathos of the story. A complete absence of dialectfrom the novels helps to emphasise the author's slender use ofextraneous aids to interest. 

The influence of Ada Cambridge's twenty-five years' Australianexperience is shown in her general outlook upon life, rather than in thedetails of her work. The prevailing tone of her books is one of markedcheerfulness, sincerity, and simplicity; she has a hearty dislike forconventional stupidities, especially for the mock-modesty that stifleshonest sentiment; and she gives emphatic endorsement to the pleasantdictum (which seems so much more feasible in sunny Australia than incolder northern lands) that the second half of life is not less fruitfuland satisfying than the first. 

As the general effect of Ada Cambridge's teaching, so far as it can begathered from her plots, and the few instances in which she haspermitted herself anything in the shape of didactic expression, is tomake us more patient with life's complexities and perceptive of itscompensations, and more content with whatever happiness may be drawn inour way by the chain of accidents called Destiny, so do her principalcharacters, in their foibles and their strength--in the little acts andimpulses which qualify alike their heroism and their baseness--tend tomake 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 numerousrealistic touches not commonly admitted in fiction, which, handled withskill and insight, keep the character within the pale of commonexperience and increase rather than alienate the reader's sympathy. Thus, Richard Delavel's outburst of relief upon the death of his firstwife, so far from being vulgar and brutal, as it might have seemed inother circumstances, recalls and emphasises the high sense of duty andhonour and the iron self-restraint which had enabled him to be in allessentials a good husband for twenty-five years to a cold-heartedcreature, between whom and himself there had never been either commoninterest or feeling, and for whose sake he had relinquished the womanthat would have been his real mate in intellect and sympathy. Delavel'shousekeeper, who is also a privileged friend, takes him to task for hisunseemly hurry to go in search of this old love before his wife had beena week in her grave. He makes no secret of his relief. 'The sense thatI 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 atleast indelicate and inconsistent with his chivalrous nature. It is nothere possible to convey an adequate impression of his fiery spirit, hislong heart-hunger, and the magnitude of the loss which a whollyuncongenial marriage must ever mean to such a man. When the full storyof his life and that of his quietly 'implacable' wife is read, hisconduct seems natural and excusable. It is as much a part of himself asthe tremulous tenderness with which he ministers to the comfort of thefrail Constance Bethune, after finding and bringing her home, or as hisfierce grief when she dies. 

Another very human spectacle that illustrates the author's method is thereunion of Betty and Rutherford Ochiltree--the frank selfishness oftheir mutual joy while the poor woman who had been an unconsciousbarrier between them lies dead under their roof. It is a somewhatpainful 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 devotionto the heroine of _Fidelis_ by being shown in successive attachments toother women during his long exile in Australia. The author recognisesthat, 'the laws of literary romance being so much at variance with thelaws of Nature, ' Adam is certain to suffer in the reader's good opinionfor having 'continued to hunger for feminine sympathy as well as hisdaily dinner. ' No doubt his stature as a hero lessens when it appearsthat though the absent Fidelia was ever in his thoughts, and a dailysource of inspiration to him as a writer, he twice narrowly escapedmarriage--first with a servant girl at his lodgings, and afterwards withthe daughter of his landlady--and that at another period of his coloniallife he became involved in a disreputable kind of Bohemianism. But he isnot disgraced by these lapses to the extent that the author anticipates;at all events, they make him more human than he could otherwise havebeen. 

It is this power of infusing a robust humanity into her characters thatmakes the distinctive feature of Ada Cambridge's best novels. In each, whatever the quality of the plot, there are always two or threepersonages who talk and act as real men and women do--now rationally orin obedience to custom, now passionately or with that perversity which, as the author once describes it, 'is like a natural law, independent ofother laws, the only one that persistently defies our calculations. 'They are mostly big people with big appetites. The beauty of the womenis the beauty of mind and of sound physical health. 

Susy Delavel was tall, well grown, straight and graceful, with anintelligent, eager face, though 'her mouth was large, her nose not allit should have been, and her complexion showed the want of parasols andveils. ' She was 'not handsome at all, but decidedly attractive. '

Sarah French, the girl in _Fidelis_ whose comeliness so nearly drew thehero from his old allegiance, has 'a strong and good, rather than apretty, face, ' with a 'large and substantial figure. ' Adam Dreweconcluded on first sight of her that she was a nice woman. Later on hefinds her 'looking the very incarnation of home, with her cheerfulhealthy 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 ather ample breast, and others clinging to her supporting hand; Nature hadso 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, ofconventional girlhood, ' she is 'singularly vivid in her more substantialway. '

Betty Ochiltree's beauty, too, is of the kind that wears well. She has aface 'frank and spirited, firm of mouth and chin, kind and sweet, ashonest as the day, ' surmounting an ample body, and she carries herselfwith dignity, 'as few Australian girls can do. ' And how impressive andconsistent with her character is the noble, placid figure of ElizabethKing, 'perfect in proportion, fine in texture, full of natural dignityand ease!'

The author is fond of showing the attractiveness of such women at theage of thirty, or even more. 'In real life, ' she once observes, 'thesupremely interesting woman is not a girl of eighteen, as she is infiction. 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, andnot 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 wouldsatisfy him. I mean, of course, the human male who in real life answersto 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 dozencommanding figures who blunder in the most natural and amiable manner intheir affairs; who think a good deal more of their immediate personalcomforts than of religious or ethical abstractions; who like their ownway and try to get it; who, in short, are mostly what the author wishesthem to appear--'the men out of books that we meet every day. ' Of littlemen, in the physical sense, there are only two of any importance, buteven these are virile and masterful. A general aim of the stories wouldseem to be to show the sexes what each chiefly admires in the other. Itis first a sort of apotheosis of the _mens sana in corpore sano_, andafter that an illustration of the independent attractions of sympathy, gentleness, culture, and high character. 

Though in most cases the strongest attachments are formed between menand women arrived at an age to discriminate beyond mere physical charm, nevertheless physical charm is the most powerful, though not alwaysacknowledged, motive of their choice. 'Because of this, ' says thepathetic Hilda Donne in _A Marriage Ceremony_, touching her cheek, whichis terribly disfigured by a birth-mark, 'I have never had _love_. Canyou think what that means? You can't. Once I thought I was not going tobe quite shut out--once; but I was mistaken. I have found out that it isfor 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, andconvinced that no healthy man could consort with 'so unnatural a woman, 'had come at last to regard her as a possible wife--before he wasconfronted with the sudden temptation to secure a fortune by weddingBetty Ochiltree, in compliance with the conditions of her millionaireuncle's will. Yet Hilda's comment is substantially sound. EvenRutherford, with all the sense of his mature years, and all the culturethat enabled him to appreciate her poetic gift, would have had to arguehimself into a marriage with her. 

The ugliness of Adam Drewe, from which his mother turned in disgust athis birth, and which in youth drove him across the seas in an agony ofsensitiveness from the woman he loved, was a less serious afflictionthan that of Hilda Donne; but we know that he continued to be keenlyreminded of its disadvantages long after time had proved the sterlingqualities of his manhood, lessened his deformity, and brought him fameand wealth. 

Compared with the previous illustration, however, his case is at faultin failing to give a sufficient description of his deformity. But thathe 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 thedisillusionment that would ensue when her sight was restored, he fled toAustralia and determined to abandon all thought of her as a wife. Urgedto return, because 'when a woman _is_ a woman, ' and really in love witha man, 'there's no camel she won't swallow for him, ' Drewe replied thathis camel was just the one camel that no woman had been known toswallow, 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 theauthor, despite her openly-expressed scorn for the unnaturalness of theaverage conventional novel, has not disdained employment of some of itstime-honoured methods. Occasionally she is at pains to explain thefeasibility of coincidences employed to secure dramatic interest. Theyare certainly never of an impossible kind, and no one would deny thetruism that real life abounds in them. But has not a distinguishedwriter aptly pointed out that there are matters in which fiction cannotcompete with life? As a rule, however, where a few such weaknessesexist, they do not count for much with the average reader when theprincipal scenes are as finely drawn as those in _A Marked Man_ or_Fidelis_, or _The Three Miss Kings_. The latter story in some detailsputs a greater strain upon the credulity than any of the other novels, yet so well conceived and absolutely natural are the characters of thethree girls, and so humorously and pictorially presented the chiefincidents in their development, that the dubious points of the plotbecome almost insignificant. The qualities of the novel as a whole aresimilar to those which obscure the artistic defects of _Geoffry Hamlyn_, and which for thirty-seven years have made it one of the most popular ofAustralian stories. 

In the presentation of tragic or pathetic incidents lies Ada Cambridge'schief power, as far as her plots are concerned. In _A Marked Man_ it isaccompanied by her highest achievements in portraying a variety ofwell-contrasted character. _Fidelis_, which opens at the Norfolk villageof the earlier novel, and reintroduces the Delavels, contains fewerdeveloped characters, as may also be said of _A Marriage Ceremony_. Butthe three novels are equal in the high standard of their emotionalquality. No quotation of moderate size could do justice to any of theprincipal scenes of _A Marked Man_: the chivalrous sacrifice of RichardDelavel's youthful marriage; the inward repentance of it for twenty-twoyears; the revival of his love for Constance Bethune; his painfulanxiety for her health, hungry enjoyment of her companionship, andanguish at her death; and his own death soon afterwards. In the morebriefly detailed tragedy that brings into such striking relief thesprightly drama of _A Marriage Ceremony_, there is a scene giving a fairexample of the author's style in touching passages. When Hilda, deeplyin love with Rutherford Hope, hears of his union with another woman, shetakes the readiest means of effacing herself by suddenly marrying ashallow coxcomb who seeks her for mercenary reasons, and going with himto Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected by the suddenreappearance of Rutherford, and by subsequent ill-treatment receivedfrom her jealous husband, that an exhausting illness follows, and tosave herself from insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile the longseparation of Rutherford and Betty Ochiltree, which began on the day oftheir marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda's death removes the finalimpediment. 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 thelovers' self-absorption and short-lived sorrow, and the callousness ofDonne. 

 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 thebest of which are those between Fidelia and Adam Drewe, first in theirbrief meetings as girl and youth--she with her weak eyes bandaged, butreading him through his voice and bashful deprecation; he yearning toremain 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 seeminghopelessly blind. 

The conception of the latter scene is quite the best to be found in thewhole of Ada Cambridge's work, and has not been equalled in its kind byany other Australian writer. The simplicity and verbal reticence of thischapter of intense feeling gives also a good sample of the author'sstyle of expression. Seldom ornate or much studied, it is ever a lucidand easy style. As a narrative specimen, the following, from the samenovel, 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--AdaCambridge has occasionally a neat and forcible way of describingcharacter. Richard Delavel's first wife was 'a gentle and complaisantbeing, soft and smooth, apparently yielding to the touch, but dense, square, and solid as a well-dumped wool-bale. ' When opposed in will orcontradicted in her opinion, she smiled resignedly, and, if it appeareddue to her dignity, sulked for a period. Yet generally she was 'theevenest-tempered woman that ever a well-meaning husband found itdifficult 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 madean 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, andwhen he became wealthy, and she a fashionable hostess in Sydneysociety, nothing delighted her more than her opportunities of making thearistocratic connection known. Her own origin as the daughter of afarmer was quite forgotten. 'Annie might have been a Delavel from thebeginning, in her own right, for all the recollection that remained toher of the real character of her bringing up. . . . Years and certaincircumstances will often affect a woman's memory that way--a man somehowmanages to keep a better grasp of facts. '

Yelverton, the lover of Elizabeth King, an English aristocrat spendingsome of his wealth in lessening the misery and vice of London, was 'notthe orthodox philanthropist, the half-feminine, half-neuter specialistwith a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with a mission to set theworld right; his benevolence was simply the natural expression of asense of sympathy and brotherhood between him and his fellows, and thespirit which produced that was not limited in any direction. '

His friend, Major Duff-Scott, 'an ex-officer of dragoons, and a lateprominent public man of his colony (he was prominent still, but for hissocial and not his official qualifications), was a well-dressed andwell-preserved old gentleman who, having sown a large and miscellaneouscrop of wild oats in the course of a long career, had been rewarded withgreat 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 strikingcharacter. Yet that character had clearly shown itself, as had also hislyric gift, before he saw Australia. He is the favourite poet of thecountry by a happy fortuity rather than by the merit of special nativeinspiration. Those tastes of the people which he has expressed in mannerand degree so rare as to make a parallel difficult of conception werealso his own dominant tastes. From early boyhood they had controlled hislife, and in the end they wrecked it. 

That any man living an adventurous and precarious life, often in rudeassociations and without the stimulus of ambition or of intellectualsociety, should write poetry at all is a matter for some wonder. Andwhen several of the compositions of such a writer are marked by rarevigour and melody, and some few are worthy to rank with the best oftheir kind produced in the century, it must be held that the gift of theauthor is genuine and spontaneous. It is impossible to believe thatGordon would have been less a poet had he never lived under the SouthernCross; that he would have cared less for horses and wild riding, formanliness and the exhilaration of danger. Had he become a countrygentleman in England, or a soldier, like his father, should we not stillhave had 'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde, ' 'The Romance of Britomarte, ' 'ByFlood and Field, ' and 'How we beat the Favourite. ' And do these not formthe majority of his best poems? A man apt alike for the risks of thechase or the cavalry charge, with a delicate ear for the music of words, with natural promptings to write, would in any conditions have foundtime to celebrate the things which his daring and gallant spirit loved. Had he not ridden as well as written the rides related by his 'SickStockrider, ' he might have been foremost in that more glorious one sooften 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 atrue Englishman, and it is the soldier and the Englishman in him farmore than the Australian that the people of his adopted country, consciously or unconsciously, admire. It is yet difficult to considerhis work as a writer apart from his personality. And it is natural thatthis should be so in the case of a man whose career was itself aromance, 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 theideal 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 longafter he had won recognition as the first steeplechase rider in acountry of accomplished riders, he declined payment for his services onthe race-track, accepting it only when compelled at last by poverty todo so; and the distaste with which he had always viewed the meanerassociations of the sport latterly became dislike and scorn. In theperiod of disappointment that preceded his death he refused aremunerative post on the sporting staff of a leading Melbourne journalbecause he wished to dissociate himself completely and finally fromeverything connected with the professionalism of sport. 

As a Bush rider he became noted for the performance of feats which noone else would think of attempting. The Australians often speak andwrite of it as courage absence of fear--but it surely had a largeadmixture of pure recklessness. It is at least evident that danger had acertain irresistible fascination for him. 'Name a jump, and he was onfire to ride at it, ' is the description given of this curiouspredilection which made his company in a riding party a somewhatexciting pleasure. The day in 1868 when he won three steeplechases atMelbourne is still remembered; and at Mount Gambier, in South Australia, a granite obelisk marks where once he leaped his horse over a fencesurmounting the headland of a lake, and then across a chasm 'more thanforty feet wide. ' A single false step would have cast horse and riderinto the lake two hundred feet below. Of the same wild character was hisriding during boyhood in the hunting-fields of Gloucestershire. It wouldbe natural to suspect some measure of vanity or bravado in all this, butno hint of either is given by any of his acquaintances; and the few whoknew 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 ofhis life brought him into contact. 'Gordon, ' says one of his intimatefriends, 'was always a quiet, modest, pure-minded gentleman. . . . I neverknew such a noble-hearted man, especially where women were concerned. '

The deep melancholy in many of Gordon's poems has been attributed to theinfluence of Australian scenery, and to the loneliness of the earlieryears of his life in the colonies. This explanation, if not whollyerroneous, is at least much exaggerated. It ignores the most obviouselements of the poet's temperament. It takes no account of the historyof wasted opportunities and regrets, of defeat and discontent, ofself-wrought failure and remorse, that may plainly be read in 'To mySister, ' 'An Exile's Farewell, ' 'Early Adieux, ' 'Whispering in theWattle Boughs, ' 'Quare Fatigasti, ' 'Wormwood and Nightshade, ' and otherpoems. The writer, as he himself says, has no reserve in the criticismof 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 hisfolly had lost him home, friends, love, and the one profession thatmight have steadied him, as well as afforded him distinction. He wasthe son of Captain Adam D. Gordon (an officer who had seen service inIndia) and the grandson of a wealthy Scotch merchant. Captain Gordonsettled at Cheltenham in the later years of his life, and intended thathis son should study for the army; but a mad wilfulness and passion foroutdoor sport had taken possession of the youth, and nothing could bedone with him. He rode to hounds with all the daring that marked hishorsemanship in later life; he rode in steeplechases, he frequented thecompany of pugilists at country fairs and public-houses, and joined intheir contests; he was removed from two schools for unruly conduct, anda more serious escapade, though innocent of any bad intention, nearlycaused his arrest by the police. At last it was agreed that he shouldemigrate to Australia. He was glad to go, but bitter at the thought ofwhat his going implied. The knowledge that he suffered solely throughhis own fault did not make less disagreeable to him the censure ofothers, even that of the gallant father whom, in his wildest moments ofrebellion, he never ceased to love and admire. The unhappiness attendingthis severance from the home that he felt he would never see again istold in a poem to his sister, written (August, 1853) a few days beforehe 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 ofa youthful sorrow and all the vigour of a youthful defiance. But at themoment of his deepest depression it is upon himself that the writercasts the real blame. This is characteristic of his judgment of himselfthroughout life. He has ever too much honour and spirit to shirk theresponsibility of his own acts. And the same qualities keep him fromdoing injury to others. He is consoled by remembering this in biddinggood-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 makinga fortune. Wealth was to be gained in other and surer ways than bygroping for it in the goldfields. But he was indifferent, and allowedhimself to drift. Australia was attractive to him only as a place ofadventure, of freedom, of retirement, of oblivion. All but the latter hefound it. He readily adapted himself to the rough conditions of thecountry, but could never overcome the thought that in those first falsesteps he had lost all worth striving for. Time softened the gloomydefiance of his farewell verses, but did not alter his determination toefface himself, to be forgotten even by his family. He held nocommunication with anyone in England, and heard nothing from his homeuntil ten years later, when a lawyer's letter notified him that both hismother and father were dead, and that under the will of the latter hewas to receive a legacy of seven thousand pounds. Meanwhile, Gordonappears to have made no attempt to win any of the prizes that were thecommon reward of pluck and industry in the Australia of the fifties. Hejoined the mounted police force of South Australia, but, impatient ofits discipline, soon left it, and for long afterwards was content withthe rough employment of a horse-breaker. 

A curious, pathetic figure he makes at this time. He broke in horsesduring the day, and read the classic poets at night. Think of therefined 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 honeysucklecone stuck in clay in a pannikin, and surrounded with mutton fat!' Orsitting at some Bush camp of his own, and imagining, as he so finelydid, the famous Balaclava Charge, which set Europe ringing with pity andadmiration a year after he arrived in Australia. How he would have likedto 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 havebecome attached to it. He once declared it to be better in manyrespects than any other. He was temperate, skilful in his work, and aspopular as one of reserved manner can be. Most of the squatters of theperiod made it a practice to receive into their social circle anycompanionable and educated man, whether their equal in position or not. It was a generous custom, typical of the most hospitable country in theworld, and worked well on the whole. But Gordon, unlike Henry Kingsleyand others of the same class, took no advantage of it. That thesquatters did not themselves recognise the worth of one so unassertivewas not to be wondered at. He saw this, and never blamed them. Theycould not, as he remarked on one occasion, be expected to know that hewas as well born as any of them, and perhaps better educated. One ofthem saw there was 'something above the common' in him; but that wasall. At length he was discovered by a good-natured and scholarly RomanCatholic priest (the Rev. Julian E. Tenison Woods), who, though he doesnot say so, evidently took a pleasure during the five years of theiracquaintance in making the merits of the solitary Englishman known inthe colony. Their tastes accorded excellently. They talked 'horses orpoetry' as they rode together, or smoked by their camp-fires. Gordon'sreserve thawed for the first time. He had a well-trained memory, andoccasionally would recite Latin or Greek verse, or a scene fromShakespeare, or passages from Byron and other modern poets. Greek he hadtaught himself in lonely hours after his arrival in Australia, havingneglected it while at college. 

In the end his disposition left the good cleric, like many another, muchpuzzled. Was there anything of foolish pride or misanthropy in Gordon'savoidance of society that would have welcomed him? Both his recordedspeech and his poems are without evidence of either. Those who rememberhis taciturnity and little eccentricities also speak of his kindness ofheart, generosity and trustfulness of others. Did he ever complain thathe was oppressed and saddened by his self-chosen life in the Bush? Wehave seen the high estimate he once gave of it; and Mr. Woods, who hasrecorded many proofs of close observation of his friend, testifies thatthe melancholy of his poems found little or no expression in hisconversation. Gordon may have been shy (as Marcus Clarke noted), but heearly 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 thatthe world should talk of him before he died. ' Coming from one who wasfar from being vain or boastful, the remark suggests hope and ambition. But neither, it would seem from his colonial career, was ever more thana passing mood with him. Why did he remain in obscurity during severalof the best years of his life, doing rough and dangerous work, when hemight have obtained some remunerative post in one of the cities? Why didhe marry a domestic servant--one who could never be an intellectualcompanion for him?

It appears that he considered himself to have 'irretrievably lostcaste. ' It is a fantastic idea, and could not have any justification ina country where an Englishman of good manners and behaviour need neverwant congenial society. Gordon was abnormally proud, independent andsensitive: an unfortunate disposition for anyone who has his way to makein an imperfect world. Such a man constantly misunderstands himself andis misunderstood. He takes severe, unpractical views of his owncharacter and of life generally. Not necessarily morose or ungenial, heis always apt to be thought so. Gordon's conclusion that he had lostcaste is a proof of supersensitiveness, and the deep effect producedupon his temperament by the incidents of his youth. 

There is a touching and significant little story of an acquaintancewhich he formed with a young lady at Cape Northumberland, and how heended it. We are delicately told that, having become a warm admirer ofhis dashing horsemanship, the lady used to walk in early morning to aneighbouring field to see him training a favourite mare over hurdles. Something more than a mutual liking for horses and racing is plainlyhinted at as existing between them. But after they had met thus a fewtimes, Gordon asked abruptly whether her mother knew that she came thereevery morning to see him ride. She replied in the negative, adding thather mother disapproved of racing. 'Well, don't come again, ' said he; 'Iknow the world, and you don't. Good-bye. Don't come again. ' Surprisedand wounded, the lady silently gave him her hand in farewell. 'He lookedat it as if it were some natural curiosity, and said, "It's the firsttime I have touched a lady's hand for many a day--my own fault, my ownfault--good-bye. "'

For a brief period after the receipt of his father's legacy Gordonlooked towards his future with some interest and confidence. He spoke ofa proposal to undertake regular journalistic work at Melbourne, and tomake an attempt at writing novels. It was at this time also that heforesaw that he would make a name as a poet. The people of MountGambier, finding him presently settled as the owner of a small estate inthe district, made him their representative in the Legislative Assemblyof South Australia. In this new character he seems to have achieved onlya reputation for drawing humorous sketches. Having delivered a fewspeeches highly embellished with classical allusions which failed tomake any impression upon the plain business men of the House, hesubsided, and was afterwards seldom heard. And when his seat becamevacant in due course, he did not seek re-election. He had been unable totake his Parliamentary experience seriously. He is said to have alwayslooked back upon it as something of a joke. 

And now, with a revival of his former attachment to the excitements anduncertainties of the turf, begin a series of misfortunes which pursuedhim until his death. His property, mismanaged and neglected, had to besold, and he set out a poor man once more for the adjoining colony ofVictoria. Here, while suffering ill-health and poverty--starving in hisown proud way--after failing in a small business which he hadundertaken, Gordon learned that he would probably come into possessionof the barony of Esselmont in Scotland, then producing an income ofabout two thousand pounds a year. But on further inquiry it was foundthat his title to the estate ceased with the abolition of the entailunder the Entail Amendment Act of 1848. The excitement of hisill-fortune and the effects of a recent wound on the head combined tounhinge his mind, and in June, 1870, at the age of thirty-seven he endedhis life by shooting himself at Brighton, near Melbourne. In comparingthe impressions of Gordon's disposition given by his friends, it iscurious to note that among the few things in which they agree is anabsence of surprise at his suicide. 

It would not be difficult to imagine a more representative poet in theprovincial 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 linesfrom the same hand, showing a delicate appreciation of the ruggedfeatures of Australian scenery. But he sees them only in passing, or asa symbol of something he is pondering, or as a contrast to what he hasleft behind 'on far English ground. ' No sight or sound of AustralianNature is a sole subject of any of his poems. His 'Whispering in theWattle Boughs' does not express the voices of the forest, but the echoesof a sad youth, the yearnings of an exile; his 'Song of Autumn' is not asong of autumn, but a forecast of his own death--a forecast that wasfulfilled. If he ever felt any enthusiasm for the future nationhood ofAustralia, he did not express it. And such few native legends as therewere, 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 astory does not come readily to his hand in the new world, he seeks onein 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 happinessor life itself upon a single hazard. The subjects that Gordon best likedwere short dramatic romances, which he found it easier to evolve fromliterature than from the life and history of his adopted country. Beyondthe compositions upon the national sport of horse-racing, the onlynoteworthy Australian subjects in his three slender volumes are 'TheSick Stockrider's Review of the Excitements and Pleasures of a CarelessBush Life, and his Pathetic Self-satisfaction'; 'The Story of aShipwreck'; 'Wolf and Hound, ' which describes a duel between thehunted-down bushranger and a trooper; and some verses on the death ofthe explorer Burke. 'Ashtaroth, ' an elaborate attempt at a sustaineddramatic lyric in the manner of Goethe's 'Faust' and 'Manfred, ' fillsone of the three volumes, and among shorter pieces in the other two aremore than a dozen suggested by the poet's reading, by his recollectionsof English life, and, in a notable instance, by one of the mostmemorable of modern European wars. 

In a dedication prefixed to the _Bush Ballads_, Gordon suggests some ofthe local sources of his inspiration. He obviously overstates hisobligations to the country. Some of the best of the poems in this, themost characteristic collection of his work, have no association with itwhatever. 'The Sick Stockrider, ' 'From the Wreck, ' and 'Wolf and Hound'are colonial experiences, finely described. But most of the remainingpoems, 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 verseor 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 _BushBallads_ the 'Rhyme of Joyous Garde, ' a recital of the old tragedy ofArthur and Launcelot; the story of seventeenth-century siege andgallantry in the 'Romance of Britomarte'; the dramatic scenes from the'Road to Avernus;' 'The Friends' (a translation from the French); andthe psychological musings of 'De Te' and 'Doubtful Dreams. '

And the galloping rhymes? Yes, there is indeed one galloping rhyme--'Howwe beat the Favourite'--with a ring and a rush, a spirit and swiftnessof colour, not approached by the best verse of Egerton Warburton orWhyte-Melville. Especially vivid and terse is the description of thelatter part of the race, where the favourite (The Clown) overtakesIseult, 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 'figuresare 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 earlyreputation was made. 'Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shameat the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who areknown to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously tomagazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybodyknew a couplet or two of "How we beat the Favourite" that he consentedto forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of averse-maker. ' Even in this picture of the excitements of the turf, thereis nothing that would not be as true of Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick orFlemington. Yet, it _is_ Australian in the sense that it expresses theone taste which, of all those inherited by the people from their Britishancestors, seems never likely to be lost (as it was by the Americancolonists)--which, on the contrary, has gained in ardour in the newland. Gordon was a pronounced believer in the efficacy of field sportsas a means of maintaining the nerve and hardihood of the race. In one ofhis 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 tobe cultivated and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly, as atBalaclava, 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 ofJoyous Garde' and 'The Sick Stockrider. ' They afford a complete contrastin subject, tone and treatment. The old Arthurian story is the finer andmore finished. There is a nobility in its expression not elsewhereequalled by the author. But the other poem is more direct and simple inits pathos, more easily understood. It tells something of familiarexperience in language irresistibly touching and musical. It would beinteresting and a favourite if only through the obvious fact that itdescribes 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 assumingfamiliarity 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 remorsethan 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 theelegant quotations which he inflicted upon the South Australianlegislators. 'He talked of the Danai, whilst they were vastly moreinterested 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 _TheLaureate of the Centaurs_ (now out of print), was published. Since thenhis poems have become known throughout the English-speaking world. Isthis because he is called an Australian poet--because people wish tolearn something of Australian life from his pages? Do English readersever 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 whatthey tell of tastes and personal qualities dear to the pleasure-lovingand fighting Briton in whatever land he may be. It is the sort ofadmiration that finds fit expression when an English officer and artistmakes a present to the publishers of a spirited and valuable set ofdrawings to illustrate the poem of the Balaclava Charge. No otherAustralian poet has yet found entrance to the great popular libraries ofEngland. Kendall, who almost deserves to be called the AustralianShelley, tells more of Nature in one of his graceful pages than can befound in a volume of his contemporary. But his thoughts are too remotefrom the common interests of life; and of his own character he hasrecorded only what is sad and painful. For the rest, his brief historyseems to prove that scarce any service may be less noticed or thanked inAustralia than the describing of its natural beauties or the writing ofits national odes. 

Gordon has more than once been misrepresented with respect to hisreligious views. He has been called an agnostic, an atheist, even apagan. Passages in nearly a score of his poems must be read and comparedbefore an opinion can properly be given on the point. That he was adoubter, and to some extent a fatalist, appears certain; but there isnothing to support the charge of atheism. He shows a very clearconception of the Christian ideas respecting right and wrong, and of theDivine mercy, but hesitates to accept any theories of punishment in afuture state. His general attitude is one of hope, and of desire tobelieve. He often thinks--too often--of the transiency of life, and ofthe question to be solved 'beyond the dark beneath the dust. ' But thereis 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 givenof his own character. Generous to others, he was too seldom just tohimself. It was well there remained among the friends he left behind afew who knew him for what he was, and who were unwilling that qualitiesoften clouded during his life by an unhappy temperament should beundervalued or forgotten. Kendall's 'In Memoriam' is a worthy tribute, and finely summarizes the general impression of Gordon which one obtainsfrom 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 hehas ignored in his writings the modern social life of Australia. He hasa unique knowledge of the country extending over sixty years, but hisliterary materials have been drawn only from the first half of thisperiod. No other purely Australian novelist has succeeded in making aconsiderable reputation without feeling the necessity of fleeing to themore congenial atmosphere of literary London. 

It is true that even he had to find acceptance at home through thecircuitous route of the press and the libraries of Great Britain, but hewas able to wait for his long-delayed popularity, and when it came andfound him in advanced age, he had no inclination to leave the land ofhis adoption. Probably if literature had been to him more of aprofession and less of a taste and pastime, he would long ago have feltinclined to turn his back upon the indifference with which the coloniesusually treat their own products in authorship until English approvalhas imparted new virtues to them. 

Most of the other writers who have contributed to the portrayal of acertain few aspects of Antipodean life have gone to London or elsewhere. Many years absent from Australia, they know little of its laterdevelopments. Boldrewood has spent a long and eventful life there. Ofthe southern half of the continent he must possess a specially intimateknowledge. Melbourne he has known in all the stages of its growth from acanvas-built hamlet to the finest city in the Southern Hemisphere. Whenhe 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 andexperience. In 1830, being then four years old, he was taken by hisparents to Sydney, and there educated. Early in youth he became one ofthe pioneer squatters of Western Victoria, sharing with a few others thedanger of dispossessing the aboriginals, and soon acquiring considerablewealth. But some years later, going back to New South Wales, andventuring 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 partlyautobiographical, he has minutely recorded the varying fortunes ofpastoral life in the colonies. But the bitterness of failure nevercaused him to forget the happiness of his young enthusiasm, or to speakill 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 ofall pleasant professions--the calling of a squatter. '

Abandoning his ambition to rank with the wool-kings, he entered theCivil Service as a police magistrate and gold-fields commissioner. Inthese combined offices he spent twenty-five years, and, while continuinga good public servant, contrived, like Anthony Trollope, to find timefor substantial work in literature. Though during a period of abouttwenty years he contributed several stories and other literary matter tothe Sydney and Melbourne press, it was not until the publication of_Robbery under Arms_, at London in 1889, that his work obtained duerecognition even in the colonies. Ten years earlier he had made anunsuccessful bid for an English reputation by the publication of _Upsand Downs_, the novel which, under the more attractive title of _TheSquatter's Dream_, reappeared in 1890 as a successor to the famousbushranging story. That the spirited opening chapters of _Robbery underArms_ should have been thought lightly of by Australian editors when theserial rights of the story were offered to them is somewhat astonishing. The author has related how these chapters were successively rejected bya 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 itfor 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 hisstory failed to impress, that his previous work had revealed little ofthe dramatic sense that contributed so materially to his success inpresenting the careers of his highwaymen. But it is less easy to seewhy, when the full possibilities of the story had been realised, thereshould have remained a second difficulty, that of securing a publisherto 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 hadto publish it partly on my own account in England. ' This proof of hisconfidence in the attractions of the story has since been justified byits complete success throughout the English-speaking world. 

A writer with so much experience of Australia, and continuing to residein it, cannot be surprised if he is expected to take a large share ofresponsibility for the fact that Australian fiction--the fictionproduced by writers known to the British public--only in a slight degreereflects the most interesting features in the present-day life of thecountry. At the same time, no such considerations can detract from thesterling merits of Rolf Boldrewood's actual services to Australianliterature. It is hardly possible to believe that the English peoplestill prefer to look to Australia only for stories of adventure; but ifthey do--and as the first to welcome and appreciate colonial writersthey are perhaps entitled to exercise a choice--it is well that suchstories be written from complete local knowledge, and thus at leastcorrectly describe the broader aspects of the country. 

If Boldrewood were asked to explain his silence respecting Antipodeanlife of the present day, he might reply that the novel of modern mannersdid not form any part of the work which he had chosen to do. At allevents, he could claim to be as much a historian as a novelist. It hasbeen his ambition to describe Australia chiefly as he saw it in hisyouth, about forty years ago--as it was immediately before and after thediscovery of gold. That his record _per se_ is strikingly vivid andfaithful is the first general impression which his novels make upon thereader, whether English or colonial. There is about them much of thatair of 'rightness' which Hall Caine has noted to be one of the mostenduring qualities of good fiction, whatever its literary style may be. They are cheerful, virile, soundly moral, and take far more account ofthe good than of the bad in human nature. There is no fondness of thesensational for its own sake. The conditions of probability are observedwith a closeness which, in books dependent for their interest so largelyupon plot and incident, amounts almost to a fault. 

An English historian is said to have declared that he would willinglyexchange a library full of the poets for a single good novel of theperiod in which he was interested. One can readily imagine that if ageneration or two hence there should be any Australian history leftunwritten, any unsatisfied curiosity concerning the simple annals now sofamiliar to us, Rolf Boldrewood's novels might be found, within theirlimits, a more satisfying source of information than all the rest ofcontemporary Australian literature combined, the formal chroniclersincluded, as well as the poets: that is to say, the general view theywould furnish of certain features of pioneer life would be fuller andclearer, and, minor details apart, more reliable than could be gatheredfrom any other source. 

Where is there in the elaborate histories of Rusden, Lang, Blair, andFlanagan, or in any of the numerous books of sketches and reminiscenceswritten by persons who have visited or temporarily resided in Australia, a view of the picturesque variety, colour, and splendid energy of thegreat first race for gold to compare with that given in the secondvolume of _The Miner's Right_, or with the memorable account of whatStarlight and the Marstons saw at Turon during their temporaryretirement from the highway?

Boldrewood, in these descriptions, has done what Henry Kingsley, withhis more eloquent pen, if slighter personal experience, unaccountablyneglected, and what Charles Reade, though he never saw Australia, vividly imagined, and regretted his inability to fully employ. Reade sawa theme for a great epic 'in the sudden return of a society far morecomplex, artificial, and conventional than Pericles ever dreamed of, toelements more primitive than Homer had to deal with; in this, with itsnovelty and nature and strange contrasts; in the old barbaric force andnative colour of the passions as they burst out undisguised around thegold; in the hundred and one personal combats and trials of cunning; ina desert peopled and cities thinned by the magic of cupidity; in a hugearmy collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore by one man'sconstraining will, but each human unit spurred into the crowd by his ownheart; in the "siege of gold" defended stoutly by rock and disease; inthe world-wide effect of the discovery, the peopling of the earth atlast according to Heaven's long-published and resisted design. '

If Boldrewood had not himself realized the literary value of thestirring scenes in which his youth was passed, this summary of theEnglish novelist, published in 1856, might well have suggested it tohim. How far has he succeeded in commemorating those scenes, and in whatdirections chiefly?

In the first place, it is the pictorial, the literal, not thephilosophical, aspect of the subject which has most attracted him. Thereis a personal zest in his remembrance of the general animation of thescene, a keen sense of the pleasurable excitement, freedom andgood-fellowship of the life. His books are essentially men's books. Thisis the universal report of the English libraries. Analytical subtletiesthere are none. Boldrewood is not given to weighing moonbeams. Hisnearest approach to psychology consists in noting the various effects ofrobust, unconventional colonial life upon fortune-seekers and visitorsfrom the mother country. This has been a favourite theme with allAustralian writers, and one of which the female novelists have so farmade the most effective use. One could wish that Boldrewood had madehimself as far as possible an exception to the rule--that he had aimedat a praiseworthy provinciality by matching with the elaborateminuteness of his local colour some finished and memorable studies ofAustralian character. 

Maud Stangrove in _The Squatter's Dream_, and Antonia Frankston in _TheColonial Reformer_, who seem to offer the best opportunities to typifyAustralian womanhood, are gracefully described; but, save for anoccasional longing to relieve the monotony of their lives by a taste ofEuropean travel and culture, they are indistinguishable from such purelyEnglish types as Ruth Allerton and Estelle Challoner. Very pathetic, andmarked by some distinctively Antipodean traits, is the sister of thebushrangers in _Robbery under Arms_. Aileen Marston has the strongself-reliance and independence which are born of the exigencies, as wellas of the free life, of the country. She and her brothers representmuch of what is best in Boldrewood's portrayal of native character. Maddie and Bella Barnes and Miss Falkland in the same novel, KateLawless in _Nevermore_, and Possie Barker in _A Sydneyside Saxon_, arealso Antipodeans, but are only lightly sketched. 

Boldrewood claims that in his writings he has always upheld theAustralian character. It is a fact that he has incidentally done this toa considerable extent, but not by any notable portraiture. In the periodwith which the novels deal the population of the colonies was largelyEnglish; it was, therefore, perhaps only natural that the stranger andadventurer from the Old World, so often well born and cultured, shouldprove a more attractive study than the sons of the soil. Moreover, thelatter, in their monotonous and circumscribed life, lacked much of themystery and romance so vital to the novel of adventure. But when thishas been admitted in Boldrewood's favour, there still remains a broadercharge to which he is liable. 

He has been accused, and it must be confessed with a good deal ofjustice, of paying too little attention in later novels (taking theorder of their publication in London) to the development of even thosecharacters most concerned in his plots. The fault is purely one ofjudgment. It is hardly possible to suppose any lack of ability in awriter who has produced the bright and suggestive dialogue scatteredthrough the pages of _Robbery under Arms_ and The _Miner's Right_. Giving rein to his passion for reminiscence and descriptive detail, hehas paid the inevitable penalty of a loss in human interest. So obviousis this loss in the stories of pastoral life, that one is almost fain toassume it to be the result of deliberate choice. How far the author, inthis section of his writing, has neglected the social and dramaticpossibilities of country life, can be judged by noting Mrs. CampbellPraed's work in _The Head Station_, _Policy and Passion_, or _TheRomance of a Station_. But the best contrast to Boldrewood's style isfurnished by the author of _Geoffry Hamlyn_. 

Henry Kingsley decided the movement of his characters with a lovingcare. Their interests were paramount to him. They made their own story;the story did not make them. Their author cared little for the externalsof Australian life except in so far as they helped to tell something, especially something good, of his leading personages. His interest inthem was not semi-scientific, like that of Thackeray or Jane Austen, Howells or Henry James, in their studies of human nature; it was thatmainly of a sympathiser and a partisan. 

His frequently expressed anxiety about the impression they were makingupon the reader was not always an affectation. There is a realsolicitude in the confidences concerning William Ravenshoe upon hissudden promotion from the stable to the drawing-room of Ravenshoe Manor. 'I hope you like this fellow, William, ' he says in one place, and thenthere is a naïve enumeration of some of the ex-groom's socialdeficiencies. This, at best, is a useless interruption of the story, butit helps, with other signs, to show Kingsley's constant interest in hischaracters. 

Nearly everything in his descriptions of Australian squatting pursuitsis intended to have a definite and notable bearing upon them. Thus, theview we get of the drafting-yard at Garoopna, with Sam Buckley in tornshirt, dust-covered, and wielding a deft pole on the noses of theterrified cattle, is not presented as a piece of station-life so much asa picturesque means of leading Alice Brentwood into an involuntarydisplay 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, isremembered chiefly on account of the picture of Sam and Alice in thefrank enjoyment of their first love as they loiter in the tracks of thesportsmen, and, relinquishing the chase with happy indifference, go homeand sit together under the verandah. 

Kingsley avoided the fault, common to his successors, of exaggeratingthe interest which readers are supposed to take in the general aspectsof life in a new country. He had a keen sense of the value ofpicturesque environment, but wisely contrived that nothing shouldwithdraw attention from the progress of his drama. He was ever on thewatch for opportunities to sketch in lightly and humorously small traitsof character, and to emphasise salient ones. 'She had an imperial sortof way of manoeuvring a frying-pan, ' he says, in allusion to thecheerful adaptability of the high-bred Agnes Buckley, that fine model ofEnglish womanhood, during her first rough experiences in Australia. WhenHamlyn comes to Baroona from the neighbouring station to spend Christmaswith his old friends, he finds the same lady 'picking raisins in thecharacter of a duchess. ' Considered apart from the story, theseDickensian touches might seem merely humorous exaggeration, but to thosewho have traced the development of Mrs. Buckley's character, how happyand 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 adistinct exception to the rest of his work. In the later stories thecharacters are brightly sketched, but with so casual a touch that theyleave no permanent impression with the reader. The best excite no morethan a passing admiration, whereas Kingsley's win lasting admiration andlove. There can be no surer test of art and truth: it furnishes the oneindubitable proof of clear vision, sympathy, and correct expression. Where the weakness of some of Boldrewood's characters is not due todeficiency of interest in them on the part of the author, it is theresult of an attempt to copy life with an accuracy which sacrificespicturesqueness. 

The attempt to preserve absolute truth in every detail of the life-storyof John Redgrave, the hero of _The Squatter's Dream_, seems distinctly acase in point. In no other novel is there so complete a description ofAustralian squatting life--its varying success and failure, its solidcomforts and wholesome happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave is oneof the most elaborately drawn of all the author's characters; there isthe fullest sense of probability in every incident; the entire story isplainly a direct transcript of life; nothing at first seems wanting. Butwhen the book is laid aside, the reader realises that he has scarcelybeen once moved by it. He has felt a transient pity for the hero'smisfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at his modified ultimatesuccess--nothing more. 

The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive ofRedgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aimis no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and whenhe fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly givento the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for MaudStangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennoblinginfluence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impressionof 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 favourwith us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay. There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which eventhe sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found itimpracticable to dispense. 

An illustration of how little Boldrewood was inclined to idealise eitherhis characters or their surroundings is afforded by the account ofRedgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours onthe Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period wheredrunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to thestable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed withcorrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandyplain. ' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at theback of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptaclefor rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-lookingpigs lay in the verandah or stirred the dust and bones in the immediatevicinity of the front-entrance. 'What, in the name of wonder, ' inquiredJack of himself as he rode away, 'can a man do who lives in such afragment of Hades _but_ drink?'

The home of the Stangroves, though less depressing, bears painfulevidence of its isolation. The settler's wife little resembles AgnesBuckley--she is too typically colonial for that. 'She was young, but acertain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face boresilent witness to the toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants ornone at all; to the want of average female society; to a littleloneliness and a great deal of monotony. '

The visitor meets another member of the household, Stangrove's unmarriedsister, a beautiful and spirited young woman whose impatience with hercolourless life is outwardly subdued to ironical resignation. 'Anothereventful day for Mr. Redgrave, ' she remarks on his return after a day'sriding over the station with her brother; 'yesterday the sheep werelost--to-day the sheep are found; so passes our life on the Warroo. '

The best argument against Boldrewood's usual treatment of character isfurnished by the great bushranger chief who is the central figure in_Robbery under Arms_. The author here submits for the first and onlytime to that fundamental law of fiction which demands a certainjudicious exaggeration in the characters of a story depending for itsinterest mainly on the charm of circumstance. Starlight is at once themost real and least possible personage to be found in any ofBoldrewood's novels. He becomes real because his character and actionsare conceived in harmony with the romance and pathos of the story. Though it is obvious enough that there never could have existed abushranger with quite so much of the _bel air_, or with a private codeof honour so admirable, the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He is ofa stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploitsbeing often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense ofreality is maintained. 

Starlight seems to be a compound of several characters. He has Turpin'subiquity, Claude Duval's _sang-froid_, the personal attractiveness ofGardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbinggold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and thehumorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notorietyin the same colony a few years later. 

Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed with the dictum of Turpin, thatit is necessary for a highwayman, at all events a captain of highwaymen, to be a gentleman. But Starlight, unlike Turpin, does not become vainwith 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 incertain aristocratic circles from which, by occasional hints, we areinformed that he has fallen. He indulges in no lugubriousmoralisings--he is far too agreeable a person for that--but exhibitsjust the required touch of romance by letting you know that in his pastthere is a sadness which a career of excitement and danger is necessaryto enable him to forget. Having been won over as a sympathiser andadmirer, the reader is ready to believe that at worst the dashingoutlaw could never have been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author hascarefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessnessof which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typicalbushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing and highway robbery as supervisedby Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious, in so far as theyafford him opportunities to practise some facetious deception on thepolice. Such raids are not crimes, but comedies. 

There is excellent fun in his posing as 'Charles Carisforth, Esq. , ofSturton, Yorkshire, and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs, N. S. W. , ' whileawaiting the arrival at Adelaide of the 1, 100 head of stolen cattle, oras the 'Hon. Frank Haughton, ' one of 'the three honourables' on theTuron gold-field. The rash daring and cleverness of these disguisesfurnish a combination of amusement and dramatic interest not approachedin anything else that Boldrewood has written. Starlight's presence atdinner with the gold-fields commissioner and police magistrate atTuron, when 'in walked Inspector Goring, ' the officer who had been solong and patiently seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance at BellaBarnes' wedding, after a reward of a thousand pounds has been offeredfor his capture, are scenes which remain vivid in the memory long afterthe more commonplace adventures of the lords of Terrible Hollow havelost their distinctness or been forgotten. 

Next to his humour and courage, the qualities which most endear thispicturesque marauder to the reader are the happy fierceness with whichhe commands the respect of his retainers, and his politeness andgallantry to women. When a robbery is to be effected, the plans are laidwith sound generalship, but there is no unnecessary violence or loss ofgood manners. His conduct at the plundering of the gold-escort is fullyequal to the traditional suavity of Claude Duval. 'Now, then, allaboard!' he calls out to the passengers when the contents of the coachhave been removed. 'Get in, gentlemen; our business matters areconcluded for the night. Better luck next time! William, you had betterdrive on. Send back from the next stage, and you will find the mail-bagsunder that tree. They shall not be injured more than can be helped. '

The bushranger of real life, as known to the pioneer colonist, wouldhave bagged his booty with much fewer words. That Starlight should have'treated all women as if they were duchesses, ' and have made it a pointof honour to keep his pledged word with them, in however slight amatter, seems only natural. Not even the women-folk of his enemy areallowed to want a protector. When Moran and his gang of ruffians takepossession of Darjallook station during the absence of the male membersof the household, Starlight and the Marstons ride twenty miles acrosscountry and rescue the ladies before the worst has been done. Starlightbows 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 showhow far the author, fired with the spirit and romance of the story, gave freedom to his imagination in shaping the proportions of hisleading character. Starlight, though he is not, and cannot be, aportrait of any single colonial outlaw of real life, is sufficientlynatural to consistently represent in both his conduct and adventuresmuch that was typical of Australian bushranging forty years ago andlater. 

Some of his characteristics, and at least one of the concluding episodesof the story, were suggested by the career of a New South Waleshorse-stealer who became known as 'Captain Moonlight. ' So much iscertain. Boldrewood has himself narrated to a contributor of theAustralian _Review of Reviews_ his recollections of Moonlight and hisend: 'Among other horses he stole was a mare called Locket, with a whitepatch on her neck. We had all seen her. This was the horse that broughtabout his downfall, and he was actually killed on the Queensland borderin the way I have described in _Robbery under Arms_. Before that, Moonlight had had some encounters with Sergeant Wallings (Goring); andthis day, when Wallings rode straight at him, he said: "Keep back, ifyou're wise, Wallings. I don't want your blood on my head; but if youmust----" But Wallings rode at him at a gallop. Two of the troopersfired point-blank at Moonlight, and both shots told. He never moved, butjust lifted his rifle. Wallings threw up his arms, and fell off hishorse a dying man. As Moonlight was sinking, the leader of the trooperssaid: "Now you may as well tell us what your name is. " But he shook hishead, and died with the secret. ' He was 'a gentlemanly fellow, ' probablyone of that unhappy class of young Englishmen of good birth and nocharacter who are exiled to the colonies for their sins, and there oftenacquire new vices or sink into obscurity. 

When Archibald Forbes was in New Zealand a few years ago, he met apeer'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 isinteresting to note the use Boldrewood makes in his novel of thesuggestion afforded by the bushranger's concealment of his identity. When Starlight is overcome in his last attempt at escape, the curiositylong felt concerning his past life seems for the third time in the storyabout to be gratified. But the reader is once more and finallydisappointed. The bushranger has given his last messages, and is dyingwith some of the indifference to existence which has characterised himthroughout 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 frommany models. And the Marstons are, it seems, the only personages he hasdrawn solely from life. Gardiner, with whom some readers haveidentified Starlight, was, it is recorded, 'a man of prepossessingappearance and plausible address, who had many friends even among thesettlers never suspected of sympathy with criminals, while many of thefair sex regarded him as a veritable hero. '

That the romantic life of this noted criminal furnished Boldrewood withsome material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushrangeris far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one. InStarlight's relations with women, for instance, there is nothing butwhat is manly and honourable, whereas one of Gardiner's exploits was theseduction of a settler's wife, a beautiful woman whom he induced toelope with him to a remote district in Queensland. And, further, none ofthe sensational incidents connected with his capture--his escape under alegal technicality from the death-penalty suffered by some of hisassociates, his imprisonment for twelve years and subsequent exile--aremade use of in the novel. 

The narrative method adopted in _Robbery under Arms_ has so muchcontributed to the success of the story as to be worthy of somecomparison with the ordinary style of the author. The limitationsimposed by the choice of a narrator with no pretensions to education orsentiment, and writing in the first person, proved in this case salutaryrather than disadvantageous. They repressed Boldrewood's usual tendencyto excessive detail, and kept his attention closely fixed on the dramaof the story. 

The occasional deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in thegrouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racypiquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled inAustralian literature, which his account affords of bushranging lifefrom the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which thisview is presented lies the strength and lasting merit of what mightotherwise have been little better than a commonplace series ofsensational episodes. 

Starlight and the Marstons, as we see them, are reckless and dangerouscriminals, but they are not exactly the 'bloodthirsty cowards' and'murderers' known to the press and police of the period. The little theycan plead in excuse for their lives is plainly stated, while nocomplaint is urged against their fate, or attempt made to obscure itsobvious lesson. Grim old Ben Marston's career illustrates one of theresults of the stupidly cruel system of transporting persons fromEngland to the colonies for petty offences which in these days arepunished by a slight fine, and his sons are types of a class who werefar from being as irreclaimable as their offences made them appear. 'Menlike 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 doingwrong by opportunity, and kept back by circumstances from getting intothe straight track afterwards. '

The examples given in the story of the aptness of this remark are oftenvery touching. The poor Marston boys are indeed only half bad. Theirbetter natures, seconded by the influence of a good mother and sister, are continually urging them to reformation, but for this there is noopportunity. The decision of their fate by the turn of a coin when thefirst great temptation comes is symbolical of the trifling causes towhich the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the early days of squattingwas traceable. 

The personal observation strongly marked in all Boldrewood's novels hasin _Robbery under Arms_ its fullest, as well as most skilful, expression. As a squatter, the author had seen the practices of thecattle-thief, and learned his language. He had observed the extent towhich idleness and a love of horseflesh combined to fill the gaols ofthe country, and in later years this knowledge was confirmed in thecourse of his long experience as a magistrate. The judgment with whichhe presents the case of the young Marstons as types of a class isexcelled only by the literary skill employed upon the character of theirchief. 

But there was no need to make Dick Marston so often emphasise thecomfort of living 'on the square, ' and the folly of ever doingotherwise. The story bears a self-evident moral. Humour there is inplenty, but the pathos of tragedy is the dominant, as it is theappropriate, tone of the book. In no respect has greater accuracy beenattained than in the reproduction of the Australian vernacular, that oddcompound of English, Irish, Scotch, and American phrases and inflexions, with its slender admixture of original terms. Visitors to Australia havepraised the purity of the English spoken there by the middle classes. Mr. Froude, as late as 1885, found that 'no provincialism had yetdeveloped itself, ' but he wrote chiefly of what he had heard in thetowns. It is in the country that the colonial dialect--if speech solargely imitative can yet be called a dialect--is most heard. 

Among other interesting features in Dick Marston's narrative is thecurious half-impersonal view which the outlaws take of the efforts madeby the Government to capture them, and their strong dislike, on theother hand, to the private persons who competed with the police for thelarge rewards offered. This detail is as true to life as the example ofthe sympathy and assistance accorded the bushrangers by settlers in theneighbourhood of their mountain retreat. 

It was sympathy of this kind, combined with bribery, which so protectedthe Kelly gang as to involve the Government of Victoria in an outlay ofabout one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds before their destructioncould be accomplished. Effective literary use will be made at some timein the future of the exploits of this last and most daring of all thebushranging gangs, but many years must elapse before the sordid aspectsof their career shall have been forgotten, and only its romance be left. And nothing short of genius will be required to refine the rudeproportions of Ned Kelly into something like the gentlemanly exterior ofthe dashing captain, the smooth gallant, the humorist, philosopher, andquick-change artist of _Robbery under Arms_. 

In _The Miner's Right_, which ranks second in popularity amongBoldrewood's novels, the personal narrative style is again adopted, butwith little effect of the kind produced by Dick Marston's vividdirectness in the earlier novel. Hereward Pole, the hero, is a culturedEnglishman, sensitive and sentimental, who keeps an eye upon humanity atlarge, as well as upon the business of making a fortune which hasbrought him to the colonies. Half of his record, though a strikingpicture of the gold-fields, is not an inherent part of the story of hisown career. Confined to their strictly just limits, the events whichcombine to prolong his separation from the sweetheart whom he has leftin England could have been told in fifty pages. But this would not havebeen all the author wished. He was satisfied with a slender plot and a_dénouement_ which can be guessed almost from the outset as soon as hesaw that they would carry the glowing scenes and episodes of diggingslife with which his memory was so richly stocked. One cannot believe butthat, in this case, his slender attention to the long-drawn thread ofthe story was the outcome of choice. Else where was the need forelaborateness in such details as the dispute over the Liberator claimat Yatala, the trial of Pole and the inquest on Challerson, with theirrendering of witnesses' depositions in the manner of a newspaper report, the riot at Green Valley and Oxley, and the scene at the funeral of theagitator Radetsky? Yet, though these episodes are given at great length, and do not form any essential part of the story of Hereward Pole andRuth Allerton--the vindication of a man's honour and the triumph of awoman's invincible devotion--they are told with so much intimateknowledge and strength of colouring as almost to supply the absence of aplot, and to make the story, apart from artistic considerations, areally fine piece of work. 

It has a popularity in the English libraries which is itself a proof ofthe service done by the author to those who would know something of thecareers of varying success and bitter failure, of hardship and romanticadventure, upon which so many of their kinsmen set out forty years ago. _Nevermore_ and _The Sphinx of Eaglehawk_ give other views of thegold-digging days, chiefly of their seamy side, but these stories offernothing that equals in interest the splendid panorama of pioneer liferevealed in _The Miner's Right_. 

Boldrewood has more than once insisted with evident pleasure upon thegeneral good behaviour and manliness of the miners, and, having been oneof those all-seeing autocrats, the gold-fields commissioners, he is anauthority to be believed on the subject. In _Robbery under Arms_ thenames are given of thirty races represented on the Turon field, andHereward Pole, recounting his early impressions of Yatala, says: 'I wasnever done wondering of what struck me as the chief characteristic ofthis great army of adventurers suddenly gathered together from all seasand lands, namely, its outward propriety and submission to the law. 'Elsewhere he likens the sensible reticence which they observedrespecting their own affairs and those of their neighbours to thedemeanour and mode of thought which prevails in club life. 

A passage from Dick Marston's account of what he saw at Turon is worthreproducing here as characteristic of the author's representation of agold-fields community and as a sample of his humour. The 'threehonourables, ' of whom the disguised bushranger captain is one, aretogether 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. _TheSphinx of Eaglehawk_, the shortest of all his works, might have been anexcerpt 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 anddisastrous droughts. 

The materials employed in the latter story reproduce the principalfeatures of almost a score of other Australian novels published withinthe last few years. The love-affairs of a beautiful, impulsive girl, sighing for knowledge of the great world beyond the limits of her narrowexperience; the influence upon her of a fascinating and gentlemanlyEnglishman, with aristocratic connections and a dubious past; the manlyyoung Australian, whose loyalty, undervalued for a time, is rewarded inthe end--these are some of the items which go to the making of a classof story already somewhat too common. The fact that Boldrewood continuesto make such subjects interesting is due largely to the pervading senseof scrupulous truth, the evident element of personal experience, and thegeneral cheerfulness of tone, which are never absent from any product ofhis pen, and which constitute his highest claims to rank in Australianliterature. 

MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED. 

To Mrs. Campbell Praed belongs the credit of being the first to attemptto give an extended and impartial view of the social and political lifeof the upper classes in Australia. While she has not ignored whateverseemed picturesque in the external aspects of the country, her chiefconcern has been with the people themselves. Some of the best of herworks--_Policy and Passion_ and _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_, forexample--might fairly be named as an answer to the somewhat commoncomplaint of a deficiency of dramatic suggestion in colonial life. 

In a preface to the first-named novel, Mrs. Praed explains it to havebeen her wish to depict 'certain phases of Australian life, in which themain interests and dominant passions of the personages concerned areidentical with those which might readily present themselves upon aEuropean stage, but which directly and indirectly are influenced bystriking natural surroundings and conditions of being inseparable fromthe youth of a vigorous and impulsive nation. '

The point of view here taken by the author at almost the beginning ofher literary career has been maintained in most cases throughout herlater work. The same preface might almost, in fact, serve for all herAustralian stories. They describe broadly, in an attitude ofgood-natured criticism, the leading facts in the intellectual life ofthe people; their proud self-reliance, tempered by an acute sense ofisolation and its disadvantages; their susceptibility to foreigncriticism and example; their frank, natural manners in social customs ofnative origin, contrasted with their quaintly-rigid observance ofconventionalities which have long since been relaxed in the mothercountry whence they were copied. 

Mrs. Praed has turned to account more fully than any other writer thelittle affectations of that small upper crust of Antipodean societywhich is sufficiently cultured to have developed a taste foraristocratic European habits, along with an uncomfortable suspicion of'bad form' in anything of purely local growth. This is the class whichmaintains an air of portentous solemnity in public ceremonials, and isliable at any moment to be convulsed by a question of precedence at aGovernment House dinner. 

From a lively appreciation of comedy to caricature is an easy descentwhich the author has not always resisted, but her exaggeration is soobviously resorted to in the interests of fun that it is unlikely tomislead. There is certainly no need to repudiate as untypical ofAustralian political society the Pickwickian spectacle of a drunkenPostmaster-General fearfully trying to walk a plank after a Vice-regaldinner, in order to win three dozen of champagne wagered by the leaderof the Opposition, while the Premier looks on and holds his sides withmerriment; or the case of the Premier's wife, who, on being told by anewly-arrived Governor--a musical enthusiast--that he hoped to be ableto 'introduce Wagner' at the local philharmonic concerts, said: 'I'msure we shall be very pleased to see the gentleman. '

Considering, however, the opportunities which colonial life, andespecially colonial politics, afford for ridicule, the author has beencommendably 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 onthe defensive?' asks more than once an Englishman in one of her novels. The author seems to have put the same question to herself as anAustralian, and to have decided that ultra-sensitiveness is a worse vicethan affectation, and that her compatriots, by giving way to it, do boththemselves and their country an injustice. For it implies a too lowestimate of what is fresh and strong and of real merit in theindependent life of the nation. 

Colonists need a little more of the philosophic and common-sense spiritwhich can look upon deficiencies and crudities merely as phases in thenatural evolution of society in a new land. This is what Mrs. Praed hasendeavoured to teach in some of her stories. The lesson is oftensurrounded with a good deal of bantering discussion; it may not alwaysbe apparent to an English reader, but it can hardly be overlooked by anAustralian. There is rarely anything so pointed as the conversationbetween Miss Jacobsen and her lover, Chepstowe. The former has beenwondering what the cultivated Englishman thought of a recent noisy andrather vulgar reception tendered to a new Governor for whom he is actingas private secretary. Chepstowe is suspected of being secretly amused athis surroundings. But his view of them is purely rational andmatter-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, butperhaps a deliberate and intelligent effort to acquire some of it inAustralia would be the best specific for that consciousness which, colonists should not forget, is the mark of insignificance. It has beensaid that Australians already have too much to say for themselves andtheir country. The assertion is only applicable to a small boisterousclass 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 widerexperience and culture produced among educated people by their constantuse of British and European literature. James Ferguson, the youngsquatter in _The Head Station_, represents those Australians who, thoughstout believers in their own country, feel its intellectualdeficiencies--perhaps too much; who are more English than the Englishthemselves in their veneration for the historic associations of themother land; who, when they go to London, are curiously at home instreets and among sights that have been more or less definitely outlinedin their imagination from early childhood. 

While three of his English-bred companions are exchanging reminiscencesof London life, Ferguson listens with an eager interest, 'putting in aremark every now and then which had the savour, so readily detected, ofacquaintance with the thing in question by means of books rather thanpersonal experience. ' In Mrs. Praed's stories, as in real life, apersonal acquaintance with other countries gives the Australian a truerappreciation of the good in his own. The man who has taken part in theartificialities of a London season, or has been a spectator of its pettyrivalries, returns joyfully to a simpler life; the woman who is prone todeify the smooth-spoken Englishman, learns through him to value the morehomely virtues of colonial manhood. 

In the difficult task of rendering attractive the restricted life of thesquatting class, who form the country aristocracy of Australia, Mrs. Praed has combined humour and a terse cultivated style of expressionwith a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merelycommonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnishmaterials for bright little sketches immediately associated with someromantic 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 thevine-trellised verandah at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlightimparting a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing withe of orangebegonia touching her shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of guavason the ground beside her; Elsie Valliant waiting for her lover on therocky crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two giant cedars andoutlined cameo-like against the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdylittle belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves at her churn, pretendingunconcern when she is surprised by her English visitors--these are someof the pictures in which the author commemorates much that is noteworthyin the warmth and colour of tropical Australia and in the daily life ofits inhabitants. This fondness for posing her heroines is one of theminor features of her work. Its results in some of her later novels arenot, however, always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the history ofthe unhappy Judith Fountain in _Affinities_ are painful, and theportrait, in _The Brother of the Shadow_, of Mrs. Vascher as she lies inthe mesmerist's blue-silk-lined room is an unnecessary ghastlyelaboration. 

The hardships suggested by the beginnings of pastoral life amid thegiant forests and intense loneliness of Australia are never allowed byMrs. Praed to give a gloomy colour to her stories. It is one of theirdistinct merits that they present the humorous incongruities rather thanthe trials of pioneering, though the latter are by no means ignored. Inthe first three chapters of _The Romance of a Station_ some excellenthumour is provided by the young bride's account of her home-coming tothe rude mansion on her husbands mosquito-infested island station, andthe ludicrous privations she encountered there. There is nothing of thekind more amusing in the whole of Australian fiction. The description ofthe household pets, and the vermin--including a lizard with an uncannyhabit of 'unfastening its tail and making off on its stump whenpursued'--rivals the famous verandah scene in _Geoffry Hamlyn_. Anintimation in the preface that these experiences are a faithful recordfrom the early life of the author herself sufficiently explains theirgraphic quality. Amusing also are the sketches of the aristocraticsettlers in _Policy and Passion_ and _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ who try toapply the principles of æstheticism to the crude surroundings of theirnew-made homes in the backwoods--Dolph Bassett with his ornamentalbridges and rockeries and his grand piano; Lord Horace Gage explainingwith his maxim, 'If we can't be comfortable, let us at least beartistic, ' 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 ofAustralia only in climate; its social and political conditions areessentially the same in character as those in the rest of the country. The Englishman acquiring colonial experience, the squatter living invarious stages of comfort or discomfort, the gentleman spendthrift fromwhom his family has parted with the affectionate injunction, 'God blessyou, dear boy; let us never see your face again!' and the politicalparties which go in and out of office 'like buckets in a well' (to usethe author's own expression), are, or have been, common features ofevery colony. Like several of her heroines, Mrs. Praed alternated lifein the country with the gaieties of the capital. 

The position of her father, the Hon. T. L. Murray-Prior, as a member ofthe Legislative Council, brought her into contact with those politicaland vice-regal circles of which she has given entertaining andoccasionally derisive accounts in _Policy and Passion_, _Miss Jacobsen'sChance_, and elsewhere. Her description in the former story of thewealthy landowners, who adopt a passive and somewhat disdainful attitudetowards party strife, applies to a class already large in the colonies. Whether such an attitude is consistent with 'the truest conservatism tobe found in Australia, ' which they are said to represent, may bequestioned. It seems rather to indicate selfishness, petulance, and lackof patriotism. 

It is not, however, upon the business of politics or the humours andmakeshifts of colonial life that Mrs. Praed has expended her bestefforts as a writer. Some study of the human emotions is the primaryinterest in all her novels. There is nearly always love of thepassionate and romantic kind, prompted on the one side by impulse, ignorance or glamour, and on the other by passing fancy orself-interest: the love of an innocent, unsophisticated woman for a manexperienced in the pleasures and some of the darker vices of life; and, in contrast, the blunt respect and devotion of the typical Australianman for the same woman, and her light estimate of his worth. Thetragedies of marriage--the union of the refined and imaginative with thecoarse and commonplace, the high-souled with the worldly and cynical, the pure with the impure--are correlative themes of some of thestrongest of the novels. In these, pathos is the prevailing tone. Wehave the spectacle of the woman's blind, illogical trust abused, herhelplessness in self-inflicted misery, or the tenacity with which, intemptation, she clings to the safeguards of conventional morality. Inmost cases this tenacity, which the author accounts an instinct ratherthan a virtue, is either allowed to triumph, or is placed by deathbeyond the possibility of a supreme test. In the loves of HesterMurgatroyd and Durnford in _The Head Station_, of Mrs. Lomax and LeopoldD'Acosta in _The Bond of Wedlock_, and of Mrs. Borlase and EsméColquhoun in _Affinities_, it is the woman who directly, or byimplication, insists upon respect of the marriage tie so long as itremains a legal obligation. 

But it should be made clear that Mrs. Praed is not in any sense apropagandist on the subject of marriage. She illustrates, oftenimpressively, its difficulties and anomalies, but leaves the rest to thejudgment of the reader. The romantic, ignorant girl who marries ontrust, or is ready to do so, has numerous representatives in thesenovels. Though it is a woman's view of her trials and unhappiness thatis 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 theinevitably lenient, the pitifully inadequate estimate which women makeof men themselves. 

The most striking illustration of this feature is probably contained inthe last scenes of _The Bond of Wedlock_, where the heroine learns atonce the hypocrisy of her father and the dishonour of her lover. Thefather, in a fit of resentment, has revealed the mean plot by which shehas 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 HarveyLomax, while the audacious old humbug, his father-in-law, does thebusiness of a detective. Ariana's dream of happiness is dissipated. Shehardens into indifference. The revelation completes the disillusionmentwhich had already begun. 'I had set you up as my hero, and my ideal, andI 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, ChristinaChard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of Mrs. Praed's unhappyheroines. Married life, as they illustrate it, is usually a compromise. Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not quite a failure. Her husband does notattempt to conceal the fact that she no longer interests him, but withthat commonly-accepted philosophy which recognises a wife as at least anadjunct 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 towhich she had been self-deluded: 'I am not going to be melodramatic. Wecan be very good friends on the outside. We need never be anythingmore. '

A strong bias towards analysis is the chief characteristic of Mrs. Praed's studies in character. As in her illustrations of the perplexinguncertainties of married life it is the woman's point of view that ismost impressively presented, so in each story there is at least onewoman whose personality stands out in pathetic relief and claimsparamount attention. She is usually a cultivated woman of romantictendency, living in a restricted social environment, and displaying thecraving of that class of her sex for change, pleasurable excitement, andsympathy. In the satisfaction of her yearnings or ambitions are seen, perhaps more often than is typical, the gloomy aspects of marriage, andthe incompetence of women to manage their own lives. 

The average Australian girl of real life is neither very romantic norfastidious. She is cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to bethoughtful, and has a decided inclination towards married life. Itsmaterial advantages and status attract her--and, for the rest, she has avague confidence that everything will come right. Nowhere is the horrorof elderly spinsterhood more potent. The influence of independentprofessional life fostered by the large public schools is stillinfinitesimal. 

The type upon which Mrs. Praed has bestowed her most elaborate workbelongs to a class both higher and far fewer in numbers. It is the classthat Mr. Froude had chiefly in view when he noted the absence of 'severeintellectual 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 thecolonial woman educated beyond sympathy with her native surroundings, and unprovided with any employment for her mental energies. With thedistractions and interests of her narrow circle exhausted, and theknowledge that her future--her only possible future--must soon bedecided by marriage, she is consumed with an intense and reckless desirefor new emotional experience. Her unrest is like that of the large classof American women who are educated above the purely commercial standardof their fathers and brothers, and are impelled to satisfy theirintellectual cravings by frequent European travel. 

'This is only a state of half-existence, ' said Honoria in reference toher country life in Australia. 'Books are so unsatisfying! I read themgreedily at first, then throw them aside in disgust. They never take onebelow the surface. . . . I want to grow and live. . . . What is the use ofliving unless one can gauge one's capacity for sensation?' Gretta Reay, in whom the same discontent is reproduced, exclaims: 'Ah, we Australiansare 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 cultivatedEnglishman, who offers them the prospect of change and emancipation frommonotony, is distinctly preferred in marriage to the man of colonialbirth and experience. 'Don't you know, ' says Gretta to one of thelatter, 'that an Australian girl's first aim is to captivate anEnglishman 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 beingmore emphatic in her preference for the doubtful stranger, andirrational in her objections to her tried Australian lover, FrankHallett. Once, in a riding-party, 'she had moodily watched his(Hallett's) square, determined bushman's back as he jogged along infront of her, and compared it with Blake's easy, graceful, ratherrakish, bearing. Why was Frank so stolid, so good, so commonplace?'

A trifling superficial defect of the same sort turns the tables againstthe gallant young explorer, Dyson Maddox, in his first suit for the handof Miss Longleat. The half-dozen analytical studies of female characterin the principal novels of Mrs. Praed are far from flattering to hercountrywomen, and might be somewhat misleading if we permitted ourselvesto forget that in every case it is only one phase of a colonial girl'slife that is being given. 

The whims, the countless flirtations, the greed for new sensations, theinconsistencies and the apparent mercenary attitude towards marriage, are not more permanently characteristic of the women of Australia thanof Englishwomen with equal opportunities. The impulses of the former areunder few conventional restraints; they have a greater control of theirlives: that is the only material difference. The matrimonial creed ofGretta Reay expresses rather the exaggerated cynicism of a coquette thana fact generally true of the class to which she belongs. The experiencesof herself and of other leading characters in these stories correctlyshow that, although Australian women have an undoubted preference forthe gentlemanly product of an older civilisation, it is a preference ofsentiment 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 commercialview of marriage. It had been systematically planned that she shouldcontract an aristocratic alliance; for years she had co-operated withher parents in elaborate preparations, half pathetic, half ludicrous;she had been guarded and nurtured like a hothouse-plant. At last, whenher opportunity came, she relinquished her lover on finding that therewas another who had a prior right to him. 

The subtle skill with which some of the nobler qualities of her womenare brought out, especially their capacity for self-sacrifice anddevotion, marks Mrs. Praed's highest point of achievement in theportrayal of character. Her knowledge of the mental complexities of herown sex is both deeper and better expressed than her observation of men. In the most inconsistent, the most cynical, or the shallowest of herwomen, there is a latent tenderness, a soft womanliness, which conquersdislike. Thus, it is impossible to lack sympathy for Christina Chard, oraccept her own estimate of her selfishness, after reading thefinely-written scene in which she is found kneeling by the bedside ofher dying child, from whom she has been so cruelly separated, while herrecreant husband stands apart in awe and humiliation; or, again, in theinterview with Frederica Barnadine, when the claims of both women tothe love of Rolf Luard are discussed. 

The absence of similar redeeming qualities in several of the principalmale characters leaves them almost wholly without definite claim on ourregard, and also lessens the effect of the author's frequent endeavoursto impartially contrast the unconsciously low moral standard of theaverage 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 ofsentiment and passion revealed to them by men older in years, andskilled in those small arts and graces of refined society which are everattractive to women. But, in fulfilling this design, the men themselvesare often placed in a strained and artificial pose. The presentation ofthe purely emotional side of their nature inevitably tends to produce anappearance of weakness and effeminacy. 

There is hardly a single admirable quality in Barrington, the base loverof Honoria Longleat; or in George Brand, who deserts Esther Hagart inher poverty and loneliness, and years afterwards, on finding herrecognised as the niece of an English baronet, persuades her into anunhappy marriage; or in Brian Gilmore, the profligate in _Moloch_, whoseeks to rejuvenate his jaded passions with the love of an innocentgirl, after abandoning another woman whose life he has spoiled. SirBruce Carr-Gambier forsakes Christina Chard and her child for cowardlyreasons 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 theold world with the simplicity of the new, and help to give the necessarydramatic point to the several stories; but there is so much of the cadin their nature and conduct, that it is difficult to accept them asrepresentatives of any conceivable type of the Englishman of birth andrefinement. This result, however, does not imply any actual inability onthe part of the author to realise the standard of true manhood in allits varying strength and foibles, its tenderness and honour. Where therehas not seemed any necessity to bend the character to the requirementsof the story, admirably life-like sketches of men have beenproduced--such as Rolf Luard in _Christina Chard_ and Bernard Comyn in_An Australian Heroine_ among Englishmen; and Dyson Maddox, FrankHallett, and James Ferguson among Australians. 

Though it is plain that Mrs. Praed has generally found colonial menwanting in interest in proportion as they themselves lack the polishthat travel and extended experience of social life impart, she has notoverlooked the rugged dignity, the truth and virility, which are theirhighest characteristics. Alluding to Ferguson as one type of hiscountry, she observes that, 'underlying the rough-and-ready manners andthe prosaic routine of bush-life, there is an old-world chivalry, areverence for women, a purity of thought, a delicacy of sentiment. . . . This is partly due to the breezy moral atmosphere, and partly to theinfluence of books, which become living realities in the solitude andmonotony of existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is anodd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student wholearns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to itspronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or societyslang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits;but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to thesoul, he has made his own. '

Ferguson himself echoes the same estimate in pleading his suit with MissReay. 'It seems to me, ' he says, 'that there's a kind of chivalry whichcan be practised in the bush here better than in great cities--thechivalry Tennyson writes about--the knighthood that isn't earned bysauntering through life in a graceful, smiling sort of way, with yourheart 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, theAustralian man seems crudely provincial. Yet he is never shown in anincorrect or merely satirical light. There are, to be sure, occasionswhen he appears too tame and Dobbin-like in acceptance of his lady'scaprices; but this is partly an evidence of that mixture of stiff nativepride and independence which forbids servile appeal even to one heloves. 

The deficiency of which the reader is most often conscious inendeavouring to make a general estimate of Mrs. Praed's work is a wantof breadth in her scope--a presentation too constant and too tense ofcertain phases of the passionate life of men and women, to thecomparative exclusion of those softer and higher attributes which evenCharlotte Brontë (whose touch that of Mrs. Praed occasionally resembles)did not neglect. In other words, we are not given enough to admire. There are few pictures--and none that can be called memorable--of happymarried life to contrast with the vivid tragedies of mistaken unions. An inclination towards humorous disdain characterizes the references inthe 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 siderepelled by indifference; an uncouth parent offering rough sympathy thatirritates instead of soothes; a sensitive girl writhing under thebrutalities or _gaucheries_ of a drunken father. 

A survey of the author's female characters will recall over a score ofnames of discontented girls experimenting in life--flirts, minxes, unhappy wives, and shallow society women; while after passing over halfa dozen of the _ingénue_, the amusing and the neutral types, thereremain only about four to represent the highest and most lovablequalities of womanhood. A similar division might be made between themale characters, though here the preponderance of the bad would not beso great as in the first case. 

The descriptions of English society which are amongst Mrs. Praed's bestwork are marked by the same clear vision of the darker side of humannature that is displayed in the treatment of English character in herAustralian novels. Her view of the 'smart' section of English society issomewhat severe. After reading several of her novels, one could almostimagine her defending her literary preference in the words of EsméColquhoun, in _Affinities_: 'What is our mission--we writers--but todistil 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 theoutcome of influences which have been gathering through centuries ofadvancing civilization . . . The reign of healthy melodrama is over; thereign of analysis has commenced. We make dramas of our sensations, notof our actions. ' The same view is expressed in an article contributed byMrs. Praed to the _North American Review_ in 1890. 'Analysis, notaction, ' she notes as the prevailing characteristic of the fictionproduced by female writers, 'as it is also of our modern social life. 'But, 'to dissect human nature under its society swathings needs, ' sheadds, 'the skill of a Balzac or a Thackeray, while the femininecounterpart of a Balzac or a Thackeray is difficult to find. '

That indefinable power which includes sympathetic insight and does notoverlook whatever is good even in the most repulsive character is, perhaps, what the describers in fiction of modern society need even morethan skill in dissection. To observe and dissect what is corrupt iseasier than to make the record of corruption presentable. Mrs. Praed'sown tale _The Bond of Wedlock_, with all its undoubted cleverness, itsrealism and dramatic strength, fails in its due impression as a pictureof latter-day English morals because it is too sordid, too completelydevoid of any of the better qualities of humanity. 

To see Mrs. Praed in her most agreeable and natural moods one mustrevert to the novels in which the scenery and people of her own countryare described. In _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_ we have her liveliestexample of humour and caricature, in _The Head Station_ her mostcheerful pictures of country life, and in _Christina Chard_ some accountof the society with which colonists of wealth surround themselves inLondon. The latter story has several finely dramatic scenes and is asample of the author's mature work. Hers is the most comprehensive viewthat we have of the social and political life of the Antipodes, and forthis and for her minutely recorded knowledge of her own sex she willlong continue to hold and deserve a foremost place in Australianliterature. 

TASMA. 

Between the writers who profess not to see anything individual in thelife of Australia and those others who confine themselves to describinga few of its principal scenes and types of character, Tasma holds amiddle and independent place. She is absolutely without predilectionsand hobbies. Her materials are chosen for some quality ofpicturesqueness rather than for the purpose of illustrating any phase oflife at the Antipodes or elsewhere. So little are some of her novelsconcerned with the external appearances of the country that the scene oftheir action might easily be transferred to almost any part of GreatBritain or America. 

Incidentally she has given a few strongly-sketched views of places--ofMelbourne in midsummer, with its buildings of sombre bluestone andstucco, and streets swept by dust-laden hot winds; of Riverina, arid anddrought-stricken; and of the peaceful beauty of rural Tasmania, the homeof her own youth--but these and other descriptions from the same pen areslight 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 thepresent at all events, more than sufficient use has been made in fictionof the natural peculiarities of Australia. Her novels are, moreover, allcharacter studies, and little dependent upon local colour for theirinterest. Her quiet, satirical humour and power of rapidly and mordantlysketching a portrait, do much to justify a comparison which her friendssometimes make of her writings with those of George Eliot and JaneAusten. Rolf Boldrewood, after the publication of her first three books, hailed her as the 'Australian George Eliot, ' and the title is certainlymore fitting than the praise implied by the other comparison. She hasmuch of George Eliot's conscientious literary expression, directmasculine way of looking at life, and unsparing criticism of her ownsex. While reminding one, as she often does, of Jane Austen's humour, Tasma does not approach any nearer to that writer's supreme gift ofdescribing character in dialogue than scores of others who have followedthe same model during the last seventy years. 

Like most of the chief contributors to Australian literature, Tasma is acolonist in experience only. She was born at Highgate, near London, andtaken during childhood by her father, Mr. Alfred James Huybers, a Dutchmerchant, to Hobart, in Tasmania, about forty years ago. She displayedliterary talent at an early age, read extensively, and publishedcriticisms in the _Melbourne Review_, and short stories and sketches inthe lighter colonial periodicals. 

In 1879 Tasma went to live in Europe, and has since known Australia onlyas an occasional visitor. Becoming interested in social questions duringa residence in France, she wrote in the _Nouvelle Revue_, suggestingemigration to the colonies and engagement in the fruit-growing industrythere as a means of relieving some of the poverty of the Old World. Sheafterwards lectured on the subject in French at the invitation of theGeographical Society of Paris. So successful were the lectures that shewas induced to repeat them in various provincial centres, as well as inHolland and Belgium. This work occupied from 1880 to 1882, and Tasma waspresented by the French Government with the decoration of Officierd'Académie. The King of the Belgians also honoured the lecturer byreceiving her in special audience to discuss means of improvingcommunication between Belgium and Tasmania. 

In 1885, after revisiting Australia, Tasma was married to M. AugusteCouvreur, a distinguished Belgian politician and journalist (he hassince died), and four years later began her career as a novelist by thepublication at London of _Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill_, which proved tobe one of the most notable books of its season. 

This novel remains the best example of the author's humour and power ofdescribing character that she has produced. It has none of the marks ofa first effort. Written when Tasma was about thirty-two, it embodiedsome of the best fruits of many years' keenly critical study of life, inaddition 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 laternovels--but sufficient variety of incident is given to afford scope forunusually rich faculties of sympathy and philosophic observation. 

In her desire to present only real persons moving in a familiar worldshe merits, in _Uncle Piper_, praise almost equal to that accorded byNathaniel Hawthorne to the novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke ofthem as being 'as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of theearth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants goingabout their daily business and not suspecting that they were being madea show of. ' It is, however, less of Trollope than of Howells that Tasmareminds the reader in this first story. The character of the wealthy_parvenu_ uncle, sensitive, boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yettender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls _Silas Lapham_, thatwonderfully natural and sympathetic presentment of a commonplace man. There are numerous points of resemblance between the two, especiallywhen they are shown contrasted with their aristocratic friends. Thedelightful comradeship of Lapham and his wife, with its curiously dryNew England expression, has its counterpart in Piper's affection for hissister and their pride in each other. 

The half-acknowledged social ambitions of both men, qualified by theirsecret contempt for the pretensions of the upper classes, is shown invarious similar ways, as is also their love of display. They differ onlyas their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives in the Americanmerchant and his wife, and unconsciously sways their lives. UnclePiper's conception of the Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has areligion of generosity and love which in the end nothing canrepress--which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematiccoldness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son andstep-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind--the tractablesection of them--there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy andreserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tendernesswhich is irresistible. 

The superiority of Silas Lapham as a realistic portrait is not difficultto affirm; still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that thecharacters thus far approximate. Uncle Piper is under all thedisadvantage that a figure in fiction suffers in being described largelyin plain statement by the author instead of being gradually revealed inpiquant dialogue. 

Readers of _Silas Lapham_ will remember the rapid series of wittytouches with which the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in theoffice of his warehouse, surrounded by samples of the mineral paint thathe is so pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a dignifiedindifference as he answers the rather flippant curiosity of the localpress interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is introduced, asall of Tasma's characters are, in sundry solid-looking pages of directnarrative. It is true that their humour and epigram make bright reading, but they are necessarily without the power of pithy dialogue to create avivid impression of character. 

Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian plutocracy need hardly bediscussed. Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every community has itsproportion. It may, however, be said that the owners of luxurious villasin the suburbs of Melbourne have individually a good deal more grammarand less generosity than he who was described by one of his fashionableEnglish guests as possessing 'the home of a West-End magnate and theintonation of a groom. ' The author herself would probably disclaim anyintention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt theexistence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and shecertainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them. 

A passage in her third novel, _The Penance of Portia James_, gives herviews on this subject, and incidentally upon Australian character. Adescription is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of anAustralian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a_habitué_ of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron ofart and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices. 

 To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of English readers as thoroughly typical Australians would be as unjust a proceeding as was that of Dumas _père_ when he declared that all the inhabitants of Antwerp were _roux_ because he had encountered two red-headed girls on his way to the hotel. No one is thoroughly typical unless he be a savage or a peasant. Portia and her relatives retained their own underlying individualities none the less that they had been influenced in their outward bearing and modes of expressing themselves by a long sojourn in the backwoods of Victoria, in daily contact with all sorts and conditions of men--broken-down gentlemen, English yokels, bush-hands, and the like. After all, the moulding of character by outward influences alone is not a work to be achieved in one generation, or what would become of the theory of heredity, upon which everything is supposed to depend, more or less, in our present scientific age? If these people strike the English reader, therefore, as differing in certain respects from those he is accustomed to meet in his daily walk through life, let him remember that the differences which will strike him most are the merely superficial ones resulting from an occasional departure from the conventional rules of speech and behaviour that guide his own outward conduct, and that in all the main essentials they are, _au fond_, neither more like him or more unlike him than though chance had willed that they should be born and brought up on the selfsame patch of earth as himself. A difference in the vocabulary of the native-born Australian, or long resident in Australia, of the not too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a corresponding class in England, is one of those facts, however, which 'nobody can deny. ' I am not going to enter in this connection upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs. James would have called 'höfisch' English, and the English that has been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and backwoodsmen. Suffice it to say there _is_ a difference, and Portia was never more sensible of it than when she returned, as on the present occasion, from moving among a London society crowd into the Anglo-Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington house. 

Tasma's efforts to give variety to her work, and keep as far as possibleout of the beaten paths of the Australian writer, have not, however, quite excluded from her novels characters which will be recognised astypical. There is, for instance, the young pleasure-loving colonial manwho keeps racehorses, gets deeply into debt and love, and has sometimesto encounter awkward parental alternatives. 

At least three excellent portraits of such men are given. The best isthat of George Drafton, in _In Her Earliest Youth_. In no other novelare the rough good-nature and loose, slangy talk of the young Australiansportsman of the upper-middle class more naturally expressed. Theauthor's knowledge of the cant terms and short cuts in the vocabulary ofthe not necessarily ill-educated but supremely careless colonial youngman is almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who has been listeningto the talk of such men all his life. 

Uncle Piper's exasperating 'gentleman' son George is also a noticeablyclever creation in a book full of good portraits; and it is a tribute tothe author's skill that as the story progresses our sympathy for himincreases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding the needless agoniesof rage he occasions his father. 

The most vivid chapter to be found in any of Tasma's novels is that inwhich Uncle Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between Laura Lydiatand George, sends for the latter and threatens to cast him off if amarriage of the pair should take place. Laura is an agnostic and a sortof 'new woman' who maintains a constant attitude of disdain towards herstepfather. She and George have spent much of their youth together, discussed pessimistic theories in Piper's hearing, and generally ignoredhim, and made him feel his ignorance in ways very trying to the temperof a man who, 'now that his money-making days were over, had a passionfor dictating absolutely to everyone about him. ' 'He'd talk' and 'she'dtalk, ' as Mr. Piper would complain; 'and they'd spout their scraps ofpoetry that hadn't an ounce of the sense any good, honest old rhymecould show; and you'd think, to hear them, they were doing their Maker afavour by condescending to go on living at all!'

An alliance of this kind between the two people for whom he had donemost with his wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was determinedthat it should not become a closer one. Was this not one reason for hisimportation of an entire family of impoverished relatives, that they andhis little pet daughter, the angelic Louey, should readjust the balanceof household power in his favour?

It was on the eve of the arrival of his aristocratic connections, theCavendishes, 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 manto a favourable view of 'the only wish that he had ever framed with afeeling that savoured of intensity. '

Before entering the ornamental tower where his father awaited him, George had composed his face to its usual expression of laziestindifference. His imperturbability always 'had the effect of a goad uponhis father's temper. His face never changed colour when the old man'swas purple. His voice never lost its measured drawl. '

 As Mr. Piper turned and faced him you would never have traced the sonship in George. There was nothing in common between the sallow, indolent face of the younger man, and the spreading, heated face of the elder. George looked like any club-lounger--not unwilling to let it be seen that he is slightly bored, yet ready, with perfect acquiescence, to go through with an hour or a forenoon of the infliction of boredom, as conveyed by a father's presence. . . . Mr. Piper watched him as he continued tranquilly to pare his nails, the baffled sense of helplessness that exasperated him at the outset of an interview with his son creeping over him as he watched. If George could only once have lost his head and sworn, or only once implored or threatened! But he never did. The apathy and unconcern of his attitude--the veiled disrespect it implied--spoke of an indifference that was worse than the most open revolt. But surely he would be made to feel now! Mr. Piper had never tried to reach 'my gentleman' through his 'young woman' yet. . . . A slight elevation of an unruffled brow just gave evidence that though his eyes were looking critically at his almond-shaped finger-nails, his ear took in the sense of his fathers words. Otherwise he might have served as a perfect model of intentness upon his hands, as the statue of the boy who to all eternity will be absorbed in the task of extracting a thorn from his foot. 

Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute excitement. 

 'I'll see and put a stop to it!' he threatened. 'I'll take and pack her off, and you at the back of her, "my gentleman"!' George knew that the use of this expression signified especial bitterness on his father's part. 'I'll have an end of this nonsense--a painted jade like her!'

 'Wait a minute, please, ' said George, shutting the knife with a little snap, and settling himself back upon the window-sill; 'you are a little hard to follow, or I am slow at catching your meaning, perhaps. I understand that you had some object in sending for me. Are you explaining it to me now? I am quite prepared to listen, as you see. '

 'You're very condescending, I'm sure, ' said Mr. Piper, with such withering sarcasm that George stroked his moustache and smiled. 'You put yourself about for your father a deal too much, "my gentleman, " there's no doubt of it. ' Then, with a sudden break in his voice: 'No, George; it's not much of a son you've been to me, and no one can say I've stood in your light. I'd like you to show me another young man who could carry on top ropes like you. There's not many fathers 'ud have stood it. Most fathers 'ud made you turn to long ago. '

 'Do you want anything done for you?' interrupted George, with the air of a man who is laying himself out to oblige--'another tour of inspection in the north?'

 Whenever Mr. Piper made allusion to George's want of occupation, it was the young man's policy to refer to this tour of inspection--a memorable tour, seeing that it had given him employment for at least three months. . . . 

 If there was anything humiliating in being rated as an 'able-bodied young man who wasn't worth his salt, ' as a loafer who was hardly fit to 'jackaroo' on a station, as a 'lazy lubber' who would 'go to the dogs if it weren't for his father, ' George never betrayed that he felt humiliated by so much as the twitching of an eyelid. Persistently stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as Mr. Piper stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing an inclination to yawn. 

 'I dare say it's all very true, governor, ' was all he said in reply. 'It's very nice and complimentary, I'm sure, and I ought to be very much obliged to you. But, _à propos_ of your compliments, may I ask if it was only to treat me to them in full that you brought me up those confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that case, I wouldn't have minded waiting, you know. It's hardly fair upon a man, is it, to put him to the treadmill before he's well awake in the morning?'

 'If you were like other young men, ' retorted Mr. Piper, 'you'd be up and down them steps twenty times a day' (George shuddered); 'but oh no! my gentleman can crawl on to the lawn and carry on with a----'

 'Stop there!' cried George, in a tone that made his father silent through sheer astonishment (George had never been known to raise his voice before). 'Do you know the relation in which Laura stands to me?'

 He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and seeing the ghastly change that came over the face as he looked, he felt that he had been over-hasty. For the glass through which Mr. Piper had made a feint of looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips worked in a distorted fashion over his discoloured teeth; the blood rushing away from his florid cheeks left them streaked with thready, sanguineous veins, mottling the ash-coloured patches; and rushed back again with a force that seemed to swell the veins round his temples to bursting. . . . 

 'What's the matter, father?' said George at last, not with any of Louey's vehement alarm, but eyeing him rather gravely and curiously. 'Do you object to my looking upon Laura in the light of a--_sister_?'

 'Eh?' said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable. 

 'Of a sister, ' repeated George slowly, 'and a friend. '

 'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine, thank God! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill again!'

 'You mistake the position of affairs, ' said George calmly. 'Laura wouldn't have me if I wanted!'

 'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful. 'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?'

The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will not haveLaura as a daughter-in-law 'at any price, ' and that if George choose tomarry her it must be as a pauper, and unrelieved of his heavy burden ofturf debts. Piper's stormy, almost speechless anger, like his cravingfor sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. Hispersonality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, SaraCavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineationof an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of UnclePiper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of herother works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in _In Her EarliestYouth_, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the same class, in the shortstory _Monsieur Caloche_, are shown only in a satirical and repulsivelight, which necessarily makes them appear somewhat unreal. 

As a vivid study, combined with excellent comedy, the portrait of SaraCavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishnessconcealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdlyexcessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat, are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a passenger bythe ship which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gavehis weekly sermons during the voyage, Miss Cavendish was always present, and looked at him with her large eyes to such purpose that they 'seemedto be absorbing his meaning into the soul of their possessor. '

But there was nothing ethereal in Sara's thoughts. 'She had a fancy forimagining becoming dresses. She would build up a delightful wardrobe inthe air, entering into as many details of her airy outfit as though itcould be instantly materialised. And she liked to imagine a becomingbackground for her own beautiful person, in which a husband with theessentials of good birth and unlimited money, and the desirablequalifications of an air of distinction and great devotion to her, filled a reasonable space. ' Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreamssuch 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 ofupsetting had reference to the shape of an imaginary velvet train. '

The insight and completeness with which Sara's character is depicted inthe course of the story make it impossible that the reader shouldentirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. Sheis one of that large class of women, with a limited capacity foraffection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don'tbe shocked, ' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessfulsuit 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 authorgives a charming picture of the elder sister's affection andthoughtfulness for others. 

Margaret Cavendish and Eila Frost, in _Not Counting the Cost_, are goodwomen of a perfectly possible and natural kind, and it is surprising tothink that the same hand which drew them also found patience to draw theunhappy, metaphysical heroines of _In Her Earliest Youth_ and _TheKnight of the White Feather_. Tasma is seldom so pleasing as whendescribing the characters of children, of whom several figureprominently in her novels. There is a delightful picture of rompingchildhood at the opening of _Not Counting the Cost_. The scene is a farmin the shadow of Mount Wellington, near Hobart, the city where theauthor spent many of her own early years. 'Chubby, ' the eight-year-olduncle of the heroine of _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Louey Piper arelovable creations, though, it must be said, more quaint than natural. One remembers the expansive dignity of the former on his first meetingwith Pauline's lover, George Drafton. 'How do you do, little man?' saysthe latter condescendingly. 'How do you do, sir?' replies the little manstiffly, raising his garden hat. 'You are an acquaintance of Paul--ofMiss Vyner's, I believe. I have the honour to be her maternal uncle. ' Nowonder George bursts into a loud guffaw, notwithstanding the tragicintensity of his love protestations of five minutes before!

Louey Piper's relations with her father are idyllic. She is morenecessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continualnegotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could nothave displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-worldchangeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers ofuncertain testamentary inclinations. ' In her limited knowledge of thingsoutside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presentedthemselves to her in the light of shocking and mysterious man-traps. . . . The wistful, yearning look that gave her eyes so touching an expressionin the setting of her small freckled face never gave place to such afulness of satisfaction as when her father, her brother, and her sisterwere all, as it were, under her eye, and safe to remain indoors for thenight. '

The general praise won by _Uncle Piper_ for its author as a delineatorof character appears to have decided her to give increased attention toher ability in this direction. The immediate result was scarcely a happyone. The analytical bias disclosed in the first story was largelyextended in the second, with the usual accompaniment of a decrease inaction and humour. Pauline Vyner, the central figure of _In HerEarliest Youth_, a sensitive and speculative girl, marries without lovea man who has saved the life of a child to whom she is much attached. Intastes and intellectual bent the pair are almost without anything incommon. The story--an unusually long three-volume one--is mainly aminute study of Pauline's disillusionment during the early period of herwifehood: how she escaped the temptations placed in her way by a man whohad 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 dramaticmovement 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 thetragic pathos of so common a matrimonial error as Pauline's, especiallyas George, though uncongenial in his tastes, and not exempt from theordinary weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to her, and wouldreadily have improved under her influence, had she chosen to exert any. Tasma's more recent work is better both in spirit and literaryconstruction. Very sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative, in_Not Counting the Cost_, of the adventures of the Clare family in theirquixotic travels in search of the cousin who is to restore them along-lost heritage. In this story and _The Penance of Portia James_ theauthor gives some interesting scenes of Paris life. But to get the bestsamples of her humour, one must return to her first novel. The burlesqueof Piper's pompous, genteel brother-in-law is delicious. Mr. Cavendishaffects 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 conceivesthe project of hunting up a pedigree for his plebeian relative, afterthe manner of the enterprising person who opened a 'heraldry office' inSydney about fifty years ago, and announced his readiness to provideclients with reliable information of their ancestors, together withsuitable 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, butshows 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 thefirst meeting of the two men, humbly wondering how she could soften theheart of her discontented lord towards the low-born brother--'how leadhim to pardon, as it were, his benefactor for having dared to benefithim, ' and the subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not only waswealth an acknowledged power, 'even though pork-sausages should havebeen its alleged first cause, ' but that, after all, 'politic members ofthe great ruling houses in the old world had been known to makeconcessions to trade, ' and he 'was prepared to make concessions too!'Accordingly, he resolved that the meeting with his relative should bearthe 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 aconsistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in_Not Counting the Cost_ is made ridiculous in his harangue on the dutiesof the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception, little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regardsbroadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with hersomewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if notless pungent, is of a quieter kind. 

Next to their humour and skilful presentation of character, the mostnoteworthy feature of these novels is their lucid and polished language. The style is, perhaps, scarcely easy enough for fiction. Its qualitiesand culture are those that equip the essayist or critic rather than thenovelist. Indeed, judged by some of her early work in the reviews, andby the little philosophic exordiums with which she opens so many of herchapters, Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist. To a large classof thoughtful readers it will always seem that what her novels lack indramatic interest is fully compensated for by their more than usuallyfaithful sketches of both men and women, and by their intimate andsympathetic view of our common life. 

THE END. 

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 

_G. , C. & CO. _

 +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation (book-form/book form, gold-fields/ | | goldfields, horse-racing/horseracing, race-horses/racehorses) | | has been retained. | | | | Minor typographical corrections are documented in the source | | code of the html version of this e-book. Instructions for | | viewing those corrections will be found in the transcriber's | | note at the end of the html file. | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+