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Title: The real Australia
Author: Alfred Buchanan
Release date: August 15, 2024 [eBook #74258]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co, 1907
Credits: Alan, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL AUSTRALIA ***
THE REAL AUSTRALIA
THE
REAL AUSTRALIA
BY
ALFRED BUCHANAN
AUTHOR OF
“BUBBLE REPUTATION”
Where the water-blossoms glister,
And by gleaming vale and vista,
Sits the English April’s sister
Soft and sweet and wonderful.--KENDALL.
PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
PUBLISHERS
1907
[_All rights reserved._]
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The object of a novel is, as a general rule, to reflect life and
temperament in a selected environment. For various reasons it has
become the fashion to achieve this end by indirect means. An author
goes to Italy, and writes a book about Italy. He tells us the things
about Italy, and the people of Italy, that we want to know; but in
order to discover these things we have to read many pages dealing with
imaginary persons, for whose adventures we may or may not care, and in
whose personality we may or may not believe.
The present work is merely an attempt, and an obviously imperfect one,
to do directly what the travelled and cosmopolitan novelist does in
an indirect way. That is to say, it is an attempt to mirror in some
fashion the social life, the literary life, the individual life, the
present-day life, of a developing continent and four millions of people.
The author is aware that books of this kind are usually written by
travellers of more or less distinction. He knows that it is the easiest
thing possible for your up-to-date journalist to rush across to Japan
or Siberia and to be back in six months with the MSS. of a book that
will exhaust the subject. He knows this; and he is bound to admit that
he may be lacking in that breezy and picturesque point of view which
follows naturally on an acquaintance of ten weeks, but is liable to
vanish with a knowledge of ten years.
Yet he does not apologise; certainly not for the subject matter,
nor yet for the fact that he writes about Australia as a resident
Australian. The living world should be at least as worthy of
interpretation as the dead world, or the world that existed only in
some writer’s brain. What he does apologise for is the treatment,
should that prove _altogether_ inadequate to the theme.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. VIRTUES AND VICES 1
II. SOCIETY 23
III. JOURNALISM 45
IV. THE GAME OF POLITICS 68
V. PSEUDO-LITERARY 91
VI. ADAM LINDSAY GORDON 113
VII. THEATRES AND AMUSEMENTS 137
VIII. THE ETERNAL FEMININE 160
IX. TWO CITIES 181
X. THE NOVELIST AND HIS SELECTION 204
XI. THREE WRITERS OF VERSE 225
XII. FOUR PRIME MINISTERS 252
XIII. THE IMPERIALIST 277
XIV. THE LITTLE AUSTRALIAN 296
INDEX 313
THE REAL AUSTRALIA
I
VIRTUES AND VICES
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
_Life_ there outlying!
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as national character.
That is to say, there is no set of qualities peculiar to any one
nation. In every known country extremes meet. They meet now, as they
met in the days when history began. Greece has had its Zeno and its
Epicurus, Rome its Octavian and its Vitellius, France its Barrère and
its Chateaubriand, Germany its Heine and its Bismarck, England its
Cromwell and its John Wilkes. Why multiply the list? Why assert of
the contrasted characters that exist always side by side that one is
typical of the people as a whole, and the other is not? Why imply that
one class of individual ceases to exist at a particular parallel of
latitude, and another begins there and then to take its rise?
But while there is no such thing as national character--except in the
sense that historians find it convenient to use--it is yet a fact
that certain people encourage each other in certain practices, and
that these practices come in time to assume the proportions of public
virtues and vices. One environment may permit an individual to wear a
species of garment, or to indulge in a form of language that would be
among other surroundings either legally forbidden, or frowned out of
existence. The unwritten law in regard to externals insensibly modifies
both the law of conduct and the habit of thought. In Australia there
are opposing tendencies at work. There is, in the first place, the
tendency to freedom and to license which the remoteness from an older
civilisation fosters. Opposed to this, and rapidly overcoming it, is
the tendency of a country, as it develops settled institutions, to
mould itself on the ambitious models of fashionable society elsewhere.
As a third factor, and an undoubtedly powerful one, there is the
influence of climate. This is tending in Australia to produce a
different race of beings, physically and morally, from that in the
Northern Hemisphere. It is tending to do so--but up to the present it
has produced a crop of half results, of insufficiently proven theories,
and of partially established types.
There are certain qualities--virtues, they may be called--that come
prominently under notice in Australia and appear, from their habit of
repeating themselves, to form some integral part of the life of the
community. The foremost of these good qualities is that of hospitality.
And here a singular anomaly presents itself. Politically the
Australians are the most exclusive and the most inhospitable race on
earth. Their only rivals in this respect must be looked for among the
bottled-up Confucians of China, or the mysterious Buddhists of Thibet.
The “white-ocean” policy of the Federal Parliament, no less than the
present Immigration Restriction Act, with its humorous travesty of
an education test, is the most glaring instance of political bigotry
that has come to light in modern times. The whole of this legislation
has been described by an Australian Prime Minister as a “monstrous
outrage” on every tolerant sentiment and every democratic ideal. Yet
the law has been in force for three years and no Minister or Government
has dared to repeal it. It is true that a certain concession has been
made in favour of the Japanese. But it is only a partial concession.
There the law stands on the statute-book; and there it seems likely to
remain until the excluded victors of Tsu-shima show a desire to argue
the question from the vantage ground of a battle-ship. In the latter
event anything might come to pass.
The anomaly consists in the fact that the Australians, desiring to
live politically like frogs in a well, are, as individuals, among the
most open-hearted and hospitable in the world. The prevailing temper
is shown in small things as in great. In England, if you are in doubt
as to your locality, you feel some hesitation in asking a stranger
to put you on the right road. The hesitancy may do the Englishman an
injustice, but his manner explains it. In Australia you have only to
enquire as to the whereabouts of a certain street or of a particular
house, to be accompanied half the way there by a man who is manifestly
and unmistakeably pleased to be in a position to give the information.
The same hospitality is shown in the average householder’s desire to
surround himself with as many people as possible, to entertain as many
as possible, and to have as many as possible sampling his wines and
his coffee and his cigars. If you are thirsty in Australia--and the
thirst of the nation is proverbial--it is usual to look for some one
who will drink with you. The hermit temper is not common, nor is the
prevailing type that of the individual who wishes to be let alone, and
to enjoy things alone. If there is a new lawn, or a new piano, or a
new motor-car, the owner has a real anxiety that its merits should be
tested, and its benefits shared by as large a circle as practicable.
Vanity may have something to do with this desire, but however accounted
for, it exists. The inconsistency between the temper of the unit and
the policy of the Government--of each successive Government--runs from
A to Z. The elector who will vote to have black men deprived of the
means of earning a living, brown men deported, and blind or sick men
refused the right to set foot on land, will, if he meets the alleged
undesirable immigrant in the ordinary paths of life, come to his
assistance with an alacrity that the good Samaritan of sacred history
might equal, but could not surpass.
There are other qualities that must compel admiration. The Australians
are receptive-minded, tolerant--except in the political sense just
mentioned--and ready to learn. The intense conservatism of older
countries is not theirs. Standards are not arbitrarily fixed as they
are in Britain. The social groove is not artificially restricted. It
is narrowing, but it is still fairly broad. The slavish adherence to a
certain set of rules, designated collectively as “good form,” is not
a characteristic of the people. In the unwritten code that finds most
favour there is the principle that a person may be worth cultivating
even though he does not pronounce his “_a_’s” as if they were “_ai_’s,”
and even though certain monosyllables, by the aid of which the smart
set avoids the trouble of conversation, form no part of his vocabulary.
The Australian holds--in theory, at any rate--the revolutionary
doctrine that every one should be given a chance. Now and again an
individual is found who acts up to this unfashionable and somewhat
crude precept.
There is something elastic in the people’s attitude to life. They have
not become socially or mentally atrophied by centuries of convention,
by centuries of custom, by centuries of meaningless and idiotic
routine. The atrocious crime of being a young nation, with much of what
the word youth implies, is still to be laid at their door.
A certain warmth, a certain generous instinct, a certain spontaneity
of thought and action, a certain buoyancy of temper, must be placed to
the credit side of the ledger. A certain fairness to opponents must
also be conceded, despite the remarks of a noted English cricketer to
the contrary. This fairness becomes all the more praiseworthy when
it is remembered that the only topic on which the Australians, as a
people, hold any definite opinions is that of sport. Such being the
case, it is inevitable that some feeling should be shown when matters
of sport--that is to say, matters of far more general interest than the
fate of Governments or the choosing of Parliaments--are being decided.
Invidious comparisons are sometimes drawn between the behaviour of
crowds in Sydney or Melbourne, and the behaviour of crowds at Lords’ or
at the Oval. The fact is usually overlooked that the London rough, who
is the counterpart of the Australian larrikin, is not to be met with in
any numbers at an athletic contest. For one thing he has not the money
to go there, and for another thing he has not the desire. But the more
boisterous and more objectionable type of Australian has a habit of
finding his way to cricket matches in Sydney or in Melbourne. Broadly
speaking, it is a select crowd that watches the game in England--a
crowd made select by the price of admission. It is a crowd less select
in Australia, for the reason that the price of admission is more easily
obtainable. Allowing for all the circumstances, and measuring unit for
unit, it is a fact that the virtue of fairness to opponents is one that
the new nation can confidently claim.
Much might be said--in fact much has already been said, and much more
will be said--of the vices of the people. This is a topic on which it
would be foolish to dogmatise, seeing that so much depends on the
individual point of view. Vice itself has become a term of obscure
meaning. What with our logicians and metaphysicians, our up-to-date
moralists, and our new hedonists--what with our emancipated lady
novelists, our reforming social philosophers, and our revolting sisters
and brethren--what with all these, we have no arbitrary rules of
conduct, and no definitions that can for a moment be relied upon. Even
so correct and comparatively orthodox a writer as Edmund Burke has
made a statement implying that vice practically ceases to exist when
it is sufficiently embroidered and set among sufficiently magnificent
surroundings. To be vicious to the accompaniment of fine phrases and
minuet-like movements--to be vicious while the rich embroideries are
sweeping the floor, and the lights are falling on velvet curtains, and
“the stately silver shoulder stoops”--that is not really to be vicious
at all. Such at least would appear to be the general opinion. And if
the general opinion is not to be taken as a guide in these matters it
is difficult to say what is.
So far as national vices come under the heading of national
crimes--and the terms are more or less related, though they are not
identical--it can be easily shown that Australia is neither very
much better nor very much worse than other countries. The number
of people who are punished each year for crimes of various kinds
is, relative to population, much the same as the number similarly
punished in the United Kingdom. Statistics of drunkenness are
incomplete and unreliable, but there is the authority of Mulhall
for the statement that while the United Kingdom consumes 3.57 proof
gallons of intoxicants per inhabitant, Australasia consumes no more
than 2.50 gallons. Illegitimacy is somewhat more prevalent in the
Southern Hemisphere than in Great Britain, but the difference is not
considerable. The proportion of illegitimate births is 6 per cent.
in Australasia and only 4.15 per cent. in England and Wales, but
in Scotland, where morals are understood to be rather austere, the
proportion of illegitimate births is 7 per cent. And so it is in regard
to most other offences--in regard to burglaries, assaults, thefts,
murders and the rest. The lot of the average policeman is neither more
nor less unhappy, neither more nor less strenuous, in Australia than
in England. The chances of being murdered in one’s sleep--though the
middle-class English household may disbelieve the statement--are not
appreciably greater in Australia than they are in Great Britain.
Yet a nation that is outwardly law-abiding may be inherently vicious.
The habit that saps vitality may not be the habit that advertises
itself in the police-court. As a matter of fact, a heavy crop of
burglaries, and assaults with violence, may be quite a healthy sign,
tending to show that national vigour is unimpaired. Every philosopher
knows that the abounding energy which, in the one case, drives the
possessor to break open doors and to hit other people on the head will,
in ninety-nine other cases, impel him to daring feats in exploration,
or in athletics, or in war. It is the drug-taking habit, the
cigarette-smoking habit, the card-playing habit, the gambling habit,
the loafing, swearing, work-shirking habit that produces the most
insidious results, and tells the most disastrous tale. None of these
practices are liable, in the ordinary course, to land the perpetrator
in a Court of Law. There is no statistician who can say anything
definite about them. But that they are all unduly and dangerously
prevalent in Australia is a fact admitting of no reasonable doubt.
The most pervading phase of Australian character is its
irresponsibility. If this is not a vice in itself, it is the parent
of a great many vices. The term by which it is usually designated is
lack of principle, or of moral sense. The average Englishman may be
innocent of much outward profession of virtue, or, for that matter,
of any definite, cut-and-dried standard of beliefs. He may be a very
long way from the ideal of the just man made perfect. But very often
he is discovered to possess something that may be neither creed nor
conscience, but that is more potent than either. It is more than a fear
of the law. It is more than regard for the opinion of others. It is
more, even, than sense of shame. It is the inner something--accumulated
instinct, if you will--that makes a man prefer, when the pinch comes,
to do the honourable thing. At the very least, and at the very worst,
it makes him silent as to his vices, and conscious of the fact that
they are not virtues. But the Australian is beginning to run into a
different mould. It is the commonest occurrence in the world to find
him talking and boasting, jesting and laughing, over that about which
he should be most inexorably dumb. Of his successes with women, of
his breakages of the seventh commandment, of his nights at bridge or
in a public-house, of his supposed power of cajoling man, woman, or
child--and more especially woman--he will talk as long and as often as
he can get an audience to listen to him. The larger the audience the
better he is pleased. It is an unfortunate tendency of the people, and
the fact that there are conspicuous exceptions to the rule just laid
down does not make the tendency any less noticeable or less unfortunate.
When this irresponsibility reaches its zenith, its nadir, its crown
and summit of perfection or imperfection, it produces the Australian
larrikin. Every one knows this product of the hour. His fame has
spread from hemisphere to hemisphere, and from pole to pole. All
the hooligans of London, all the gamins of Paris, all the lazzaroni
of Naples, all the miscellaneous ruffians of Cairo and Port Said,
have not eclipsed, or even approached, the reputation acquired in the
space of a very few decades by this child of beneficent skies and
benign, smiling weather. It is impossible to say anything new about
the Australian larrikin, just as it is impossible to exaggerate the
heights of his lawlessness, or to plumb the depths of his depravity.
But from the scientific and psychological points of view he is both
interesting and valuable. There are a number of well-informed and
earnest people who are distressed and disgusted by the all-pervading
hypocrisy of our social laws and conventions. Mirabeau, who was
exceedingly well informed, and very much in earnest, made it a boast
that he had mastered all formulas. He had in fact reached the summit
of irresponsibility. The Australian larrikin is in precisely the same
position. But when you take weight off one man you enable him to redeem
a nation; when you take weight off another you make him what he is--a
living monument of hopeless vulgarity and inexpressible vice. In
view of the fact that the temper of the average man is more disposed
to make of him a larrikin than a Mirabeau, it becomes evident that
artificial restraints are, in the aggregate, the salvation of the race.
From the member of the “Rock’s Push” and of the “Flying Angels” we
learn valuable lessons--lessons which such enthusiasts as Godwin and
Condorcet would have us ignore. We learn that conventional laws are
necessary, that artificial restraint is admirable, that people must
be prevented by force from being what most of them left to themselves
would become.
Of a somewhat similar type to the larrikin, though not occupying
such a dizzy pre-eminence, is the cad of common or everyday life.
This individual is not quite hopeless. If he were taken in hand and
disciplined, drilled, and tutored, made to shoulder a rifle and
practise a compulsory goose-step, fined every day for using bad
language, forbidden to stand at street corners, imprisoned for the
habit of expectoration, and under no circumstances allowed the use of
a bicycle, he might come in time to be a valuable citizen. At present
he is left too much to his own devices. Lord Roberts had his English
counterpart in view when he announced that the future of the Empire
depended on the adoption of a scheme of conscription. A warlike race is
not to be discovered at street corners. It does not grow there. Neither
is it over-much given to frequenting unregistered race meetings, and
“two-up” schools. It swears occasionally, but only when circumstances
appear to call for emphasis. Something will require to be done with the
youth who perambulates its main streets before Australia will be able
to supply the world with a new Thermopylæ, or even another Yalu.
The form of vice that is more or less prevalent in all countries--a
form that is continually being warned against by the social brigade
of the Salvation Army, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union,
and a worthy Colonial Secretary, and some less worthy members of the
police--is a form much in evidence in Australia. The warfare, it need
hardly be said, is scarcely as profitable, while it is as unending as
the warfare of the Pigmies against the Cranes. There is scarcely a main
street in which, after dark, the evidences are not visible of that
which the hypocrite censures, and which the wise man merely deplores.
In this continent all social currents follow their own bent. There is
no attempt to make people moral by Act of Parliament. There is not even
an attempt to save them by Act of Parliament from certain possibilities
arising from their own actions. So the woman goes her way. Her unending
sacrifice--for there is no doubt that it is a sacrifice, chosen as the
less of two sacrifices--brings in the usual rewards, social outlawry,
criminal associates, a fiery, unquenchable thirst, and a slum in which
to draw the curtain. It is a very ancient story. In matters of this
kind one does not look for novel and revolutionary features. The life
of pleasure here is as pleasurable as it is elsewhere. As much, and
no more. The pleasure, facetiously so called, is the outcome of an
industrial system under which the working womanhood of the country
is expected to feed and clothe and house itself on ten shillings
a week, or less. By the toil of feminine hands--so long as they
choose to toil--factories abound, industries keep themselves going,
manufacturers grow rich. By the sacrifice of feminine respectability
the carrion kites of society are fed. It is an obvious truth that
Australia is always in danger of being injured, politically, by its
statesmen, while it is always being rescued, socially, by its nymphs of
the street.
There are certain acts, certain qualities, which it is impossible to
forgive. On the other hand, there is a certain species of wrong-doing
that is readily pardoned. Vice, as already pointed out, is to some
extent a relative term; and if the motive is not petty or sordid, if
the actor can rise to great occasions, if the man or woman is superior
to the occasional outbreaks of his or her worse nature, it is safe
to say that the nation is still capable of great things, and is by
no means inherently bad. The most noteworthy characteristic of the
Australian is his mental attitude to life. It is an attitude that is
in danger of becoming crudely materialistic. It is impossible to build
on this anything lasting. The pursuit of pleasure may be pardonable
enough; but it is distinctly disquieting, from the point of view of
one who wishes his country to be anything or to accomplish anything,
to discover that the word _pleasure_ is being given only one meaning.
“Patient, deep-thinking Germany” was at one time laughed at by the
wits of Vienna and Paris. But Germany has had its Koniggratz and its
Sedan, and is laughed at no longer. The moral is that it is better, in
the national sense, to be patient and deep-thinking than to be shallow
and pleasure-loving. The charge that is being brought against the
typical Australian is that he is not self-contained enough, not deep
enough, not patient enough, not idealistic enough. The pleasure that
he understands, that he works for, that he gives himself over to, that
he is limited by, is the obvious pleasure that is dependent on sense,
and the things of sense; and _that_ must inevitably, sooner or later,
become pallid and dead. He seems to be learning--in very many cases he
has already learned--
To say of shame, what is it?
Of virtue, we can miss it;
Of sin, we can but kiss it,
And it’s no longer sin.
And he threatens--it may be only a threat--to flutter down from the
stage of spasmodic enterprise to that of foolish indifference, from
that of energy to that of ineptitude, from that which commands the
respect, to that which invites the contempt of nations physically
stronger and more enduring than his own.
Australia has so far achieved nothing great from the national
standpoint. It cannot be said to have failed, because it has not yet
been called upon. There are people who declare that they have the
utmost confidence in its future. And if certain present-day tendencies
could be overlooked, or if they could be obviated, as they might be,
this confidence would be abundantly justified. The country has still
indefinite room for expansion. It is not over-populated, and for at
least another century is not likely to be. The wild-eyed enthusiast
who imagines, with Milton, that he can see a noble and puissant
nation rousing herself like a strong man from sleep, and shaking her
invincible locks, must, if he forsake the _rôle_ of prophet for that
of the sober speculator, find some habitation and dumping-ground for
the people that are to be born hereafter. And there are not many
regions remaining where new growths can be attempted without decided
inconvenience to the old. Apart from South America, Australia is
practically the only country offering--the only country, that is to
say, where there are millions of acres of unoccupied land, and a soil
and climate that do not actually forbid approach. But the people, if
they are to do great things, if they are not to become a tributary of
some foreign power, or an appendage of Eastern Asia, must be prepared
sooner or later to make a few changes, and even a few sacrifices. They
must be prepared to give up the habit of looking to their big brothers
for ideas on art and literature, and dress, and dining, and ball-room
dancing, and methods of pronunciation, and national defence. They must
be prepared to get a _belief_ of some kind, a religion of some kind.
They must be fanatical on some point--whether a religious point or a
point of national honour, it does not matter--or they will go down
before the Oriental fanatic as surely as the grass goes down before the
scythe. No one imagines that a dilettante preference can stand against
a consuming fire.
Be it a mad dream or God’s very breath,
The fact’s the same,--belief is fire.
The Australian must be prepared, in the event of great emergency,
to die for something or for somebody. When he is thus prepared, his
virtues and vices will not greatly matter; they will learn as a matter
of course to adjust themselves.
II
SOCIETY
The gods their faces turn away
From nations and their little wars;
But we _our golden drama_ play
Before the footlights of the stars.
George Eliot, in a passage that has become famous, lets it be
understood that good society is a terribly expensive product, that
it is accustomed to float on gossamer wings of light irony, and that
in order to bring it to perfection infinite labour is required from
common people who sweat in factories, and toil in coal-mines, and
tramp heavily about in agricultural districts “when the rainy days
look dreary.” The novelist was dealing particularly with England; but
the circumstances which she had in mind repeat themselves more or less
exactly in most civilised countries. Even in Australia, which has not
been civilised very long, men are sweating in factories, and toiling
in coal-mines, and grubbing industriously on way-back selections for
the benefit of other people who live in large houses and give a social
tone to populous cities. Much interest attaches to this thing called
“good society.” Is it, as a matter of fact, floated on gossamer wings
of light irony, or on gossamer wings of any sort? Is it as delicate and
ethereal as George Eliot says it ought to be?
There are certain truisms that do not require to be insisted upon.
They are self-evident. Mr Henry Crosland, who has become quite famous
through his ingenious habit of turning positives into negatives,
and negatives into positives, says that the moral tone of English
upper-class circles is excellent, while that of English middle-class
circles is deceitful and desperately wicked. But the ordinary man, with
no literary reputation to weigh him down, declares confidently that
the facts are neither as George Eliot nor as Mr Crosland declare them
to be. The term society, as commonly used and understood, refers to
the limited number of people who have come into possession either of a
certain property or of a certain name. The atmosphere of this circle
is not light and buoyant. It is heavy, and _blasé_, and tired, and
dull. This good English society does not float on gossamer wings; it
drags itself round two continents with very conscious endeavour. It is
not ironical; to be that, requires mental effort, while it is easier
and more effective to be supercilious. This same society is not moral;
the whole scheme and purpose of conventional morality is narrow and
circumscribed, and therefore unattractive to those unprejudiced people
who perceive that arbitrary rules of conduct are made for slaves.
The set in question is in no single particular what its apologists
and admirers declare it to be. It is not really exclusive; a man
with sufficient means can always enter it. There is only one thing
to which it is actively antagonistic, and that is ability. It is not
antagonistic to poverty; it is merely disdainful. Its arrogance is
appalling. Its lack of creative power is more appalling still.
And yet while the characteristics of the best London society are
of this nature--while the whole edifice would suggest the Jugurtha
reflection that the city is for sale, and will perish quickly when it
finds a purchaser--it is undeniably true that the passion to enter the
comparatively limited circle is steadily growing. The desire is the
natural result of that envy which the man or woman who is everywhere
circumscribed feels for the individual who is in all things privileged.
The important circumstance at present is that the London “four hundred”
were never more run after than they are to-day. Their patronage and
presence were never in greater demand. We may swear that this smart
set is a very dull set; we may vow with the earnestness of conviction
that its very atmosphere is fatal to initiative and inimical to brains,
and more destructive to morals than to either; but there is not a
woman, scarcely a man among us who does not bear witness, in the way
he dresses, or dines, or parts his hair, or takes the hand of a lady
in a ball-room, that he is a humble imitator of the example set him
by the people who live in large houses and flourish in the pages of
De Brett. There is not a man outside this narrow pale, be he English
or Australian, who could walk along Piccadilly in the company of two
members of the aristocracy, effete though that aristocracy may be,
without a sense of elation bordering on vertigo. With all its vice
and frippery and inanity and boredom, the thing called society is an
influence, a power, a far-reaching entity, a commanding and controlling
force. From a distance we can criticise it and discover what it really
means, what it actually is. But at close quarters it makes cowards of
us--that is to say, of all who are not hermits or desperadoes, of all
who are not phenomenally rich or abysmally poor.
Good society, as already mentioned, is a peculiarly English
institution. Nevertheless, it has flourishing offshoots in different
parts of the world. In Australia, there is rapidly growing up a set of
conventions and a habit of speech founded on a close study of the older
community. There is such a thing as Australian society. It exists. It
is ambitious. It aspires to be recognised. It wants to grow. Some of
its members have been presented at Court and have brought back with
them large social aspirations. Certain of its women have been taken
into dinner by members of the British peerage. Quite a number of
Australian tailors have been in Bond Street and have made observations.
A proportion of Australian dressmakers has seen something of Paris.
These dealers in cloth and millinery have magnificent ideas. They have
impressed themselves and their notions on the home-staying community.
So it has come about that dress, wealth, reputation, fashion, and
appearance have done a great deal between them to create the nucleus of
a favoured _clientèle_, and to scatter to the winds the obsolete idea
that in a democracy all things are equal, and all people are socially
on a _par_.
What, it may be asked at the outset, is meant by the term “Australian
society”? It has been agreed that something of the kind has been
evolved. But who are the individuals? Where are they? How can they be
recognised? For purposes of rough-and-ready definition, they may be
classified as the people who are in the habit of receiving invitations
to Government House. It is the business of the aide-de-camp to discover
who is who in Australia. The task is impossible to the statistician
or the scientist, but it seems in some mysterious fashion to fit in
with the temperament and abilities of an aide-de-camp. There are no
definite rules that can be relied upon. The dividing line between
desirables and non-desirables is of the most shifty, and uncertain, and
elusive character. Yet, when mistakes are made, as they always will
be, the social uproar is tremendous. The unfortunate official whose
business it is to request the pleasure of So-and-so’s company at a
Vice-regal dance, or a garden party, is for ever voyaging upon troubled
waters, with scarcely a beacon or a land-mark to guide him. His eye
may light upon a few judges, a few prominent politicians, one or two
naval and military officers, half a dozen wealthy land-owners, and a
few prosperous warehousemen. So far as they are concerned, he knows
he is safe. But there remain the grocer, the land-agent, the brewer,
the confectioner, the lawyer, the singer, the actor, the doctor, the
grass-widow, and many more--a miscellaneous assortment which cannot be
entirely ignored or collectively accepted, and which presents a problem
baffling in the last degree.
It is almost unnecessary to say that the social world of Australia is
controlled by women. It is they who set most store upon artificial
distinctions. It is they who value most the receipt of a request to
disport themselves on His Excellency’s lawn, or in His Excellency’s
ball-room. It is they who understand best how far the Vice-regal card
of invitation exalts them over their sisters who have not come in for
a like attention. The average man, if left to his own devices, would
not sparkle with animation at the prospect of either a Government House
dance, or a Government House garden party. This average man--unless
he happens to be very young and very volatile--is not an enthusiastic
exponent of those ball-room exercises in which Ouida’s heroes excel.
Neither has he any delight in the formality and stiffness, the silk
hats and the long coats inseparable from a two hours’ promenade on
some distinguished person’s lawn. If it were a matter of personal
inclination, he would confess that he knew better ways of amusing
himself. But the Australian woman is socially ambitious. Her passion
for social festivities is unquenchable. When the tocsin has sounded she
will march with the procession--at the head of it, if she can. And the
man of her circle, whether he likes it or not, must march with her.
All the mannerisms that do duty in the society of one hemisphere come
in their turn to do duty in the society of the other. The puppets
advance and retire to identical sets of rules. If the high handshake is
fashionable in England, it must become fashionable in Australia. If it
is the custom to take your partner’s arm in the West End of London, it
has to be the custom, a little later, in certain quarters of Melbourne
and Sydney. If it is the correct thing for the young English lordling
to talk in tired monosyllables to the daughter of the Marquis, it is
equally the correct thing for the Australian young man of means to look
as bored as possible when conversing with the daughter of the host. One
artificiality follows another. The imitative processes extend to the
manner of using a finger-bowl, and of handling an eye-glass. If white
waistcoats and gaudy ties are the rule among certain people in England,
they become the rule among certain people in Australia. Society in
either country is raised, fortified, buttressed, and embellished with
shams--with shams that have nothing to recommend them on the score of
cleverness, or ingenuity, or outward grace or hidden meaning. They
represent, simply and solely, the desire of a certain class to do
certain things in a manner peculiar to itself.
As to the inner life of this fashionable society, as it exists in
Australia, there is little new to be said. The object in view is
simply that in view everywhere else, namely, that of obtaining as much
amusement as possible, and of being left to one’s own devices as little
as possible. All the distractions known to civilised man are drawn
upon in one country as in another. The men bet on racecourses, drink,
and play cards. The women do all three, and in addition smoke and talk
scandal. In one respect Australian society has an advantage over that
of London, or of Paris. It has more physical energy with which to
pursue its vices and its follies to the bitter end. Its opportunities
for extravagant display may be fewer, but its zest is greater. It has
no series of inter-marriages to look back upon. It has no titled and
_blasé_ families to support. Its fathers or its grandfathers belonged
to the race of hardy pioneers. The present generation is the product
of a virile stock. As a consequence it has not exhausted its physical
equipment. There is a certain buoyancy about its mental attitude,
a certain juvenility in its pursuit of the bubbles of the moment.
The _nil admirari_ manner, borrowed from London drawing-rooms, sits
awkwardly on its shoulders. If it could only get away from old-world
traditions, if it were willing to stand upon its feet, if it would
leave its absurd mannerisms to the people who first invented them,
this Australian society, with all its health and youth and unimpaired
vitality, with all its magnificent opportunities furnished by variety
of scene and splendour of climate, might set an example of living which
other countries would have reason to envy, if they had not the power to
imitate. For Australia, if the fact were only recognised, is a country
in which it is possible to enjoy oneself finely, or to deny oneself
greatly, as the mood pleases, independently of the world.
One characteristic of Australian society is its vulgarity; another is
its snobbery; another is its lack of ideals. The vulgarity is apparent
on the surface. It is usually explained on the ground of want of
familiarity with the more luxurious and the more cultivated conditions
of living. To endow a man who commenced life as a small shopkeeper
with a large house, a carriage, some superior furniture, and still
more expensive possessions in the shape of wife and daughters, is
not to make him refined. The glorified tradesman is the pivot of the
social life of the continent. The distinction between the wholesale and
the retail dealer, which is still more or less observed in England,
does not obtain here. If a man has the money he is accepted at his
own valuation. He can go anywhere. Government House throws its gates
open to him, unless, indeed, it should have happened that certain
incidents of an unusually lurid character have reached the ears of the
painstaking aide-de-camp. The landowner, if his lands are extensive
enough, is another who helps to set the standard. He also is usually
a novice at the pursuits and mannerisms that find favour with the
more seasoned upper classes. The trail of newness, of _gaucherie_,
of awkward, although of lavish ostentation, is over the whole social
fabric. The people have zest and energy. They dine well, drink well,
gamble well. But they have not yet learned to do these things with the
nonchalant air that comes of heredity or of much experience.
The snobbery of Australian society is a matter equally beyond the
reach of question. It is an elementary principle in all speculations
as to human conduct that the man or woman who is intrinsically best
worth knowing is the one who asserts himself or herself least. The
plutocrats of Australia are continually and tirelessly asserting
themselves. They all advertise--possibly because of the survival of the
shopkeeping instinct, which prompted them in earlier days to get ahead
of the man next door by making a finer display of haberdashery or of
cold meat. The advertising habit does not die out in one generation.
At present it dominates the social life of the community. This is the
reason why the man who does not care to advertise, or feels he has no
need to advertise, prefers to stay away from gatherings at which the
resplendent tradesmen are the observed of all observers. There are
_many_ men of sensibility, of imagination, of delicacy of thought and
refinement of feeling, in Australia. There are women equally gifted.
But these are not the people who besiege the Vice-regal Residence most
determinedly, or appear in the papers most often. If they have means,
or leisure, or culture--and often they have all three--they look for
congenial souls, or are satisfied to remain apart.
The selfishness of Australian society is more or less implied in what
has been already stated; but a special significance is often given to
the word in connection with the declining birth-rate. The population of
the continent is by no means stationary. The birth-rate is about 28 per
thousand, and the death-rate scarcely 13 per thousand. In fifty years,
even at the present rate of increase, there will be 8,000,000 people in
the Commonwealth. But the preachers and politicians are not satisfied.
They want the increase to be still greater, the births to be still
more numerous. They have discovered that the cradle of the working
man--when he can afford such an article of furniture--is seldom empty,
while the cradle of the rich mother has only an occasional inmate. The
cry has gone up that the women of the well-to-do class are furnishing
a bad precedent. A committee of nine, appointed by the New South
Wales Government, recently investigated the whole question. And the
conclusion arrived at is that Australia, and more especially its middle
and upper classes, are socially and morally in a bad way.
It is remarkable that so much unnecessary alarm should have been
created over this subject. To say that the diminishing birth-rate
is necessarily a bad sign is to ignore great part of the teaching
of history, and of science, and of civilisation. Birth is stronger
than death, and has been throughout the ages. It was so when the
barbarians were knocking at the gates of the Eternal City; when the
tens of thousands of Attila were falling before the tens of thousands
of Aetius; when Goth and Vandal, Frank and Scythian, were transforming
Central Europe into a charnel pit; when famine and pestilence were
assisting the war-god of the Middle Ages to keep population in check.
Yet population grew then, and is growing now. Science, by checking
disease, and humanitarian sentiment, by preventing war, are helping
it to grow still faster. No one can pretend to say what the end will
be. The temper of Australian society is probably no more unselfish
and no more moral than is that of any other society equally endowed
with means and leisure time. But even out of evil good may come; and
if selfishness and immorality are evils, it has yet to be shown that a
declining birth-rate belongs to the same category.
The tone of what is called society is, as a matter of fact, the outward
expression of the country’s ideal. Australia badly wants an ideal. At
present it has none worthy of the name. It is not looking for one; at
least there are few indications of a search. What is everybody striving
for? Unto what altar is the mysterious priest of nationhood leading
his followers? Of what nature are the offerings? Who are the deities
that are being invoked? These are all questions that should interest
the speculative mind. As to the habits and inspirations of the working
classes, there is not much uncertainty. They are aiming--and it is an
honourable and straightforward aim--at improved mental and material
conditions of living. But as the present argument deals with methods
of employing leisure, and the workers are understood to have no
leisure, they may be omitted from the general conclusion. The leisured
classes, the privileged classes, the social classes have one, and only
one objective. Their familiar gods are those of the worshippers in
_Atalanta in Calydon_--Pan by day, and Bacchus by night. Their mission
is to pass the time, to kill it in the most agreeable way, to accompany
its exit with the music of flutes, to see that its obsequies are
attended by the most lulling effects, the most soothing harmonies, the
most insidious appeals to brain and sense that money will allow.
Once upon a time there were ideals. The patriotic ideal was one of
these, and it was decidedly useful, though from the logical standpoint
rather absurd. The march of intelligence teaches that the willingness
to die for one’s country is the survival of a crude and primitive
instinct; that it is much finer, as well as much safer, to entertain
a cosmopolitan feeling of regard for the foreigner, and not to put
oneself unnecessarily in his way. Leonidas, when he put himself in
the way at Thermopylæ, illustrated the earlier man’s fondness for an
ideal. From his country’s point of view his ideal was a good one,
though for himself it had no concrete value. Another manifestation
that is occasionally to be met with in Europe and elsewhere is what
might be called the aristocratic ideal. This is an inheritance from
feudal times. Yet a third variety is the intellectual ideal. France
in the time of Louis XIV. grew tired of looking up to the people of
high birth, and for a brief space looked up to the people of high
intelligence. Every member of the best society carried his sonnet about
with him as the modern man carries his walking-stick. The age of Louis
and of Molière was the heyday of the intellectual ideal.
In Australia there is no real acknowledgment of any of these three.
There is no inducement to the average citizen to be patriotic. The
quality, so far from being idealised, is hardly recognised. Times have
altered since King Xerxes looked out over Salamis and since Arnold
von Winkelreid fell at Sempach. The people of the new continent have
never been called upon to defend themselves. Where there is no desire
for fighting, no military spirit, no past history, no present danger,
there is not likely to be a patriotic ideal. If you were to ask the
average Australian whether it was not his highest ambition to die for
his country he would take you either for a person of weak intellect,
or for an eccentric amateur comedian. Neither is there any quality in
the people that corresponds to the ancient practice of idealising noble
birth. The country has no aristocracy of its own. It has no special
desire for one. Whatever ambitions or aspirations it may acknowledge,
they have nothing to do with a titled class. Neither is the typical
Australian given to worshipping intellect as such. When the particular
brand of intellect brought under his notice has been commercially
successful, and can command a high market value, he is appreciative and
respectful. But for the quality itself he has no special regard, and in
nine cases out of ten does not recognise it when it is there.
Without any such ideals as connect themselves with patriotism, with
good birth, and with intellect, Australia bestows its enthusiastic
idolatry on the individual possessed of great riches. Patriotism, good
conduct, character, intelligence, imagination, fancy, unselfishness,
brilliancy of expression--all these things are quite unnecessary in
local social circles. It is only when they have been translated into a
cash value that they can be seriously considered. It is not that brains
are ruled out of court. They are always tolerated. But it is only when
they have allied themselves with some kind of commercial success that
they are sought after. The ideal before the community--the ideal that
finds expression in society, that shines through the restless eyes of
the women, and stamps itself on the dissatisfied faces of the men--is
nothing if not a monetary one. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is not
an ideal at all. Money will purchase everything that the country has
to offer, and for want of something else it does duty as the country’s
ideal.
It is unfortunate that the continent should be in this position--the
position of having nothing but a large fortune, a motor car, and a
quantity of expensive furniture to aim at. Henry Lawson and one or two
other poorly appreciated writers of talent have endeavoured to inspire
the people with a martial sentiment, but as yet without success. All
invocations to the “star of Australia” have so far fallen on deaf ears.
There is no star of Australia. It has not set, and it has never risen.
Until something unforeseen happens it does not seem likely to rise.
How can it? The well-spring from which patriotic aspirations mount up
has not yet been discovered. People with admirable intentions have
recommended Australia, as an escape from mere frivolous amusements, to
cultivate various forms of the strenuous life--for example, the life in
barracks, the life in libraries, the life on the intellectual mountain
top, the life in the home. It is unquestionable that a new development
of some kind is badly needed. Australia would reap a substantial
benefit, and one reflected throughout all ranks and conditions, if in
the near future it evolved _something_, whether it were a patriotic
ideal, a jingoistic ideal, a home-life ideal, a moral, intellectual,
religious, or even a physical ideal. If it is to play a respectable
part in future questions of magnitude it must, at any rate, develop
some variation in the pleasure-seeking, money-making, work-shirking
propensities that represent the greater part of its social life.
Probably the salvation, when it does come, will be wrought by the
working classes; for though they have blundered industrially, and
failed more than once politically, they have the confidence of numbers,
they are emancipated, and they are quick to learn. The ultimate destiny
of the Australian continent is very largely in their hands.
III
JOURNALISM
The many waves of thought, the mighty tides,
The ground swell that rolls up from other lands,
From far-off worlds, from dim eternal shores
Whose echo dashes on life’s wave-worn strands.
The people who are connected with journalism in Australia, as
elsewhere, fall naturally into three classes--managers, sub-editors,
and newspaper writers. There are numerous subdivisions, but these are
the three cardinal ones. The outside public does not always appreciate
the value of the classification just given. The outside public may,
therefore, in its tolerance, submit to be informed. For modern
journalism has become a vast and comprehensive and complex thing. It
touches every one, interests every one, more or less attracts every
one, more or less mystifies every one. The man who is not an outsider,
but who has had the lot to
See with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine--
who has been caught up and whirled round by the wheels, so to
speak--should be able to claim the privilege of describing his
observations and his sensations.
The managerial class is deserving of much respect, and usually gets
all that it deserves. Its members are few, but its influence is
undoubtedly great. Only a short account need be given of the character
and abilities of the handful of men who either own or manage the great
“dailies” of Australia.
For them the anonymity of the profession does not exist. They live much
in the public eye. They collect the praise; they accept the flattery;
they grow rich on the proceeds. The blame, when there is blame, is also
theirs. But what terrors can the breath of outside criticism have for
men who sell their papers at the rate of 30,000 or 40,000, or 100,000
a day? What profit is there in kicking against the pricks? These men
who control the city newspapers form a separate oligarchy, and a
powerful one. They are not troubled with any misgivings as to their own
potentialities in the cosmos. They have a practical working knowledge
of the world, and a vast confidence in themselves. Sometimes they know
how to write, sometimes they do not. In any case it does not matter.
Whatever brains they want they can easily purchase. They live in large
mansions in the suburbs, arrive at their offices at eleven o’clock in
the morning, go regularly to Government House, and deal in Napoleonic
fashion with complaints from the sub-editor, with suggestions from the
commercial world, with expostulations from aggrieved politicians, and
with applications for increases of salary from unsatisfied members of
the staff. They have won their way to big positions, and they know it.
It is an excellent and a pleasant thing to be the proprietor or the
manager of a large newspaper in Australia.
The sub-editors, again, form a class by themselves; they resemble
the managers in that they are not really journalists. Possibly at
some stage of their individual careers they may have been, but they
are so no longer. As a matter of fact they are the sworn enemies of
journalism. They stand like the British infantry at Waterloo--a sort
of cold iron palisade against which the effervescence of youthful
journalistic enterprise dashes itself in vain. They represent not so
much the literary, as the commercial instinct of the paper. They are
the outposts which a cautious management sets to keep watch against
the Philistines. The sub-editor has tremendous responsibility and very
little power. Therein lies the tragedy of his existence. Before he
begins his long series of vigils under the electric lamp, he knows that
while he will get no manner of praise if everything goes right, he will
get short and decisive shrift if anything goes wrong. He knows this
very well; and the knowledge makes him what he is.
A strange existence, a strange personality is that of the sub-editor.
He seems to resemble the patient, sleepless Eremite of Keats’s last
sonnet; he is always there, and he is always “watching with eternal
lids apart.” It is impossible not to admire him. He must, to be in
any sense worthy of his post, possess great abilities. The machine
that he controls is vast, unwieldy, and yet sensationally rapid in its
flight. The Rio Grande of Paterson’s Steeplechase did not require a
touch half so firm or half so fine to keep him in his course. Of the
thousand objectionable, offensive, libellous, dangerous, unnecessary
or unwise things that come under the sub-editor’s notice every week,
how many get past him? How many does he suffer to see the light of day?
It is impossible not to admire the sub-editor, but it is difficult to
like him. He must be a man without pity and without remorse. If he
made allowance for good intentions, if he judged otherwise than by
results, he would ruin his paper in a month. If he did not effectively
discourage the swarm of budding writers who attempt to rush him, he
would speedily have to cease publication. If he were not constantly
saying unpleasant things, he would inaugurate a reign of chaos. And
yet there are one or two first-class sub-editors in Australia who are
well liked, and by none better than by their victims. It is a strange
anomaly, but there it is. In any case it is a great tribute to the
personality of the man.
Of the third class, the order of journalists proper, a great deal
might be said. This class includes all those who get their living
by furnishing copy to the newspapers of the country. They are a
motley crowd; they number in their ranks representatives of all the
professions, and of no profession at all. They embrace men and women of
good social position, and men and women who are distinctly outside the
pale. They have no definite organisation, no professional status, no
formal rules of etiquette, no exclusive caste, no artificial barriers
against membership. They have one standard of living, unorthodoxy; one
bond of fellowship, Bohemianism; one passport to success, ability; one
aversion, dulness; one insidious enemy, human nature; one unreliable
friend--the world.
For these workers of the community there should be, in the aggregate,
a feeling of considerable respect and of no little sympathy. Of
respect, because in the mass they accomplish great things. The really
first-class journalist showers a wealth of good phrasing, clever
word-painting, wise discrimination, light fancy, brilliant humour,
and saving common-sense on the breakfast-tables of a quarter of a
million people each morning. He does all this and more. The result
has come to be looked upon as necessary, obvious, mechanical, in a
sense inevitable. It represents to the average reader the outpourings
of a great machine. And a machine it certainly is, but one that is
intricately fashioned, piece by piece, out of the minds and bodies,
and hopes and fears, and personal gifts and graces of tens of hundreds
of unrecognised writers. Unrecognised--the word that expresses always
the salvation of the bad journalist, and always the detriment, or the
ultimate ruin, of the good one.
These men are entitled to sympathy, or would be if they did not include
in their ranks so many specimens of moral obloquy, so many hopeless
outcasts from all the paths of reasonably sane and tolerable behaviour.
Journalism makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows. Yet, taking
it right through it contains probably more _ability_ than all the rest
of the professions put together, though possibly less _knowledge_ than
is to be found in any one of them. The newspaper writer, considered
as a type, is always overworked, and always underpaid. Australia in
this respect is no exception to other parts of the world. The men who
labour behind the veil of anonymous journalism are rewarded for the
most part with a living wage, and are swept out of sight as the new
generation comes along. When their initiative goes, they go. Time is
their deadliest enemy. Instead of fighting for them as it fights for
the barrister and the medical man, it is constantly threatening them
with loss of initiative, with loss of energy, with loss of brilliance.
Honey is proverbially sweet for a season; but no one knows better than
the journalist that the laurel which he wins this morning cannot last
till to-morrow.
As to the products of this handiwork--what is to be said of them? The
Australian newspaper has already developed a character of its own.
Its place is somewhere between the startling sensationalism of New
York and San Francisco, and the solemn impressiveness of the older
London school. The representative editor balances himself between
these two modes of journalism. He is seldom quite free from the
English traditions, but he knows his readers; he knows that they, too,
are somewhat under the influence of the older and more respectable
associations; he knows that, while they have no taste for solid
reading, and are always ready to be excited or amused, they have yet
a contempt for machine-made sensationalism, for foolish and frothy
elaboration, for staring capital letters, for shriekful epithets, for
the flimsier kind of composition that rears itself on a basis of sand.
Hence it may be that the press of the Commonwealth has followed, for
the most part, a middle course, and has endeavoured to be neither
too dull nor too picturesque. The effort has often resulted in
insignificance; but it has now and again achieved great success.
For purposes of illustration it is not necessary to go beyond Melbourne
and Sydney. The smaller capital cities, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth,
are content as a rule to follow their leaders. Whatever is good or
bad, or in any way distinctive at the centre, you will find reflected,
though in a slighter and paler fashion, in the towns further north
and further west. The same lines of demarcation hold good throughout
the continent. In each city one morning paper calls itself “liberal”
or “national,” while its rival goes one better, and styles itself
“radical” or “democratic.” The word “conservative” has become a taunt,
and is never an acknowledged title. The predominant tendency is for
the younger and more democratic organ to go beyond its older and more
serious competitor. The only important exception seems to be that in
Perth, where the _West Australian_ occupies a unique position. It
is the accented mouthpiece of “groperism”; that is to say, of those
privileged few who came to the State in early days, and monopolised
as much of the earth as seemed worthy of their attention. Needless
to add, these people are more conservative than they care to admit.
The newspaper of their choice is singularly popular considering the
circumstances. Under the guidance of an extraordinarily far-seeing and
subtle-minded editor who has a rare faculty for flattering a democratic
audience, while really ruling and guiding it--who knows also how to
bend to the storm when to beat against it is no longer possible--the
_West Australian_ is more widely read, and more influential, to-day
than it ever was, and that in the midst of a people containing a
stronger socialistic infusion than is to be met with elsewhere in
Australia.
It is in Melbourne and Sydney, however, that we get the most useful and
instructive illustrations of the working of the journalistic machine.
The _Age_ and _Argus_ in the former city; the _Morning Herald_ and
_Daily Telegraph_ in Sydney, represent the best that Australia has
yet been able to accomplish in this field of enterprise. The _Age_
is referred to first because it claims, and with an emphasis that
frightens contradiction, to have the largest circulation of any daily
south of the line. Its political influence, though perhaps hardly what
it was, has also to be reckoned with. The _Age_ has been in existence
just fifty-two years; it has been consistently fortunate in the men
behind it. More especially it has been fortunate in its proprietor.
It owes its power, its prestige, its circulation, its character, its
very existence to David Syme, who is still, at a venerable age, an
active, working journalist, and who has the distinction of being the
most respected and the most disliked man in Australia--perhaps also
one of the very best liked by the few who know him really well. That
he has used his immense power fearlessly, and on the whole for good,
is unquestionable. The present editor of the _Age_ acts up to the
policy of the proprietor. Never laying claim to pyrotechnical skill
as a writer, and not giving too much rein to his imagination, he is
yet pre-eminently shrewd, far seeing, clear-sighted, well informed,
capable, and where business interests are concerned, inflexible as
death itself. In private life no man could be more popular or more
deferentially urbane.
The _Argus_ suffers now, and has always suffered, from want of definite
and decisive leadership. On its general staff it has had during the
past ten or fifteen years more brilliant men--considered as reporters,
at any rate--than any other daily paper in the English language. But
instead of advancing to meet the times it has stood still, and talked
impressively of _many_ things. More particularly it has talked about
the dangers of empiricism, and the responsibilities of the press.
People read it, and will continue to read it, not so much for its
opinions, as for the graceful manner in which most of its writers
contrive to deal with the English language. For the rest its views on
Imperialism and Free-trade fall on unwilling ears.
The _Morning Herald_ is the oldest paper in the Commonwealth, and is
built on the same lines as the _Argus_. It has done great things for
the tone and temper of Australian journalism. Latterly, it has been
showing signs of democratic restlessness that have caused its older
admirers a certain amount of alarm.
The _Daily Telegraph_ is the Mary Jane of Australian journalism. It
is the most active, the most aggressive, the most tireless, the most
sensation-loving, the most hysterical, the most shrill-voiced, the most
daring, and the most inventive paper published on the continent. It is
a slab of San Francisco tumbled down in the vicinity of Botany Bay.
This reference to certain leading journals brings up a large
question--the question of the power of the newspaper press in
Australia. Is it an excessive power? And how does it compare with the
power of the press in other countries? So far as their political creeds
are concerned, the Australians have been called a newspaper-ridden
community. They are often too tired to think, and they let the paper
think for them. The writer recollects calling upon a prominent official
who had just returned to Melbourne after a visit for political purposes
to England. The first, and almost the only observation this gentleman
made, was that “They are not afraid of the newspapers in the old
country.” It was this circumstance that had impressed him more than
anything else, although during his absence he had been everywhere,
and had seen a great deal. If you are a public man you must read and
despise the papers. If you do not read them, you will miss something.
If you do not despise them, they will worry the life out of you. The
_Age_ is the stock instance of a paper from which tens of thousands
of adult, and supposedly intelligent voters have been content to take
their opinions. This journal has made and unmade many Ministries.
The _Sydney Daily Telegraph_ is aspiring to fill the same _rôle_,
but so far with not the same success. It is quite certain, however,
that Australian newspapers of the larger class possess more influence
in certain directions than is good either for themselves or for the
community.
Another question very often debated is that of the fairness or
otherwise of the press of the Commonwealth. Some of the leading
journals have a habit of assuring the public that they are scrupulously
fair; others discreetly say nothing on the subject; but almost every
one has adopted an admirable and impressive motto which it places on
view in a conspicuous place over the leading columns. The motto may
be intended as a salve for the consciences of the management. There
is a well-known story of a man who was not religious, but who always
took off his hat when passing a church. Having paid that homage to his
better instincts, he naturally felt more at liberty to cultivate his
other ones. Having hoisted his motto, and having made obeisance to
the abstract idea of fairness, the newspaper proprietor feels that he
must not allow himself to be regarded as in any sense a bigot, or a
moral fanatic. He has passed the church and taken off his hat. For the
rest, there are the interests of his paper to think about. If these
interests do not always coincide with the interests of individuals, the
circumstance is much to be regretted--from the point of view of the
individuals.
Some admirable diatribes have been uttered from pulpits and platforms,
and from Supreme Court benches, on the subject of newspaper morality in
Australia. During the hearing of a recent libel case in Melbourne, a
learned judge lashed himself into a white-heat of indignation over the
sinfulness of press writers who advocate views which they do not hold,
and refrain from publishing statements which they do not like. His
Honour found it hard to believe that such monsters could be discovered
walking the earth in the guise of men. Similar sentiments have been
echoed and re-echoed everywhere. There is nothing in the world quite
so fine as the average man’s idea of what a newspaper _ought_ to be.
No matter what this average man may be prepared to do, or to advocate,
or to believe himself, he is shocked beyond measure to find that even
an influential newspaper may have commercial instincts, that it may
not be disposed to love its enemies, that it may object to publishing
statements which tell against it, that it may be both unable and
unwilling to set an example of sublime innocence and spotless purity to
the people who read its pages.
A newspaper’s virtue, like a woman’s, has a special meaning, and the
meaning which outsiders attach to the word “virtue,” as applied to a
newspaper, is not necessarily that which obtains within the craft. The
goal which every management has in view is the goal of success--not
spiritual or ethical, but hard, financial, and materialistic success.
The proprietor’s virtue, the editor’s virtue, the writer’s virtue,
are synonymous, among members of the profession, with the ability to
produce a readable, a saleable, and an otherwise valuable article.
No one blames a lawyer for advocating a cause in which he does not
believe; no one censures a grocer for selling a brand of tea which he
does not personally like; no one objects to a carpenter putting up
houses in which he would not care to dwell. Why should the newspaper
be accused of unfairness when it does what is best for itself? Like
every private individual, it must keep within bounds. If it commits a
transgression there is always the libel law. If it indulges in personal
malice, there is always the gaol. The singular thing is that so many
journals--particularly the patriarchs of Sydney and Melbourne--should
be so anxious to assure the public of the excellence of their
intentions. As though good intentions had ever a market value, as
though the commercial instinct and the highest moral principles were
not always and necessarily opposed!
What of the newspaper writer’s calling as such? Is it worth following?
From the outside it looks attractive enough. Even from the inside it
has its charms, meretricious and otherwise. There is a certain glitter
and glamour about the profession, particularly in its early stages. The
absence of class distinctions helps the journalist, and makes his work
infinitely more agreeable. To a man with a real literary turn--or what
is even better, a news’ instinct--promotion comes rapidly. He escapes
the dull routine of other callings; he comes almost immediately into
the larger portion of his inheritance. The reputation that blossoms
towards the end of life, the rewards that come eventually, but with
glacial slowness, the solid and sure gains of experience, all these are
no part of his outlook. But he acquires in a few months a reputation
and a standing that elsewhere are only the product of years. He
steps at once into a wide and breezy circle; he is thrown into daily
contact with the most interesting, the most notorious, and the most
illustrious personages of the time. About the work itself there is a
peculiar, mirage-like quality; it always seems to be pointing beyond
the desert of daily drudgery, beyond the arid region of hack-work and
small salaries, to the smiling country of fortune and literary fame.
The young newspaper writer “never is, but is always to be, blest.”
There are many people who do not require to be warned against
journalism; they drift into it, or fall into it, after chequered
experiences elsewhere. But to the youth who has a choice of
professions, and who thinks of choosing this one, a word of counsel may
be tendered. There is no calling that makes such demands on talent,
that asks so much, or that treats its tried servants so badly in the
end. The man on the general staff of a big Australian daily, may for a
year or two, or for a dozen years, have a good share of what the heart
desires. He may have a degree of reputation, an amount of ready money,
a following of friends; but the money, the friends, the reputation are
all liable to vanish at brief notice. The more brilliant the writer
is, the more quickly does he exhaust his stock of nervous energy. After
the first few years, time, as already remarked, begins to work, not
_for_, but _against_ him; the more capable and the more talked of he
is, the more insidiously do adverse influences begin to grow up. As a
rule, his is not the temperament which weighs chances, or lays up store
for the future: and when the day of his mental ascendancy is past, the
management regretfully but firmly shows him the door.
The writer has in mind four representative Australian journalists
whose abilities were, or are now, of the very highest. From the ranks
of any profession, or from all the professions together, it would
be difficult to pick in Australia four men who could boast in the
aggregate a greater measure of natural or of practised ability. Each
of these four has, time after time, charmed, interested, and amused,
hundreds of thousands of perceptive and critical readers. Had they
given half the same talent to law or medicine, to science or politics,
each of the four would beyond doubt have become rich and famous. But
what has happened? One of them, possibly the most brilliant of the
brilliant quartette, died early, in some measure a victim to the
hospitality and conviviality that his own unique personality and charm
of manner invited. Journalists in Australia will not need to be told
that the reference is to the late Davison Symmons. The other three are
still living. One of them, whose work conferred lustre on the Sydney
_Morning Herald_ during the middle ’nineties, was in part the victim of
circumstances, in part the prey of his own temperament. The knowledge
that he was receiving 30s. or 40s. a column for his efforts, while
worse writers in England were getting paid for theirs at the rate of
shillings _a line_, drove him first to misanthropy, and afterwards to
other things. The third of the quartette is the writer who is known
throughout the continent by the pen-name “Oriel.” He is at the top of
the profession; he is one of the few men in Australia who have combined
social orthodoxy with newspaper brilliance; he has worked hard, and he
has not thrown himself away. But what prospects of a tangible monetary
reward are there for the gifted “Oriel,” or for writers like “Oriel,”
in comparison with those which always await the cattle dealer, the
rag merchant, or the bluffing attorney? The fourth of these typical
journalists is he who disguised himself in the columns of the Melbourne
_Argus_ and chronicled cricket, football, and other small beer for
quite a number of years. He might have continued to do so indefinitely,
had not the accident of the South African war given him a reputation
and a name.
These are only a few illustrations, but they will suffice. The
individual who launches out on the inky way must be prepared to be
judged critically on his merits, and to be treated without leniency or
favour. He must submit, for a time at any rate, to do the bidding of
a man who is also a journalist, and perhaps a less competent one than
himself. He must throw his illusions overboard; he must learn to give
and take; he must be watchful and ready, prompt to observe, and quick
to act; and he must be prepared to go without the richer prizes that
can be won in the warehouse, or in the domain of medicine, or at the
Bar.
Yet, if the would-be journalist possesses certain qualifications, in
addition to literary skill, he may be recommended to join the ranks of
the unlisted legion. If he has a saving sense of self-restraint; if he
has the faculty for seeing ahead; if he has a definite amount of moral
stamina; if he can treat the profession, not as an end, but as a means
to an end; if he can live through it and eventually rise above it--if
he can do this, the press is his most perfect and his ideal medium.
The monetary test is not the final one. The working journalists can at
least take to themselves one or two reflections. The ways of the grocer
and of the apothecary, of the lawyer and the bill-discounter, are not
their ways. Government House may not know them, and the drawing-rooms
of Toorak and Potts’ Point may forget their feet. But they have their
consolations. They are the rebels and the outlaws, and yet a strange
paradox--the entertainers, the instructors, the beacons of the whole
reading world.
IV
THE GAME OF POLITICS
Is it not better, youth
Should strive, _through acts uncouth_,
_Toward making_, than repose on aught found made?
The game of politics as played in Australia has a certain vogue with
almost every class. In numerous directions are to be found striking
evidences of the pervading character of this form of recreation. Every
state, including those whose population is only half that of a decent
sized English town, has its two Houses of Legislature, and all of the
states in unison have their double-barrelled Federal Parliament. Thus
we get a total of fourteen Houses of Parliament, and nearer seven
hundred than six hundred members to represent barely four millions of
people. The amount of space these fourteen Houses and these six hundred
and seventy odd members take up in the newspapers, and other chronicles
of the time, is enormous. Looking at some of the facts, one would be
inclined to say that the word “recreation” was a misnomer, that the
whole business was intensely and almost preternaturally serious. If a
man confined his reading to the journals of Australia, if he talked to
mechanics on their way home from work, or to business men over their
coffee, if he attended only a few of the open-air meetings that are a
feature of the life of the country, he would inevitably come to the
conclusion that the whole duty of man in Australia was to record his
vote, to watch his representative in Parliament, to burn incense to the
proved and faithful servant, and to hurl violently from his seat any
individual who ventured to tamper for a moment with the principles of
justice, equality, democracy, individualism, socialism, or whatever the
prevalent principle happened to be.
This would be a reasonable conclusion in certain circumstances, but
it would be an entirely erroneous one. As a matter of fact the game
is never really serious. In a land like Australia where many things
are dull, and lifeless, and mechanical, the tone and temper of public
affairs must be regarded as a pleasant relief. From the deadly
seriousness of cricket and horse-racing to the essentially humorous
quality of politics, is the most agreeable of transitions. It is an
incontestable fact that Australia is distinguished among all civilised
countries for the buoyant atmosphere, the mirth-provoking attributes,
and the Gilbertian features associated with its politics--features that
constitute, indeed, the whole substance and essence of the game.
To be a successful player, you require a certain amount of aptitude,
and a large measure of good fortune. Let it be assumed that you are a
spectator, and desire to be something more; that you are anxious to get
among the players, to handle the stakes, to hold a winning chance. The
task is easier--much easier--in Australia than it is in Great Britain,
but yet it is never altogether easy. The unwritten laws governing
success and failure are uncertain and peculiar. You are anxious to sit
at the table among the players. It remains to be seen what kind of hand
you have got. There are certain cards it is very desirable to hold;
others you can do without. Take it for granted that fortune has dealt
you enterprise, ambition, intelligence, power of grasping political
questions, faculty of speech, capacity for winning friends. This is a
useful hand, but will not of itself get you what you want. If somebody
plays the stronger card, that is to say the power of the purse, you
will go under in nine cases out of ten; you will remain always among
the onlookers in the outer ring, and will never get to the table. It
is necessary to make this point clear. To say that the moneyed man
can do what he likes in Australia, and that wit, eloquence, industry,
and the rest are always beaten by a large banking account, would be
to commit oneself to a foolish and palpable exaggeration. But no sane
man would deny that, in the game now under consideration, Power of the
Purse is the Ace of Trumps, and that to counterbalance it a very strong
collection of cards indeed is required.
There are many things that have to be reckoned with by the man who
desires to enter politics in Australia, but there is little outside
the cloven hoof of mammon that he can safely reckon on. The sands of
public opinion are shifting, changing. Even that useful attribute,
gift of speech, is by no means a certain passport to the post of
command. The crowd is jealous and suspicious of too much ability. It
is not pleasant for mediocrity to see itself outstripped by talent.
A man may talk himself into Parliament. On the other hand, he may
talk himself out of the possibility of ever getting there. So much
depends on the impression the crowd gets of the speaker’s sincerity,
of his earnestness, of his moral, social, and other qualities. It may
happen--in thousands of cases it has happened--that a man who can
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and whose whole life has
been patriotically unselfish, has been unable to gain a place in the
counsels of the nation. For some reason the onlookers would not take
to him; they have disliked or misread his cards, disliked or misread
the man. The influence of the Trades’ Union is one powerful lever.
Many a man has succeeded in entering public life by its aid; but the
Trades’ Union is becoming to a greater extent each year a political
conglomeration of fiercely ambitious units, and nine-tenths of the
speakers who declaim at a Trades’ Hall or Union meeting have Parliament
in view. Every speaker watches, criticises, and mistrusts every other
speaker. In the rush for the spoils it is difficult to say who will,
and who will not, come eventually to the front. Capacity has to be
shown, friends have to be made, opponents have to be silenced, rival
interests have to be placated, cliques have to be frustrated, logs have
to be rolled, wires have to be pulled, and much else has to be done
before the goal can be attained. To the participant it is all very
exciting, and to the onlooker it is very droll indeed.
But it is in Parliament that the fascination of the game really begins.
So fascinating is it to the great majority of the participants who
have reached this stage, that you will scarcely find one in a hundred
who will offer to give up his place at the table, no matter how his
chances of winning a large stake may have dwindled, no matter how
much he may be out of pocket, no matter how his fellow-players may be
wishing him somewhere else. To say this is not to suggest the worst
kind of motive, or to cast reflections on individuals. The writer knows
a great many Australian politicians, and is inclined to think that on
the whole he likes them better than any other class. He regards them
as, for the most part, genial, pleasant fellows. Speaking broadly, they
are not dull-witted, and they are not corrupt. There was a time when
the average member of an English Parliament was both. The Australian
politician is usually a good sportsman: he can take his winnings
without boasting, and he can take his failures like a man. He is under
no illusions as to his own aims, or his own qualities. He knows that
it is to his interest to be considered as a patriot, and he knows
also, in his heart of hearts he knows, that he is only a player. Let
us quote Browning, and thank God that the meanest politician boasts
two soul-sides, one to face his constituents with, one to show to the
man or woman who knows him. Let us thank God, for if it were otherwise
the race of public men would cease to exist. They would be consumed in
the fires of their own simulated fervour. And some highly interesting
proceedings would be lost to the world.
It is assumed, then, that the first step has been taken, that you
have got to the playing table, that you are directly under the eye
of the marker who calls the game. The fun is now about to commence,
and with it the danger. You are untried, and practically unknown. The
first thing to do in the circumstances is to get into opposition. The
manner of doing this requires a great deal of tact and finesse. Many
a man, and many a possessor of a naturally strong hand, has spoilt
it irrevocably by playing a wrong card at this early stage. The
probabilities are that you were carried into Parliament on a wave of
enthusiasm for the Government. You were chosen to sit behind the front
Ministerial Benches. Your constituents expect this of you. Now, it is
just possible to do precisely what your constituents do not expect of
you, and yet, not only keep their good opinion, but rise very much
higher in it. This, I say, is possible, but so far from being easy,
it is distinctly the hardest piece of strategy in the whole political
manœuvre.
However, something has to be done. You are unknown, and far from
rich; you are ambitious, and cannot afford to remain for years
an obscure unit among the followers of the party in office. The
fascination of the play is upon you; there are tens of thousands of
spectators watching intently, keenly interested, waiting to applaud.
The temptation to catch their eye--that large collective eye which
overlooks the continent--is irresistible. You are invisible because of
the Ministerial phalanx in front of and around you, and it is necessary
to get clear, to break away.
The opportunity will almost certainly arrive before long. The clever
gamester is he who recognises the chance when it appears and makes
the most of it. You must have a certain amount of patience. It is
ruinous to be too precipitate, but it will almost certainly happen, and
probably before the end of your first triennial term, that the Premier
will come down with certain proposals to which you are not committed
before the eyes of your constituents, and which are intrinsically
important enough to arouse popular feeling. This is the opportunity
to break with the Government. But as you represent a government
constituency you must be careful. You must go to the electors and take
them into your confidence; you must explain that after a tremendous
and heart-breaking struggle between devotion to a political leader and
devotion to principle, the latter carried the day. It is well to point
out--as truthfully you may do--that your threats, tears, and entreaties
have been fruitless to turn the Premier from his fell purpose; that
your expostulations have fallen on deaf ears. Henceforth, you may
add, all personal attachments, all private longings, all political
amenities, are to you as nought; all the friendships of a lifetime have
been laid on the altar; for the future you live only in the endeavour
humbly but unswervingly to give effect to those eternal principles in
comparison with the majesty of which, the life and aspirations of the
individual are as the small dust in the balance, are a not worth naming
sacrifice.
Once in opposition it will be found that your sphere has extended,
your reputation increased. It is now possible to marshal all your
forces. Allusions can be made that would previously have been
inadmissible; words can be used that before would have been treason.
At this period of the game it is advisable to cultivate a method, a
manner of your own. It is desirable to be in some way _distinctive_.
There is much virtue in a particular look, in a mode of speech, in a
mannerism. If you have not the main thing, which is natural ability
and power of carrying conviction, it is possible to get something
else--something that will focus the attention of the spectators in the
outer ring. Every one knows the story of the man who laughed. He has
had his counterpart, and a very successful counterpart, in Australian
politics. It will be recorded of one man of obscure beginnings that
he was a genial, capable, extremely popular person, who laughed, and
became Premier of Victoria. If laughing is not your _metier_, if it
goes against the grain, it is just as effective, or even more so,
to cultivate a cast-iron demeanour. The “cool, calm, strong man”
has been played admirably on several occasions, by none more finely
and successfully than by Mr W. H. Irvine, of Victoria. Yet another
pose that will often be found extremely useful is that of the bluff
devil-take-you kind of individual, as impersonated by Mr Thomas Bent,
of contemporary fame, and by Sir George Dibbs, of happy memory. The
astute Cornwall in _King Lear_ says some words to the effect that this
kind of knave--the bluff, outspoken knave--has more craft than any
other kind that could be mentioned. However that may be, the gruffly
candid demeanour has proved useful in Australian politics in the
past, and is likely to prove useful again. Then there is the humorous
pose, of which Mr G. H. Reid furnishes the best living example. This
is invaluable at times, but its successful adoption is so difficult
that it cannot be generally recommended. Only the highest kind of
ability should venture to undertake this manner. It may be of advantage
to affect a plain, or even a dowdy, appearance. The first Federal
Treasurer wore an old suit of brown clothes for a lengthy period, and
with conspicuously good results. But, whatever you cultivate, whether
it is the manner of the sage or the buffoon, of the circus or of the
graveyard, it is necessary to cultivate something, and to cultivate it
well.
With a modicum of good luck, and a sufficiency of good management,
almost any one can rise to Ministerial rank in Australia, or for
that matter can obtain the highest post of vantage, namely the
Premiership. The comparative shade of private membership is no sooner
left behind than the game takes on still different phases. The cards
are reshuffled, the partners are altered, the rules are revised. The
play is as fascinating as ever--even more so--but it has become much
more difficult, much more complex. One has only to reflect for a
moment on the absence of any really live question in colonial politics
to understand the trouble that the head of a Government must have to
keep up some semblance of enthusiasm in the country, and to retain
his place. There is no large Imperial question. There is no Home Rule
question. There is no longer a tariff question, although there are
occasional murmurings and mutterings from one or two sections of the
people, and from one or two dissatisfied newspapers. It is impossible
to beat up a party, either in the State or the Federal Parliament,
on such lines as Imperialism, Nationalism, Jingoism, Fiscalism,
Conservatism, or any other “ism” belonging to the larger domain of
national affairs. What is there left to fight about? There is very
little. In three cases out of four the incoming Government takes
up the measures of its predecessor. In three cases out of four the
differences, other than the personal ones, are barely discernible.
In this political atmosphere of Australia, Amurath with Amurath is
eternally being confounded.
The rise of the Labour Party has been the most remarkable feature
of the situation during the past three or four years, and the whole
history of the Labour Party is the most conspicuous illustration of the
general truth of what has just been said. In Opposition it has been
magnificently strong and war-like. It has talked, through its leaders
and its units, firmly and finely of the necessity of checkmating
capitalistic greed, of nationalising industries, of abolishing the
large land-owner, of setting up a State Bank, of establishing a State
iron industry, of taxing the wealthy for the benefit of the poor,
of granting pensions to the aged workers, of saving the weak from
the strong, of improving industrial conditions, of giving every man
a fair return for his labour, of shortening hours, of widening the
avenues of employment, of adding something material and tangible to
the pleasures of the people. The Labour Party out of office has talked
impressively of all these things--so impressively, indeed, that it has
been taken at its word. During the last year or two, Labour Ministries
have been in power in the Federal Parliament, in Queensland, and in
Western Australia. What has happened? Where is the monopoly that has
been nationalised? Where are the wages that have been increased? Where
is the Bank that has been established? Where is the land tax that was
promised? Where are the old age pensions in Queensland, in Western
Australia or in the Federal Parliament? More than this: where are
the records of any serious attempt on the part of one of the Labour
Ministries of Australia to nationalise even one industry, to check
capitalisation, to pay old age pensions, to run a State Bank, or to do
anything that the average Liberal, or even the so-called Conservative
Opposition would not cheerfully undertake? Not only has there been
nothing revolutionary accomplished, but nothing revolutionary has been
even tried.
To keep your place at the inner table, to be able for any length
of time to set the pace for the rest of the numerous company, it is
necessary to remember that the other players, and not yourself, are the
actual masters of the situation. By proceeding warily, and by showing a
thorough knowledge of every unwritten rule and precept, you may get as
much as a reasonable man should require. You may have the appearance,
if not the substance of power, and all the honours, emoluments,
lime-light and other accessories connected with it. But to attempt
to run a crusade of your own, or to attempt to put into practice the
sentiments you preached in opposition, is merely to commit hari-kari,
to rush on your own doom. The Labour Party, or the more intelligent
members of it, have found this out. My own opinion is that the Labour
leader is a trifle less insincere on the whole, than the average leader
of any other party or section. Yet the difference between the fighting
Labourist’s word in opposition and his performance in office is great
and ghastly. It is not necessary to blame him. He has simply _had_
to realise that Australia is in a condition, politically speaking,
of being willing to listen to everything, and of being able to
accomplish nothing. It is always talking about its breathless speed,
and perpetually falling down in the mud.
Undoubtedly the most humorous, the most delightful, and at the same
time the most useful institution known to the continent is the Upper
House, or Legislative Council. What the Premier of the day would do
without this stand-by, it is barely possible to surmise. To the head
of an allegedly Radical government, the Tory Chamber is always a
God-send. Even the cleverest tactician finds now and again that he
must press forward when in office with measures that he advocated when
sitting on the left hand benches. It is an awkward predicament for
many reasons. He knows that if the reform is carried, it will probably
bring about a reaction, and that he himself will almost certainly be
hurled from office at the next election. Yet he dare not jettison the
principal plank in his fighting platform. What is he to do? Amid the
storm clouds that are all round him, out of the night that encompasses
him, above the tempest that is driving him irresistibly forward there
gleams one ray of light--the light of the Legislative Council. There
it is, straight ahead, standing between himself and swift and sudden
extinction. Confidently he presses on. His vessel triumphantly breasts
the waves of the Representative House, and is dashed to pieces on the
adamantine rock of the Council’s inaccessibility. But he himself is
safe. He gains breathing time while the fragments of his craft are
being pieced together again. His constituents are satisfied. He comes
back stronger than ever from the next election, and goes through the
performance again.
Will any one deny that all these possibilities, all these variations,
all these moves and countermoves, all these chances of success, all
these risks of failure, go to make the pursuit of the political prize
in Australia one of the most absorbing in which man can engage? The
governing fact as already stated is that the game is not confined to
a privileged class, as is practically the case in England. Subject to
certain conditions, it is open to all. It is true that the possessor of
a banking account has an advantage. In the language of pedestrianism,
he beats the pistol; he gets a certain start every time. But the start
is not so great that it cannot by a display of agility be overtaken.
And the fact remains that the chief attraction of Australia from the
player’s point of view, and one of the chief risks from the point of
view of the spectator, is that political competitions are conducted
actually, as well as nominally, irrespective of wealth, or rank, or
status in life.
It is hardly profitable to indulge in generalisation as to the kind
of ability that is needed for success in public life. A certain kind
of man flourishes, and another kind--the opposite kind--is seen to
fall; but in a year or two the positions are reversed, and the set of
qualities which seemingly commanded success are those which invite or
compel failure. Therefore the generalising process is for the most part
vain. But if one were asked to name the attribute that is most useful
to an Australian politician--the attribute that it is ruinous to be
without--one might be tempted to mention knowledge of human nature. The
phrase implies a great deal. It implies such characteristics as tact,
foresight, and sense of the fitness of things; power of being genial,
or of seeming to be genial; knowledge of when to strike, and when to
refrain from striking. It means the capacity to put yourself in the
place of those for whom you are legislating, to whom you are appealing.
It suggests in the possessor a degree of intellect, combined with a
degree of sensibility. It is the opposite of narrowness, of bigotry, of
fanaticism, and of folly of the more glaring kind.
A second quality to be considered eminently desirable is that of
accessibility. In the vernacular this is usually called “absence of
frill.” It is an asset well-nigh indispensable for any successful
public man in Australia, though it must not be confounded--as it
sometimes is--with lack of dignity. Most of the leaders of ministries
and heads of parties that I have met in Australia have been, and are,
extremely dignified; and, as a rule, the most dignified have been the
most accessible. It is not the kind of dignity that surrounds itself
with much outward pomp and ornament; not the kind that emulates Mr
Forcible Feeble, and proclaims its existence as loudly as possible,
for fear that it should be overlooked. It is the dignity that results
from mental processes not visible to the eye of the vulgar. It can
unbend, jest, laugh, look stern, wear the mask of folly or any other
mask, because it is sure of itself. The fortifications of reserve, and
the serried front of isolation, utilised by the typical English Prime
Minister, are not wanted in Australia. Here the obscure unit and the
political chief meet on equal social terms, to the advantage not merely
of the one, but of the other as well.
A third qualification which may be mentioned as very desirable, if not
as absolutely necessary, has been already alluded to as the gift of
speech. To accomplish much in public life in Australia, it is necessary
to talk, and to talk a great deal. Whether it is on a platform or in
the open air; whether it is within the walls of Parliament or outside
them, you must, if you desire to become well known, tell the public
something, and _keep on_ telling it to them. The Australians are quick,
impressionable, receptive-minded. Their highest awards are given, in
nine cases out of ten, to the man who can appeal to them in the most
direct, the most personal, and the most intelligible way.
The four men who have held office as Prime Minister of the Commonwealth
form, in the aggregate and as individuals, the best illustrations of
the qualities just enumerated. Each has displayed a sound knowledge
of human nature, evidencing the knowledge by his many-sidedness, his
tact, his judgement, his mingled daring and caution, his willingness
to compromise. Each has made himself readily approachable, alike to
indignant people who had grievances to ventilate, to friendly people
who had congratulations to utter, to newspaper people who had questions
to ask--in fact to all sorts and conditions of people who used the
right means of approach. And each has been endowed with the gift of
speech. Two of them--Mr Reid and Mr Deakin--have exhibited it in a
singular and superlative degree. Sir Edmund Barton is a speaker of the
very front rank. Even Mr Watson, though not a fiery, forensic orator,
is a very able debater. Only those who have heard and watched him in
Parliament know how keen and capable and resourceful he really is.
Quite apart from these individual instances, facts may be found to show
that one may apply over the whole field of Federal and State politics
the conclusions just arrived at.
To be a prominent public man in Australia it is not necessary to do
great things, but to act as though you could do them, or wished to do
them, or would be certain of doing them if you got the chance.
’Tis not what man _does_ which exalts him, but
what man _would_ do.
Achievement is dangerous, or fatal; the promise of achievement is
brilliant or inspiring. The truth of the matter is that Australians are
engaged, individually and collectively, in a game of which they cannot
see the end. Politically speaking, they don’t yet know where they are,
or where within the course of a generation they are likely to arrive.
V
PSEUDO-LITERARY
This world’s no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
It is strange that a people possessed of literary instincts, and of
the literary temper, should be without a literature of their own; but
so it is. The shadow of a remembered personality does indeed flit now
and then across the brief page of Australian history. There was a
writer of verses named Lindsay Gordon, and a novelist of repute named
Marcus Clarke. Each of these struck out a path for himself. Each left
a record that will not soon be forgotten. But neither was a product of
the Southern Hemisphere; neither could be described as native, “and to
the manner born”; and neither of the two, nor both together, could be
credited with creating a literature for the country in which their work
was done.
It is true there have been, and there are, others of note. There
was a poet who wrote some very fine lines about the yellow-haired
September, about waste places of Kerguelen, about lost Lorraines, about
a frail, flower-like, dead Araluen, and about much besides. It would
argue ignorance of the subject to be unaware that the book of rhymes
beginning with an account of the man from “Snowy River” has sold to the
extent of 30,000 copies, or more. There is the statement, made on what
seems reliable authority, that the author of _Our Selection_ was paid
for a continuation of that work the remarkable sum of £500. And Victor
Daley was, until a few months ago, alive amongst us. The torch of
inspiration is, therefore, not quite gone out. Throughout the continent
it flickers and falters, never shining with a steady and continuous
flame, rarely giving the wayfarer a light to guide him, but every now
and then dancing with a faint, fleeting, will-of-the-wisp quality
before his astonished eyes.
He sees a reflection, or he catches an echo, and then he is in the dark.
Of rhymes and storyettes there are any number in Australia. The local
printing presses shed them in great profusion. They are more numerous
than leaves in Vallambrosa, or than wattle blossoms in September. Nor
is their musical and poetic quality to be despised. Many of them--the
majority of them--are ephemeral and worthless; but taking them either
in the aggregate, or in the unit, they represent a fairly high
journalistic standard. Frequently can there be discovered among them a
new image, a clever piece of workmanship, even an original idea. Their
metrical quality is often admirable. In the Melbourne _Argus_ there
have been many good verses--verses so good that one regrets they should
have been consigned to so perishable a receptacle as a penny print. For
genuine melody, of something better than a topical sort, one would not
go further than the lines written to a light-footed, golden-haired,
pathetically-dead, dancing girl--lines that bring her back among the
living:--
When the scene is lighted brightly, and we
watch the players nightly,
The peasant, and the prince, and the page.
The patriotic note has been struck often, sometimes clumsily,
and sometimes with good effect. Mr Essex Evans gives it a local
application in the rather formal verses beginning:--
Awake! Arise! The wings of Dawn
Are beating at the gates of Day.
And another Australian writer gives it an Imperial significance when he
says of England, in lines that have been much praised and incidentally
awarded a substantial monetary prize by a London paper, that:--
She triumphs, moving slowly down the years.
Again, for pure romance we have Daley’s fantasy, with its very fine
exordium:--
The bright lights fade out one by one
And like a peony,
Drowning in wine, the crimson sun
Sinks down in that strange sea.
For a compound of sensuousness and sadness and lyric sweetness, we have
Von Kotze’s _Island Lover_ with its invocation, and its lament:--
Oh, Tuahina, that youth’s full measure
Should pass away like a summer’s eve!
That just the one gift that women treasure
Should be so helpless, so poor, and leave
A hint of sweetness, a taste of pleasure
And--grey-hued twilight to mourn and grieve!
These are only a few specimens, somewhat above the average as regards
workmanship and finish, but representative of what the continent is
producing every day.
So far as prose is concerned, the Australian topical and occasional
writer can hold his head up in any company. If you want a scene
described, if you want an incident related, if you want the pith of
a situation dexterously extracted, if you want an impression vividly
conveyed, if you want to catch from the paper the spirit and atmosphere
of a crowd, of a race-meeting, of a procession, of a play, of a joke,
of a tragedy, of a wedding, of a funeral; if you want any or all of
these things, there are a score or two of men in Australia who will
supply the requirement as well as it can be supplied anywhere in the
world.
But to say this is not to say there is a national literature. The
term, it must be remembered, means something more than a few dexterous
verses, a few patches of local colour, and a few characters that can
be held up to admiration as “racy of the soil.” That last phrase
hangs like a pall over the continent. If it were only possible to
forget that there is such a thing as a gum-tree in Australia the
average quality of the writing--particularly of the more ambitious and
sustained kind of writing--would considerably improve. If a national
literature implies anything, it implies the correct artistic and
adequate expression of the country’s thought and action; it signifies
the outward and visible form of what is real and vital and permanent in
the inner and intellectual life of a people. In other words it is alien
to what is merely topical and incidental. It is not a record of the
peculiarities of shearers and rouseabouts, or of the feats of jockeys
or stock-drovers. America would hardly be a literary country if it had
to rely exclusively on Bret Harte and Mark Twain. England would not be
literary if it had only Mr Punch and Mr Bernard Shaw. And Australia, so
long as its most characteristic and successful compositions deal with
the obvious peculiarities of a few local people, cannot really be said
to have a literature deserving of the name.
The position of things is curious. There is on the continent a
population of four million people, possessing a complete net-work of
state schools, high schools, art schools, academies, universities,
professorships, and chairs of learning innumerable. Education is
both free and compulsory. Complete illiteracy is almost unknown. The
ignorance and stolidity of the London docker, of the Irish peasant,
of the Russian serf, of the central European farm labourer, have no
equivalent in Australia. The people of this country are facile and
quick-minded. They turn naturally to pen and ink. The writer’s ambition
is rampant among them. It is more insidious and more pervading even
than stage fever or cricket frenzy. Every second dwelling of the middle
class is cumbered with unfinished or unpublished manuscripts. If the
son is not guilty, it is probably the daughter, or the governess, or
the parent. Every newspaper editor, if he felt disposed, could each
day fill his columns ten times over with contributions submitted by
outsiders. A Sydney paper offered last year a hundred pound prize for a
serial story. The result was a staggering mass of manuscript, weighing
in the aggregate more than half a ton, the work of one hundred and
thirty-four unknown and previously unsuspected authors. The same set
of circumstances repeats itself indefinitely. Most Australians have
ideas which seem to the possessors original. They want a vehicle of
expression, and they rush impetuously to the only one provided.
Yet the result is not great, or satisfying, or impressive. And the
reason is that the goal of all this endeavour--in so far as it is
a serious and sustained endeavour--is the hall-mark of the English
publisher. No one can compute the number of people in Melbourne and
Sydney, to say nothing of those in the country towns, who have either
accomplished, or are at present meditating, a descent on London with an
unpublished manuscript. The objective of the literary person is always
London. The recognised fount of honour is London. The banners in the
literary sky wave always in the vicinity of Paternoster Row and of
Leicester Square. Henry Kendall, who knew what he was talking about,
wrote feelingly of things that may happen to “the man of letters here.”
And circumstances have not materially altered since Kendall had his
furniture sold under him, and since he sat all night on doorsteps in a
suburb of Melbourne. While confident enough in most things, Australians
have shown no confidence in their own literary judgement. They still
look timidly and obediently towards the other hemisphere. If their
man of talent can get an English publisher to take him up, they smile
with fatuous approval. If he cannot, they pity and despise him. As a
consequence the Daleys and Quinns and Lawsons who have chosen to rely,
for the most part, on the country of their upbringing, and who have
carried their wares, for the most part, to a local market, have found
it hard to make a living. Had they been obliged to rely exclusively on
literature their living would have been a precarious one indeed.
These facts are so obvious that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them.
But a word has to be said for the other side. The Australian publisher,
like the Australian manufacturer, or the Australian politician, has his
interests at home. It is part of his policy, part also of his desire,
to encourage the literature of the country in which he lives. But he
has _paid_ so frequently for doing this that he is now extremely wary.
For a local author to tempt him is the hardest task in the world. The
publisher’s suspicions, founded on bitter experience, have communicated
themselves in some subtle fashion to the possible purchaser, and to the
country at large. At the present time it would puzzle a psychologist
to say which has the greater fear and distrust of the other--the
Australian author of the Australian publisher, or the Australian
publisher of the Australian author. The present writer has seen men in
the witness box, and in the criminal dock, and has noted the guilty
and self-accusing look on some of their faces. But for a spectacle of
absolute doubt and misgiving, for a written confession of wrong about
to be committed, for an unspoken avowal that the act in contemplation
is one of the blackest and meanest in the calendar, commend him to the
individual who, hailing from Australia, stands up before an Australian
publisher and admits that he has perpetrated a manuscript with a view
to it seeing the light of day.
The result is what might have been expected. The people are going
through a transition stage, a transition stage which, to use a mild
paradox, threatens to become permanent. They are quick to appreciate
cleverness, and, as readily as any other, that form of it which finds
expression in print. But they want to know where they are. They dislike
risks, and more especially intellectual risks. Before they begin the
task of assimilating a work of any length they desire the assurance
of some one in authority that the labour is not to be in vain. They
want the imprimatur of an English critic, or of an English public.
They appreciate good writing, and many of them know how to write, but
the confidence which is a mark of most of their pursuits, of their
virtues and their vices, deserts them entirely when it is a question of
estimating the worth of books written by their own countrymen in their
midst.
Hence a result that can be seen and read of all men. The gospel of
brevity is proclaimed everywhere. It has become recognised that the
longer and more ambitious efforts of imagination or of erudition have
not much chance of emerging into the daylight; and that even if they do
emerge, they have a still more remote chance of paying expenses, much
less of winning a profit for the ambitious author. The short article
may, however, prove remunerative. An editor who would be aggrieved
and insulted by the very suggestion of something three columns long
will put down his spectacles and smile almost cheerfully at the unknown
scribe who tenders him a column. The publisher who is firmly convinced
that the bearer of a full-length manuscript novel is a person to be
shunned like the plague, will listen with an open mind to proposals
having to do with skits and humorous episodes, with short stories and
novelettes.
From all this can be deduced the reason of the spasmodic quality, the
flashiness of the writing that is done in Australia. The warm climate
and the tired feeling may have something to do with the phenomenon; but
the main causes are those previously mentioned. It is now apparent why
the journalism of the country is one of its more admirable features.
The newspaper man has no time to waste, and no space to give away.
He must get his effects into narrow compass. He must, to employ the
vernacular, come at once to the points and leave out the superfluous
verbiage. He endeavours to do so, and often with much success. The
publisher of books does not want him, but if he wishes to be original
he can be so--to the extent of a column. If he wishes to be humorous
he can be so--to the same limit. If his vein is descriptive he has the
like opportunity--which runs also to the extent of one column. On the
approaches to every printing machine in the country, the word “Brevity”
is blazened in letters of dread significance. The Duke of Wellington’s
admonition to his chaplain “Be brief” rings sharply through the
pseudo-literary atmosphere of Australia.
It would savour of affectation to ignore the existence of the
Sydney _Bulletin_, or to attempt to deny that it is an important
semi-intellectual factor in the life of the continent. The circumstance
is unfortunate, and that for obvious reasons. The _Bulletin_ combines
in itself most of what is smart, and flashy, and cynical, and
superficial, and verbally witty in the people among whom it circulates.
Now, if a man happens to be very smart and very witty, and very
cynical, we may admit that he is a clever and interesting person. We
may hand him the laurel wreath of contemporary fame and journalistic
renown with no other feeling than one of pure appreciation and
good-will. But when his smartness and his flashiness and his cynicism
are set up as models for every one else to _copy_; when they are
watered down among a thousand imitators and served up every week
with slight variations, or with no variations at all; when we find
half the educated people of a country trying to be smart and flashy,
because they imagine that by so doing they will be able to fit their
ideas into the narrow columns of a certain publication--then we are
bound to wonder whether we in Australia are really an intelligent,
right-thinking nation, or a number of animated and extremely foolish
marionettes.
It is the readers of the paper, rather than the paper itself, who
are to blame. The sins of the copyists must rest on their own heads.
And while we get tired of certain characteristics that are always
repeating themselves, we are bound to admit the invaluable work that
the Sydney paper has done in more than one direction. By encouraging
certain writers--by gaining for them an audience and winning for them
a reputation--it has conferred a favour on the whole of Australia.
It is the kind of favour that can hardly be reckoned out on a
monetary basis. Nine-tenths of that which is musical and distinctive
and valuable in Australian verse of the last twenty years owes its
publicity, if not its existence, to the _Bulletin_. To say this is
to say a great deal. It stands to the lasting discredit of rich
proprietary newspapers of this country that they have invariably leaned
towards the reprint and the borrowed article. They have never made
what could be called a decisive stand on behalf of the struggling,
underpaid man of talent who has taken off his hat in their managerial
sanctum, or has left his wares on their guarded doorstep. They have
never championed this man; but the _Bulletin_ has always championed
him. A paper that has done this can be forgiven much. It can be
forgiven the army of cheap paragraphists, the tawdry tiresomeness of
repeated phrase, the forced ingenuity of distorted facts, the constant
disparagement of the kindred nation over-sea.
There is _some_ soul of goodness in things evil
Would man observingly distil it out.
And the truth of this in the case of the _Bulletin_ we would be the
last to impugn.
Although it must be repeated that there is no such thing as a national
literature, there are at least three distinct schools--perhaps it would
be more correct to say distinct _forms_ of writing--in Australia.
The first of these is what might be called the humorous, descriptive
style. This may be a poor thing, but it is our own. Some kinship may
be claimed for it with the method of Mark Twain and his disciples--the
method, that is to say, of calm and grotesque exaggeration. Nor is it
wholly unconnected with the thunder-and-lightning, vividly blasphemous
style of Rudyard Kipling in his earlier days. But it is in character
and essence neither American nor English; it is distinctively
Australian. We have evolved it, and should take the credit or discredit
of it. To be a successful writer of the descriptively humorous kind it
is merely necessary to attend to a few simple rules. It is necessary to
get together as many adjectives as you can, and always to apply them
in a context unlike that to which they have grown accustomed. Thus,
if you are describing something tragic and awful--say, a murder--it
is a good plan to make use of such adjectives as commonly do duty
for an artistic criticism or a musical performance. Conversely, if
you are dealing with a drama, or a piece of music, it is useful to
have at hand the terms most frequently employed in connection with a
murder. String together all the unlikely and dissimilar phrases you
can invent or remember; make a liberal and generous use of “and’s”
and “also’s”; be prodigal of semicolons and sparing of full-stops;
above all cultivate an appearance of abruptness and of brevity. Men
have been known to score a brilliant reputation, and, incidentally,
to get long manuscripts accepted, merely by leaving out the pronoun
at the beginning of a sentence, and thus giving an air of curtness
and epigrammatic force to their composition. Stick at nothing, spare
nothing, be afraid of nothing, and your fame as a descriptively
humorous writer is assured.
There is another school, which may be called the flippant school. It
must not be confused with the one just mentioned. The flippant school
is mainly the preserve and playground of women. The lady journalists
of Australia are as fond of a varnish of cynicism on their social
writings as certain of their sisters are of a suggestion of rouge on
their faces. The amusing part of it is that in neither case does the
deception deceive any one. A few years ago there lived a woman named
Ina Wildman, who wrote under the pseudonym of Sappho Smith. A gifted
woman she was, with a wonderful eye for bizarre effects and a mind like
a scintillating surface of light. She was a conspicuous journalistic
success, and deserved to be. The Sydney _Bulletin_ discovered her,
and deserves the credit of the discovery. But one penalty of success
is persistent imitation. The truism has in her case been proved up
to the hilt. It matters nothing to Sappho Smith--she is beyond the
reach of that kind of vexation--but it is distressing to the patriotic
Australian to find so many of his countrywomen rushing pell-mell into a
literary groove that can only be safely trodden by those possessed of
quite singular ability and quite exceptional discernment. Over all of
the larger Melbourne and Sydney journals there is now the trail of the
flippant woman writer. Not a line of the product rings true. Every word
of it is imitation. Whether it is a wedding, or an engagement, or an
infant baptism, or a crush at Government House, or a Lady Mayoress’s
reception, or an afternoon tea-party, or a display of new millinery, or
a theatre, or a football match, the Sappho Smiths of these times bring
to bear the same set of phrases, the same slap-dash methods, the same
cynical suggestion of a _roué_ of seventy in a garden of growing girls.
This style of composition is specially remarkable when the topic is
a wedding. If the Australian woman expressed her real thoughts about
a wedding she would speak of it as the most tragic and fateful, the
most joyous and the most serious event on earth. But when she gets a
pen in her hand she finds it necessary to revel in the slang of two
continents. For this the example of the _Bulletin_ and of its greatest
woman contributor is mainly to blame.
Then, in the third place, we have the erotic school. This also has
certain Australian characteristics. These manifest themselves not in
the prose, but in the verse of the country. The local rhymester has
been more than once exhorted to give the rein to his fancies--to let
himself go. The advice is not uncongenial, even apart from the fact
that he has probably been reading Swinburne, and is more or less under
the influence of the master mind. A certain biblical institution was
told that it was condemned, because it was luke-warm. The reproach can
hardly be levied against the youthful poets who fill unvalued spaces
of the print that is their medium for the time being. Amid all this
intensity--bogus intensity, be it understood--there is very seldom
the note of contentment, still less of genuine mirth. Australia is a
bright, sunlit, open, and breezy country; but the minor poets that it
produces in abundance have, for the most part, gloom dwelling in their
inmost souls. The Australian child of the Muses is willing enough to
clasp his Amaryllis to his palpitating breast, and to tell every one
who likes to listen about the subtle and permeating sweetness of her
eyes and lips and hair; but at the next moment, or in the very same
breath, he is inviting us to contemplate a desolated life, a dead body,
a tombstone, or a grave. In the verse of this people intense eroticism
and profound melancholy are continually blended. The Northerner may, on
the average, be less fluent and less imaginative, but he seems, when
at his best, to develop a finer idealism, a better thought. He writes
in the _Pall Mall Gazette_:--
Lean, love, a little nearer; shine, moon, a little clearer;
You cannot make her dearer, or a thousandth part more fair,
But only you can show me the kisses she would throw me,
The guardian angels that shall go before me everywhere.
While his fellow rhymester in Australia alternates between telling us
in a burst of fervour that
Hilda’s kisses seem in German
Just as sweet as any way--
And most tragically exclaiming:--
God! the irony of bringing her with garments wet and clinging
Close to my feet that lagged for her upon the sands alone--
The better English journal can teach the better Australian journal
nothing in respect of _technique_; but there is sometimes an artistic
restraint about the one which the other might copy without suffering
any loss. It is well, however, to recognise the day of small things,
looking to the day when greater things will come to pass. From Dan to
Beersheba everything is not barren; in fact there are springs and oases
in cheerful profusion. And it must be remembered that if Australia,
with all its effervescence of youth and ambition, has not yet found its
intellectual footing, it is merely exemplifying a familiar stage in the
life of man, which has a counterpart and analogy in the larger life of
a nation.
VI
ADAM LINDSAY GORDON
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone;
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
Since the finding of his body on the Brighton beach one morning,
thirty-five years ago, the fame of Gordon has been steadily growing.
He is the acknowledged Australian poet; but what do his countrymen
really know about him? Considering all things, the literature that has
to do with him is meagre and inadequate. There is the appreciation of
Francis Adams--good, on the whole, but fragmentary, and too exclusively
insistent on the merits of one poem. There is the life of Gordon,
told briefly, with a few strictly orthodox comments, in the book of
Messrs Turner and Sutherland. There is also the work of Mr Desmond
Byrne--correct, but formal, and consequently little read. Of late years
the daily or weekly journalist has taken a fancy to revive interest in
the poet, and to bring under notice some fresh phase or incident in
his life. But there is yet a great deal that could be said. For the
present the average Englishman knows nothing of Gordon, and even the
well-read Englishman knows only the name attached to some galloping
rhymes. The Australian is familiar with the name of Lindsay Gordon, and
is not lacking in appreciation, but as often as not he reserves his
praises for what is least admirable and least characteristic.
To think of Gordon is to think of a succession of pictures on an always
darkening screen. The opening vistas are rose-coloured; but each
successive glance at the moving canvas leaves on the mental retina an
image more gloomy than the one before it. The result of the life itself
was a great tragedy; the result of the work was a signal triumph. The
contrast between these two--between this splendid artistic success and
this dire personal failure--have helped to create for Gordon a sympathy
and affection out of proportion to the amount, though scarcely out of
keeping with the quality of his writing. He resembles somewhat the
fleeting figure in Shelley’s _Adonais_:--
A pard-like spirit beautiful and wild,
A joy in desolation masked.
The spirit was beautiful, but the joy--what visitations there were
of it--was always hedged round with desolation. And the tendency was
always away from the light, instead of towards it; the clouds were
always gathering as the day went on.
Yet the series of views thrown upon the moving screen begins brightly.
On an island of the Azores, amid surroundings which rest the eye and
charm the sense, a child is growing up to manhood. Listen to what his
father, a retired army officer, says of Lindsay Gordon:--“A sweet
little fellow he is! indeed, I think him almost too pretty. Very slight
and upright, carrying his little curly head well back, and almost
swaggering along. He talks with a sweet, full, laughing voice, and a
face dimpled and bright as the morning. He is seen here, perhaps, to
too great an advantage, in very light clothing, scampering amid the
large and airy playrooms.” This is the opening picture of the series,
and there is no suggestion of shadow about it. The promise is of a
life healthful and happy, proof against all morbid fancies, singularly
unfettered, mentally and physically free.
But the operator is busily at work; and he quickly changes the
landscape from the Azores to England. The next glimpse of Gordon is
that of a youth on the deck of a ship outward bound for Australia. The
rose and gold tints are less noticeable now, but there is still no
occasion for excess of sympathy. There is every reason why the young
man of twenty should find a prosperous career in the new and rapidly
developing continent. He stands on the deck of a ship with the salt
spray of the channel blowing a keen reviving breath upon his forehead.
The light of imagination is in his eyes. The flush of expectation is
on his face. It is not a situation to merit sympathy, even though home
and England are soon to vanish on the sky-line. Only--and the shadow
will assert itself a little here--there is a morbid tendency, possibly
associated in some fashion with the state of mind of his mother, who
has developed a form of religious melancholia. And Gordon’s mother and
father are first cousins. It is a circumstance of sinister omen.
Once the life in Australia has begun, the unseen hand that is
manipulating the screen makes feverish haste to get forward. Two
years of experience as a member of the South Australian mounted police
are passed rapidly in review. There is a following period of seven
years; but this also need not delay the onlookers. It shows the young
man of destiny carrying on business as a professional horse-breaker,
and incidentally writing verses. His means are limited; his social
advantages non-existent; his opportunities of intellectual intercourse
and improvement practically nil. During these first nine years in
Australia the spectre of inherited melancholia, though never quite in
the ascendant, is never entirely laid. Yet the life must have had its
compensations. The recollection of many a lonely ride, of many a starry
midnight, of many a breaking sunrise, of many a drifting fancy, wild
and subtle as the music of the _Spectre Bride_, are conveyed in the
spirit rather than in the words of verses that Gordon wrote at this
period of his life.
Then, for a brief space, there are indications of a turn of the tide.
Fortune ceases to frown. It seems desirous all at once of petting
Gordon, of consoling him, of giving him fresh chances, of making up
to him what nature and heredity had taken away. It flings into his
lap a legacy of £7,000; it makes him a member of the Legislature of
his colony; it wins him success and fame as a cross-country rider, as
a master of that daring game which can always be relied upon to draw
the wildest plaudits from the crowd. But even this mood, this smiling,
flattering, relenting mood, does not avail. And as a matter of fact,
it does not last. The legacy is lost in speculation; the Parliamentary
career is abandoned; the steeplechase successes are punctuated with
accident and failure. The sands begin to run downward faster than
before.
There is just one picture, in the dissolving series, on which it is
sometimes tempting to linger. Gordon is by this time thirty-seven
years old. He is without robust health, without money, and without
regular employment. It is quite true that he can write verses; he is
not altogether confident about them, but he believes they are good
verses. One or two people who ought to know have praised them. But
these Melbourne publishers will pay nothing for them; no doubt, the
author admits, because they would lose money if they did. What is a man
to do whose health is shaky, and who has nothing but unpaid bills and
unpublished verses in his pocket? He dare not dwell on the prospect; it
must at all cost be forgotten, pressed back, kept out of sight.
There is one man who will help him to forget, and that man is Henry
Clarence Kendall. The two meet in Collins Street, Melbourne, on the
last morning but one of Gordon’s life. It is a meeting pleasant to
think about, pleasant to dwell upon. For Kendall at least appreciates,
and Kendall understands. That appreciation is warmly, generously,
enthusiastically expressed, and it must convey a great deal to Lindsay
Gordon, though he is to die by his own hand next day. For to the true
poet the clamorous praise of the crowd means very little. If there is
any elysium for him on earth, it is found in the recognition of the few
whose knowledge and perceptions are not of the earth, earthy. Perhaps
for an hour or two while he talked with Kendall in the Melbourne
hotel, and drank with him the drink, both of the successful and the
despairing, perhaps for a moment he had an _inkling_ of the truth that
he had not lived altogether in vain.
It is never easy to estimate a man’s place in the domain of poetry. It
is practically impossible in his lifetime, and it is difficult after
he is dead. There is not merely the metrical, formal quality, not
merely the imaginative power, not merely the originality of treatment
that have to be considered. The whole question of individual taste and
temperament, whether of the writer or the reader, is at work upon the
scales. It may be impossible to prove on mathematical lines that Gordon
was a great poet. Yet it can be asserted confidently that his verse
is marked by three qualities which between them go a long way to make
up greatness. These are its spontaneity, its musical quality, and its
refinement. Everything else is included under one or other of these
three heads.
To take the first of the three--spontaneity, Gordon was above all
things a natural singer. This naturalness, this unforced quality, is
undoubtedly his first and his finest merit. He hoped for nothing--at
least for nothing tangible--from his verses. In one sense, he did not
wish to write. He much preferred action. If some one had given him a
troop of cavalry and shown him a battery of opposing artillery, he
would, in the rush and forgetfulness of one wild, sweeping movement,
have experienced more real life, more real pleasure, than he was ever
destined to know. Such an experience might have laid once and for ever
the ghosts that always haunted him; might have made him feel that he
was born to act, as his soldier-fathers had acted, instead of being
obliged to sit down in a strange land and listen to memories of action
that sang fitfully through his brain. It is for this reason--for the
reason that temperament, and heredity, and poetic impulse forced him to
find relief in verse whether he wished to or not, whether he was proud
of the performance or ashamed of it--that he occupies his unique place.
The pen and ink processes are invisible in his best work; it is as
though
A wistful, wandering zephyr presses
The strings of some Æolian lyre.
To illustrate the spontaneous manner of Gordon would be to run through
a complete list of his published poems. There is no need to go much
further than the opening lines of _The Rhyme of Joyous Garde_. It is
instructive to notice how in this, as in others of his poems, the
picture seems to create itself:--
Through the lattice rushes the south wind, dense
With fumes of the flowery frankincense
And hawthorn blossoming thickly.
No preparations, no apologies, no preliminary turning and scraping;
only the rush of a few lines which sweep the reader, whether he likes
it or not, into the enchanted world of dreams. Equally natural, and
quite as resistless, is the sentiment of _Podas Okus_. Here again we
feel, so to speak, the pulse-beat of the inevitable; we get again the
impression that Gordon could not help the writing; that he himself, and
not the Greek, is lying at a tent’s entrance; that for him the hues
of sunset are blending with the brief glories of an almost vanished
life; that it is he, and not Achilles, who murmurs to the golden-haired
Briseis:--
Place your hand in mine, and listen,
While the strong soul cleaves its way
Through the death mist hovering o’er me,
As the strong ship cleaves the wave,
To my fathers gone before me,
To the gods who love the brave.
The musical quality of Gordon is a kindred though a distinct merit.
A poet may be natural and spontaneous without being particularly
musical, just as he may achieve a musical result by what are manifestly
artificial means. A lyric poet must, however, aim at musical effect.
If he fails to attain this, he is not what he professes to be. Does
the reader receive an impression of melody? Does it please him? Does
he carry it away with him? These are some of the questions by which
the writer of verses must always be judged. The novelty, or even the
abstract merit of the idea does not matter so much. Occasionally, as
in Swinburne’s _Triumph of Time_, there are to be found some striking
ideas wedded to lines that are musically splendid. Occasionally, as
in the same author’s _Ballad of Dreamland_, there is delicate and
subtle harmony, associated only with the faint flicker of an idea. The
school of self-styled poets founded by _Euphues_ made the cardinal
mistake of supposing that the form of expression mattered little; that
their chief business was to get hold of fresh fancies, and previously
unheard-of conceits. We know better than that nowadays. We can put
up with the old idea if the treatment is artistic enough and musical
enough. In lyric poetry the new or the startling idea creates a kind of
metaphysical check, and is not really wanted. In Gordon there is enough
of the familiar, enough of the sentimental idea to satisfy every-day
requirements, while there is musical quality enough to proclaim the
genuine lyric poet. The man had a sensitive ear. It is rarely that he
strikes discordant notes. His versification is not flawless; it is not
always of the quality of _The Swimmer_ or of the _Autumn Song_, but in
reading him one feels that Australia has produced a poet in whom there
dwelt the rare faculty of music, the genuine gift of melodic form.
The third distinguishing attribute of Gordon is his refinement. This
is a word that has come to require explanation. It has some rather
unfortunate associations. A young ladies’ academy is nothing if not
refined. Bunthorne, in _Patience_ is extremely refined. The heroes of
Richardson and of Miss Burney are refinement itself. When the term is
applied to a man or an author in these days, it is necessary to be
explicit in order to avoid misunderstanding. One of the merits of
Gordon, and one that must tend to make the memory of the man loved,
even more than his poetry is admired, is the habit of thought which
reflects a fine and clear and elevated temperament; a temperament, that
does not lend itself to vice; a temperament, in other words, that is
refined. To say that Gordon was so constituted is not to say that he
lacked emotional strength or force. He had abundance of either. He had
also passion, though it was a passion that ran to self-restraint, to
fatalism, and to sombre thought. It never brought him to realism, or
even to the verge of it. When he follows a certain impulse and writes:--
From a long way off to look at your charms
Made my blood run redder in every vein,
While he--he has held you long in his arms,
And kissed you over and over again--
he is going as far as his finer nature will let him go in the painting
of pictures dear to the fleshly school. It is almost incredible that a
lyric poet who had come under the influence of Shelley and Swinburne
should go no further than this. But Gordon’s verses are not like most
other love verses--they show no indulgence in that more blatant form of
sensualism which will insist on its red lips and its soft arms, on its
tropic midnights and its reiterated embraces. It is only “from a long
way off” that he looks upon the vision splendid; he never vulgarises
it by coming too near it; in the better and more enduring sense of the
word, he is refined.
To understand Gordon it is necessary to remember that his was a dual
personality. First of all he was a man of action. He wrote as a man
who loved action, for other men who loved action. There was enough of
the soldier about him, enough of ingrained modesty, or of patrician
reserve, to make him rather ashamed of a parade of his own feelings.
It was very much finer, to his way of thinking, to _do_ something than
merely to write about something. He lived much on horseback and rode in
many races, because the speed of a steeplechase could persuade him for
a moment that he was acting; could make him forget the piping times in
which he lived. But while all his sympathy and all his desires were
towards action, his temperament was largely that of the dreamer. It is
a rare combination, and one that explains a great deal. When he put his
dreams into words--when he set his fancy free in such compositions as
_Doubtful Dreams_, _Cui Bono_, _A Song of Autumn_, and others of the
kind, it did not occur to him that he was doing anything remarkable.
It did not seem to him that fame was to be won in that way. It did not
appeal to him that this class of work might call forth rarer qualities,
might establish a better claim to gratitude and remembrance, than could
the actions of the man who went with a tomahawk into the wilderness, or
of the man who led a forlorn hope right up to the cannon’s mouth. He
wrote not so much to please others as to please himself, and because
he was unable to be always silent. He wrote because voices that sang
through him would not remain dumb.
There are three classes into which his poetry can be divided. The
first and the largest class is that in which the man of action
preponderates. These are the verses that tell of deeds of daring,
most of them accomplished on horseback. The lines have about them the
genuine ring of saddle and sabre. The air seems to be rushing past
as one reads them. Almost the whole of what praise or credit came to
Gordon in his lifetime was due to what he wrote about men on horseback.
Even now he is known to the great majority of his countrymen by such
verses as _How we beat the Favourite_, _The Roll of the Kettledrum_,
_From the Wreck_, and others of the kind. Poetry of this description
may not be the highest possible, but Gordon did it very well. He did
it so well that he may be said to have beaten all competitors in
this particular line--and that despite his uneven quality, and his
occasional lapses into the inartistic and the commonplace. His friend
Kendall raised an incredulous smile by writing in the _Australasian_
that the shy and reserved man who said so little and rode so well was
superior to Whyte Melville in the latter’s special domain. It was
thought then that a compliment had been paid to Gordon; it would be
considered now that the compliment was wholly to Whyte Melville. The
Australian has out--distanced most of his rivals; but he did not know
of the fact in his lifetime, and on the banks of the Styx he may not
much care.
Of all these poems of action there is none better, perhaps none quite
so fine as regards conception and execution, as the _Romance of
Britomarte_. It is a remarkable piece of work. The artistic finish of
it does not strike the reader while he is reading. To watch a really
fine actor is to forget he is acting; to listen to a tale that is
properly told is to forget the teller. It is rarely, indeed, that the
mechanical processes do not obtrude themselves. Of genius there has
never yet been a satisfactory definition; but the word may surely be
reserved for the man or woman who can write a book, or act a piece, or
compose a poem, of such quality that the reader or onlooker will forget
for the moment everything but that which is placed before him. It is
almost impossible to begin reading _Britomarte_ and to put it down
unfinished, or to be conscious of anything but the dramatic interest
of the story. The verve and swing of the opening lines
I’ll tell you a story--but pass the jack,
And let us make merry to-night, my men--
carry the reader on a rushing wave from beginning to close. It is a
tale of great and successful daring, purporting to be told by the chief
actor himself; but no crudeness, or bad taste, or braggadocio mars
the effect. Thinking of such a piece one forgets to be sorry for the
author. Irrespective of fame, or the lack of fame, he must have known
that the work was good; he must have known that criticism could neither
help it, nor harm it; he must have experienced the joy of creation,
which comes only to certain natures, and not often to them.
On the second class of his poetry, which may be described as fatalism
set to music, opinions are likely to differ widely. The majority of
people prefer _How we Beat the Favourite_ to _Doubtful Dreams_, but
then the majority of people have from time immemorial been the worst
judges of poetry. These verses that belong to the second class--the
class not of action, but of brooding fancy--are well represented by the
piece entitled _The Swimmer_. All the philosophy in them is contained
in the four lines:--
A little season of light and laughter,
Of love and leisure, and pleasure and pain,
And a horror of outer darkness after,
And dust returneth to dust again.
All the music of them is exemplified in the same piece, for example in
the lines commencing:--
I would that with sleepy, soft embraces
The sea would fold me, would find me rest
In luminous depths of her secret places
In gulfs where her marvels are manifest.
They are melancholy and mystic, and not hopefully inspiring, these
verses in which the writer seeks to link the unsatisfactory present
with the unknown beyond. Yet they have a sweetness of their own. The
strings that throbbed in Gordon to the touch of his mother, the Night,
have, indeed, a siren quality, akin to the lute of Orpheus when heard
on the eve of everlasting sleep in the garden of Prosperinë. Preferable
sometimes to the utterance of a noisy and blatant optimism--finer than
the blare of brass instruments or the shouting of crowds--is the voice
of the reed shaken by the wind.
As a final word something may be said of Gordon’s third and highest
class of achievement, namely his blending in verse of the active _with_
the melancholic temper. He could do two things: he could write of
action, and he could write of sadness. Now and again he combines in one
poem all that is best and most distinctive in these two sides of his
nature. There are times when he devotes his verse to enterprises of
some kind, to feats on horseback, or to feats in war. There are other
times when he discards action, and lets the sombre mood of the moment
envelop him. The hour of his greatest and rarest inspiration is when
he mixes the action with the sentiment; when he unites the warrior
with the poet; when he fuses in the same fire the contrasted (but not
necessarily antagonistic) temperaments of a Bayard and a Byron, of a
Lancelot and a Lamartine.
It is undeniable that _The Rhyme of Joyous Garde_ represents the summit
of Gordon’s poetic achievement. And the reason is that it brings
together in complete harmony the two spirits which alternately strove
for mastery in the life of the man. The movements in _The Rhyme of
Joyous Garde_ are varied, but they fit into each other, and grow out
of each other, as do the movements in a Beethoven symphony. First of
all there is the atmosphere of pure idealism, of pure romance. There is
the breath of the south wind, rich with the glory of the hawthorn and
the frankincense. It is the man of action, who is also a poet, that is
speaking. The setting is that of Arthurian England. Every line of the
opening verse is flooded with the sentiment of a romantic country--a
country in which brave men lived, and in which great deeds were done.
Against this rich, warm-tinted background is outlined a battle picture.
Here begins the second movement. First the country itself, with its
sunny fields and blossoming hedges; then the memory springing to life
of great daring and heroic achievement:---
Pardie! I nearly had won that crown
Which endureth more than a knight’s renown,
When the pagan giant had got me down,
Sore spent in the deadly grapple.
In a couple of resonant verses he explains why. The third movement
begins when the woman enters. It is romance again, but romance of a
more intense, more personal, more richly emotional kind. It forms the
dominant note of this varied theme:--
The brown thrush sang through the briar and bower,
All flushed or frosted with forest flower,
In the warm sun’s wanton glances;
And I grew deaf to the song-bird--blind
To blossom that sweetened the sweet spring wind,
I saw her only--a girl reclined
In her girlhood’s indolent trances.
The realism of the picture is carried no further. With fine artistic
sensibility Gordon recognises that he has said enough. The woman
has entered; the man has grown blind to the blossom and deaf to the
song-bird; the eternal tragedy, which is not altogether a tragedy, has
begun.
For the rest, the poem plays upon two strings. Alternately there are
echoes from the fields of undying renown, and again voices of sad and
hopeless and unending regret. The well-known lines beginning:--
Then a steel-shod rush, and a glittering ring,
And a crash of the spear staves splintering
are a memorable piece of versification. They arrest and perpetuate the
fighting Arthurian spirit, they convey in words the actual clash of
arms, and they bring back the forgotten mood of the man of personal
valour as possibly no other verses have yet done. Such a word picture
might be expected to leave weak and tame anything that followed; but
with equal conviction, and with equal command of tone and touch,
Gordon strikes again the chord of intense spiritual shame and sorrow,
gradually merging it into one of religious appeal and exhortation. On
this latter note the poem closes.
The man who had done this great thing surely deserved something in
this existence, or in some other existence, in return for what he had
given to the people among whom he lived. Surely, one likes to think,
there must be, somewhere, at some time or another, a compensation, a
recompense, for the tragedy of a life that merited so much success and
vanished, or _seemed_ to vanish, in such utter dark.
VII
THEATRES AND AMUSEMENTS
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
Australians are fond of the drama, but have no drama of their own.
Even those people who talk occasionally of an Australian literature
have nothing to say on the subject of an Australian stage. Not only
the masterpieces, but the hack-pieces are borrowed; the star actors
and actresses are borrowed also. In nothing is the population more
imitative than in what pertains to theatres and theatre-going. It
is only the buildings that can be described as the country’s own,
and even here the great borrowing habit is illustrated by the names
that are blazoned on the outside of them. “His Majesty’s,” and “Her
Majesty’s,” and “The Princess,” and “The Royal” repeat themselves
with monotonous iteration. The appearance of the majority of these
theatres is fine and large, in the literal acceptation of the words.
There are not many things that impress the visitor more than the size
and the configuration and artistic finish of the places of amusement in
Australia.
So far as the audiences are concerned, they are in a transition
stage--the stage of development between being delighted with everything
and being satisfied with nothing. It is still comparatively easy to
attract a crowd to a performance that can boast of novel features, or
of moderately good credentials from abroad. In fact, the Australian is
willing, at the outset, to take a great deal on trust, even though he
is quick to resent what looks like an imposition on his good nature.
An indifferent company may have one successful tour of the continent,
but it will scarcely have a second. It is the failure to recognise this
fact that causes stranded actors to be plentiful as blackberries. The
local theatre-goer is good-natured up to a certain point; beyond that
point, it is impossible to move him.
Speaking generally, the country is not kind to its own theatrical
children. The actor, like the prophet, has to look for his honours
abroad. His fellow-countrymen find a difficulty in recognising him,
or at least in approving him, until he has broken in upon them
from over-seas. The stage in Australia is looked at, not through
opera-glasses, but through a telescope; the thing near at hand is not
clarified, but distorted. The man of purely local experience is in no
danger of being spoilt by adulation. However tolerated or even admired
he may have been, he is expected to seek the shades of a graceful
retirement the moment that Brown, of Jones’s English theatre, is
announced. There is not an Australian-born actor or actress who could
not testify to this fact; many of them resent it, but others have come
to accept it as a matter of course.
It is true, that there are among the four million people who inhabit
Australia, a certain number possessed of discernment. In the exercise
of this faculty they now and again perceive that an individual playing
a comparatively small part is endowed with special ability. Then, if
they are sufficiently interested, they may take steps to secure his
acquaintance; or disdaining this formality, they may buttonhole him,
remark that they have been impressed by his performances, and invite
him to discuss the situation over a glass of wine. An invitation of
this kind is seldom refused. The supporters of local talent remark to
the Thespian that he is being wasted in Australia; that there is no
scope for him in Australia; that he really ought to remove himself from
Australia at the first opportunity. It is then discovered that this
is the advice his friends and relatives have been tendering him for
months past. If he declines to go, or suggests that his own country is
quite good enough for him, he is set down as a man of no ambition, and
probably of very little soul. More often than not, he is persuaded to
go. The favourable opinion entertained of him is found, by a curious
chance, to coincide with his opinion of himself. He goes. Perhaps he
will be given a few small parts in London and return to Australia
a hero. Possibly he will be swallowed out of sight in the world’s
vortex, and that will be the end of him. More probably, he will return
disgusted and disillusioned, not with his own abilities, but with
the blasts of indifference and the _chevaux-de-frise_ of cosmopolitan
neglect that have met him abroad.
If the actor of purely local experience finds it hard to make a
living, the task is quite beyond the capacity of the local dramatic
_author_. One or two men born at the Antipodes have made their mark
in England as writers of plays. But that has only been after leaving
the country of their birth, and after surviving years of hard work and
discouragement. Where is the rising school of Australian dramatists?
Where are even the faint beginnings of it? And where are the supporters
of such a school? Echo answers to these questions. It is curious that
there should be such a blankness of enterprise and of inspiration in
this domain. The country is out of its literary swaddling clothes; it
can support any number of theatres; it can find minor parts for any
number of Australian actors and actresses; but it is incapable--in its
present frame of mind, it is totally incapable--of supporting a single
Australian dramatist. The idea that it might be asked to do so seems
never to have been seriously considered. There have, indeed, been a few
performances, mostly by third-rate, barn-storming companies, of plays
dealing with the Kelly Gang. And that excellent comedian and manager,
Mr Bland Holt, has given us a few stage pictures representing Sydney
and Port Philip harbours, and a few melodramatic incidents supposed to
have taken place in Australia. But if an audience, on being invited to
witness high-class comedy or tragedy of the more intellectual sort,
were to find itself confronted with Circular Quay and Darlinghurst, or
with Collins Street and Toorak, or with the people inhabiting them,
it would receive such a shock that it would not recover until it had
got outside the theatre door--and possibly not then. It would feel at
first amazed, and then insulted. The recognised understanding is, that
nothing worth looking at in the theatrical sense, and nothing worthy
of presentation to an enlightened public, can by any chance take place
unless it takes place in England, or on the continent of Europe, or in
America, or in Japan.
For the reasons mentioned, English actors usually do well in this part
of the world. The old country imposes now and then on the inexperience
of the new one. It has a habit of sending here, not merely its second
and third best, but its dead-beats and its derelicts. The celebrated
English actor of the play-bills is, as often as not, celebrated only
in the lively imagination of the _entrepreneur_ who brings him out.
He comes, however, with a certain flourish of trumpets and glamour of
romance. The very fact that he hails from a distance of 12,000 miles
is an aureole round his head. He can be sure of a good reception, of
an interested, expectant audience. If he has any colourable qualities,
they will be loudly, even rapturously, applauded. If he is very
indifferent, or if he is unspeakably bad, he will scarcely be told
so--at least not at first. The worst he will receive from the critics
of the great “dailies” will be a kind of faint questioning, a troubled
note of uncertainty, a dim reminder of some one else who played the
part differently. They may damn him with faint praise; but they
will be loth, at the outset, to do more. The fact that the actor is
understood to have won applause in England goes for a good deal, and
the commercial and social instincts of the big papers go for rather
more. A few of the week-end journals may bark out vituperation, but
they do not really count. It is well known that they are just as likely
to attack the supremely good as the atrociously bad. In the long run,
it may be--and perhaps before _very_ long--audiences will fall away
from the imported actor who is manifestly fourth and fifth rate; for
Australian play-goers are not naturally dull. They are, however, under
the spell of foreign associations; they are influenced, to a greater or
less extent, by newspaper criticism; and they have unquestionably given
a number of well-boomed and press-belauded visitors better support
than, on their merits and by comparison with the local substitute, they
deserved.
So far there has been no American invasion. The plays and the topical
allusions in vogue south of the Line are either English in origin,
or filter through an English channel. Productions hailing from the
United States have made their appearance and have fretted their hour,
but they have not succeeded in leaving a lasting mark. One reason
is, that the associations and atmosphere of the land of the dollar
are not sufficiently familiar. What do we know in Australia of the
Bowery? What do we know of Fifth Avenue? What do we know, or care,
for the Waldorf, or the Astoria? The local colour of Fleet Street,
of Westminster, of Petticoat Lane, and of Kensington, is, owing to
numerous stage acquaintanceships, something with which every audience
feels at home. But to talk to the average Melbourne or Sydney man of
the streets and hotels and public buildings of Boston and New York and
Philadelphia, is to talk to him in a foreign language. In the majority
of cases he does not know, and when he does know, he does not care.
Another reason is, that the typical American production lacks depth
and height. It catches something of what is flitting on the surface of
America; but it forgets that America, though topographically a large
place, is only a fraction of the intellectual and artistic world. The
country has not yet its Sardou, or its Sudermann, or its Ibsen, nor
yet its D’Annunzio, or its Pinero, or even its Henry Arthur Jones. A
dramatist spoken of as the American Sardou made his bow in Melbourne
a year or two ago, with a tragedy named _Nadjezda_. It was soon made
manifest that he had not come to stay. Neither have such productions as
_A Trip to Chinatown_ or _The Belle of New York_, or _Leah Kleschna_,
been responsible for much genuine success. The Yankee playwright is
clever with words and indifferent with ideas. As to emotions, he has
heard that they exist.
Yet there is one important, non-English product that has won a great
welcome from Australian audiences. This is the American actress. She
has not been able to acclimatise the works of her own countrymen;
she has usually refrained from attempting to do so. Clothing her
individuality in the language of Shakespeare and Sheridan, of Ibsen and
Bjornsten, of Sudermann and Maeterlinck, of Sardou and Rostand and the
Younger Dumas; heralded always by a tremendous flourish of trumpets,
and accompanied usually by an astute stage manager; restraining her
national prejudices and reducing her American accent to a few pretty
words and phrases, she has been enabled to accomplish a great deal. The
lady from the United States brings with her youth as a foremost asset.
She knows that it is difficult to “star” through a continent without
this ally. She has it proclaimed--loudly proclaimed--as part of her
equipment. Everywhere she plays the Young American Actress. It is the
first and the most effective piece in her repertoire. For the rest, she
finds it advisable to cultivate a manner, and a certain distinction
of style, when off the stage. Sometimes she is effusive, even
demonstrative, and inclined to be gracious to interviewers. Sometimes
she is magnificently cold and distant, with a coldness that is only
comparable to the fierce warmth of the characters in which she revels
behind the footlights. But always in Australia--whether she is on the
stage or off it--she is acting, acting, acting. Stage-struck people
send her flowers; infatuated people write her verses. She accepts them
all and welcomes them all as tributes to her artistic success. She is
brilliantly clever, with a cleverness that is all of the head. She gets
a great deal, and she deserves what she gets.
To come back to Australian audiences, it requires very little
argument to show there is only one kind of play that really appeals
to them. It is the kind of play that hovers about the confines of
a socially fashionable, and morally unorthodox, world. It is edged
round with impropriety; it is coloured, permeated, enlivened with
what the immortal author of _Bab Ballads_ calls “guilty splendour.”
In the background are the lilies and languors of virtue, but in the
foreground, placed there for the people to smile at and to condemn,
are the raptures and roses of vice. The theme, no doubt, has endless
variants: sometimes the end is tragic, and sometimes it is amusing;
sometimes a majority of the commandments suffer, and sometimes only
one. It is advisable that there should be a kind of supposed moral
purpose running through the production. It is an advantage to have
one or two high-minded characters as foils to the others; and as a
concession to custom, or as a salve to the uneasy British conscience,
it is always a wise policy to bring the immoral people to grief in the
last act. But no one can pretend to deny that it is these latter--these
fashionable rakes and brilliantly attired courtesans--who constitute
the real attraction of the Australian stage to-day. If any one doubts
this, let him attempt to run a theatrical season without them, and let
him put on the boards a drama dealing only with conventional or with
virtuous people. His downfall will be swift and convincing and sure.
For psychology, the typical Australian audience cares little. For
poetry on the stage, it cares less. For blank verse it has no
inclination. For sustained dignity it has no time. With intellectual
fireworks it is but indifferently and partially amused.
Comedy that lies hid in delicate shades and _nuances_, comedy that
is chiefly a matter of scintillating words and phrases, is not asked
for by the multitude. Even the brilliancy of Mr Bernard Shaw at his
best can command but a limited circle of admirers. Even the problem,
considered merely as a problem, is devoid of drawing power. When it
attracts, it attracts because of its dazzling pictures of luxury and
licentiousness.
Tragedy requires to be carefully handled. It is only when it is decked
out in certain robes, only when embroidered with certain trappings,
only when set to certain music, that it will crowd the benches. The
merely sordid themes have lost their hold, if they ever had one. An
immoral play that persists in showing its characters in a garb of
sackcloth and ashes has little chance of gaining an extended hearing.
One play that has had a marvellously successful run in Australia is
entitled _Woman and Wine_. The name might just as appropriately have
been given to nine out of every ten productions that have held, for
any length of time, the local stage. Whether it is _Camille_, or _The
Second Mrs Tanqueray_, or _The Gay Lord Quex_, or _Dolores_, or _Zaza_,
or _Quo Vadis_, or _Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, or _The Country Mouse_,
or _The Marriage of Kitty_, or _The White Heather_, or any other
melodrama of the unfailing Bland Holt and Anderson pattern, the title
might, with equal appropriateness, have been that of the popular piece
of work already mentioned. A theatre-going public--any theatre-going
public--is reached less easily through its intellect than through
its senses. What wonder, therefore, that a management should find it
advisable to stage _Woman and Wine_?
Caring only for one kind of play, Australian audiences are quite
willing, in their restless desire for novelty, to coquet with others.
That last expression of national boredom and ineptitude, musical
comedy, has its following at the Antipodes. This form of amusement,
like the others, is borrowed. It is doubtful whether Australian
audiences would ever have taken to it, had they not been assured that
it was regarded in England as the correct thing. Now that it has
obtained a footing, it is found to have a certain attractiveness. It
has become almost a rage. The reason is to be found in the circumstance
that it relieves the onlooker from the necessity of having to think.
This is a consideration that cannot well be over-estimated. For the
rest, it boasts a number of shapely-looking chorus girls, and a funny
man, whose business it is to be as mirthfully suggestive, and as
suggestively mirthful as possible. There is also some music, but this
scarcely counts. The comedy that is dubbed musical is not seriously
vicious, but then it has nothing to do with virtue. The latter
circumstance, combined with its gaudy colours, its short skirts, and
its chorus girls, helps it joyously on its way.
The claim is occasionally made, that one part of the continent
is more favourable to high dramatic art than another. Melbourne,
which is always endeavouring to be superior to every other city in
Australia, is accustomed to delude itself with the idea that it is
fond of intellectual plays. It makes a decent pretence, now and
again, of attending a revival of Shakespeare. If the brief season
proves a failure, as it usually does, the critics unkindly tell the
performers that it is they, and not the Bard of Avon, or the taste of
the Melbourne public, that are at fault. Sydney, to do it justice,
is given over to no such unnecessary make-believe. Shakespeare has
been expurgated so much that there is no risk, and consequently no
excitement, in going to see him, and Sydney stays away.
Outside the drama there are amusements which, between them, take up
most of the thought and most of the spare time of the people. But
little requires to be said of them, because, while they resemble the
drama in that they are borrowed from abroad, they give much less scope
for the play of individual taste and temper and sensibility. Racing is
the national recreation, just as gambling is the national vice. The
two insensibly melt into each other. It is a great sporting continent.
When the word “sport” is used--when a certain individual is called a
sportsman, and another individual is referred to as a follower of “the
game”--the reference is invariably to the game in which the horse and
the bookmaker play the leading parts. No writer, however admirable his
intentions, and however lurid his language, has been able to exaggerate
the hold which racing has over the whole population from Port Darwin to
Cape Otway, and from Brisbane round to Perth. The office boy reads his
racing intelligence in the papers with as much zest, and usually with
as much critical discernment, as does the man of wealth and leisure.
The man who never goes to horse races and never talks horse, is to
be met with, but he is distinctly uncommon. He stands apart from the
rest of the community. He is a modern Isaac Newton, given to voyaging
through strange social seas alone.
The assertion that racing is a noble and improving pastime--improving
to the breed of horses and incidentally to the people who look
on--is continually being made by writers who should know something of
the subject. A few delusions of the respectable sort are considered
necessary in the life of a people, and the decent efforts of sporting
authorities to keep these delusions alive are not treated with
disrespect. But any one who wishes to discover the real facts can
easily do so. The public who support racing care as much for improving
the breed of horses, as they do for civilising the Solomon Islanders,
or for christianising the Chinese--as much and no more. The horse
is emphatically not the thing; he is not the end; he can hardly be
called the means to the end; he is merely a useful pawn in the great
and insidious gambling game. In this game there are certain rules
which have to be observed. That is to say, they must not be broken in
too open, or too defiant, or too glaring a manner. But under cover
of these rules, and under pretext of observing them, every one does
his best to swindle every one else. The owner begins by deceiving the
public; the trainer, if it is sufficiently worth his while, misleads
the owner; the jockey scores repeatedly off the trainer; the bookmaker
does his best to make a profit out of the other three. The people who
pay in the last resort are the public. It is all very interesting,
and very _expensive_. The atmosphere of speculation is buoyant and
breezy, and, for the time being, exhilarating. Yet for all except those
who have learned how to move about in it--for all except the owners,
and, trainers, and jockeys, and bookmakers, and a few others--it is
decidedly unhealthy. While it is possibly advisable to have national
amusements, it is an advantage to understand what we are doing. The
man in Mrs Thurston’s novel, who keeps talking about “nerves,” when he
means opium, becomes, after a time, an infliction. And the individual
who is always referring to “sport,” when he means horse-racing, is in
danger of growing tedious.
The continent has its athletic games, although none of these can be
called national in the sense that racing is national. Not even cricket.
The Englishman sees more of Australian cricketers than he does of
Australian horses, and may be inclined to think that a country which
has beaten him at Lords, while it has been unable to raise a decent
gallop at Epsom, must perforce pay more attention to cricket than it
does to horse-racing. The idea, if it exists, is amusingly erroneous.
How do the attendances at Club cricket compare with the attendances
at local race meetings? How does the sprinkling of enthusiasts at
the one fixture look beside the tens of thousands, who, week in and
week out, follow the racing game in every centre of population in the
Commonwealth? An international cricket match will always draw a crowd;
but international cricket matches are few and far between. The truth is
that the speculation fever, the gambling fever, the fever to which the
horse acts as the main irritant, runs in the blood of the people. The
other excitements are transitory, and merely endemic.
In the realm of sport, to use the generic word, there is nothing that
the people will not attempt, nothing on which they have not turned
a roving eye. They play football, golf, tennis, croquet, hockey,
lacrosse, bridge, ping-pong, and a great deal else. They indulge in
skating on artificial ice, and, in the middle of a tropic summer,
struggle with dumplings and roast beef. They seek amusement everywhere.
In the mass, they are far more impressed by skill at some kind of game
than by any intellectual achievements. The hero-worship goes out, in
the first place, to the successful cricketer, and in the next place,
to the leading jockey, with the politician an indifferent third, and
the local poet or _litterateur_ entirely out of the running. It is an
undeniable fact that his countrymen were more proud of that amiable and
pleasant youth, Mr Victor Trumper, after his English season of 1902,
than they have ever been of any Prime Minister, actor, author, singer,
poet, or professor of metaphysics in the land.
In the world of sport and of recreation, just as in the world of the
stage, there is the tendency to borrow, and to borrow again. The games
that are played in England are played here, just as the kind of drama
that is acted in England is acted here. It matters little whether the
climate and temperament and other conditions are suitable, or the
reverse. The initiative faculty is stronger than its surroundings.
To watch a game of Rugby football in progress at Charters Towers, or
at Brisbane, is to wonder whether a new race of Salamanders, gifted
with tireless energy and some marvellous kind of asbestos physique,
has struck the earth. There is only one thing that may in the end
kill the initiative faculty, and that is the national dislike for too
much exertion. There are not wanting faint indications that Australia
is beginning to find the strain of these more strenuous pastimes too
severe, that it is slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that
training for football and for sculling matches necessitates more
sustained effort than the result is worth. It may be all very well
for the Englishman to keep himself warm by vigorous exercise. His
climate requires heroic treatment. The Australian, though still ready
to abase himself before the successful athlete, is slowly working
round to the conviction that certain pursuits are better adapted for
the Northern Hemisphere than for his own. The day is coming, and may
not be far distant, when the Australian people will revolt from their
Christmas dumplings, and abandon their Rugby football; when they will
be content, from North to South, with backing unreliable steeds on a
race-course, with playing poker in a shady room, and with watching from
the stalls of a theatre, the swaying forms of lightly clad heroines,
and the graceful movements of dancing feet.
VIII
THE ETERNAL FEMININE
“But still I see the tenor of man’s woe
Holds on the same, from woman to begin.”
“From man’s effeminate slackness it begins,
(Said the Angel) who should better hold his place.”
If a writer were always able to put down on canvas his earlier and
more enthusiastic impressions, he might draw a pretty picture of the
Australian woman. She should be the crown and glory of every Southern
landscape; she should have the dawn in her eyes, and the sun upon her
hair. In a street along which the heat waves were dancing with a joyous
and unrestrained fervour; in a ball-room which echoed and re-echoed to
rhythms of music; on a lawn that was decked with hundreds of sun-shades
and fringed with myriads of garden flowers; by the shade of trees,
on the brink of rivers, in the starlight of conservatories, on the
slopes of undulating plains, whenever and wherever the scene wanted a
touch of life to add to its romantic interest, she would be the subtle
something imparting to the new and matter-of-fact continent a tinge of
the colour of dreams. She should be all this and more, if one could put
the clock back to the days before the fiery sword of experience laid
bare the garden of imagination; if one could, by dint of any mental,
metaphysical, or chemical process, gather up and refurnish the snows of
a year ago.
On a subject of this kind it is easy to adopt one or other of two
contrasted veins: either the idealistic vein of that thin-spun
romanticist, Mr Richard le Gallienne, or the critical vein of that
earnest searcher after paradox, Mr Crosland. Is the Australian girl
to be idealised? She would hardly thank you. Is she to be satirised?
She would thank you less. Is the truth to be told about her? She would
meet you with Pilate’s question, and ask you to say where it is to be
found. Of all tasks, that of idealising is the least profitable, and in
some respects, the most dangerous. You are liable to suffer in your own
estimation and in hers, by finding at some later stage that you have
idealised the Australian woman for the qualities of which she possesses
least, and for which she has no kind of sympathy. She prides herself
on her modernity, and on her knowledge of the world. She boasts--and
it is her most frequent boast, though it is quite unjustified--that
she is not sentimental. She declares that she wishes only to know the
truth; and the truth, despite what Mr le Gallienne and Mr Crosland may
write to the contrary, it should be the business of every conscientious
chronicler to tell.
It is necessary to say something about the position of women in the
social and public life of Australia. It is a position in many respects
enviable. In this country, be it understood, we have shaken ourselves
free of sex prejudices. It is undeniable that there are a certain
number of rich but respectable people who would fain rescue the public
life of the continent from the threatening danger of a feminine
invasion. These individuals for the most part occupy seats in a
Legislative Council, and own warehouses in Flinders Lane, and run wool
stores along Circular Quay: but they do not represent public opinion.
There are only enough of them to fill one or two Houses of Parliament.
Being in a hopeless minority, they may be left, for purposes of the
present discussion, on one side.
The public sense of the community is represented by the man about town,
and this man, in theory, at any rate, is free of sex prejudices. He is
much more free of them than is the average Englishman or the typical
European--if there is such a type--or the male biped of the yellow, or
brown, or any coloured variety. He is on a level with the progressive
American; even, so far as the question of the franchise is concerned,
ahead of him. He does not deny the fairness of admitting women to the
learned professions. He is seldom willing to stand up and assert, with
the blatant unwisdom that is the heritage of past centuries, that they
are mentally or otherwise unfitted to exercise a vote at elections.
Liberty, equality, freedom for both sexes, are ideals that he can
understand. In theory he is an emancipator, a reformer. Such prejudices
as he possesses do not take the shape of definite views and opinions;
they are the unconscious relics of custom working down through the
ages. Theoretically he believes in woman’s advancement; but practically
he has no desire to see his bride-elect, or any one of his feminine
relations, declaiming politics from a platform, or laying down the law
to judges, or teaching logic to a school of metaphysicians. He is in
no danger of becoming infatuated with the women who do these things;
but neither would he be any party to an arbitrary edict forbidding that
they should be done.
It goes without saying that the feminine type most sought after in
this country, or in other countries, is the picturesquely foolish
type. As it happens, the Australian woman is by no means foolish; on
the contrary, she is unusually clever. Nothing comes amiss to her;
there is no part that she could not play if called upon to do so. With
the unusual gift of perception that is part of her mental equipment,
she understands always what _rôle_ is calculated to make her most
attractive in the eyes of the world. She knows that the average man,
despite his occasional glimmerings of reason and of intelligence, is
rendered _uneasy_ by too much cleverness in a woman, just as a mediocre
piano player is alarmed by the display of virtuosity in a rival. For
various reasons, the average woman finds it still to her interest
to placate the average man. She sets to work accordingly. In the
great game of make-believe she has no equals. She is full of quaint
and illogical surprises. For dissimulation she has the prettiest art
imaginable. She will always plume herself--more especially in those
moments of confidence that are shared with you and the stars--on the
precise qualities that are not hers. If she happens to be a brilliant
University student, she will talk mainly of her performances with a
sewing-machine. If she is a high-class musician, and has no literary
faculty whatever, she will talk, not of her interpretations of Brahms
and Chopin, but of some journalistic composition that a mendacious
editor thought fit to praise. If she is ignorant of the difference
between a flat-iron and a rolling-pin, she will tell you of an
imaginary confection of hers that excited the raptures of a fictitious
gathering of _gourmands_. If she is intensely practical she will play
very dexterously for your amusement on a sentimental string. The
artistic sense in her is not dulled by a prosaic adherence to facts.
She is anything but what she seems.
It is something more than a coincidence that both the churches and
the theatres in Australia should be mainly supported by women. Both
institutions go beyond the region of commonplace realities; both appeal
to the finer sense--the sense of something that is not prosaic. It is
melancholy to think what might happen to ecclesiastical institutions
in Australia if women did not go to church. It is interesting to
reflect that there are more stage-struck girls in the community than in
any other of the same size on earth. Those who cannot act behind the
footlights, act at home and in the houses of their neighbours. They
carry into the walks of everyday life the histrionic faculty, without
which grace is a thing unknown, and unadorned human nature is painfully
crude and severe. The man is seldom an adept in these matters. As a
rule he has no skill at concealing his deficiencies. He flounders badly
amid uncongenial surroundings. The Australian girl, on the other hand,
will adapt herself with great readiness to any set of circumstances,
will look happy when she is feeling exasperated, will smile cordially
on women she detests, will listen with charming and intelligent
sympathy to monologues on subjects for which she cares not at all, will
be intensely Bohemian or rigidly conservative just as she thinks is
required.
There are certain types that have latterly been attracting attention,
and one of these is the political woman. With her natural talent for
experimenting the Australian woman has paid some attention to politics,
and she has found the pastime moderately interesting, so long as
nothing more intrinsically important has been to hand.
There are two recognised kinds of political women on the continent.
One of these, and by far the more numerous, is the dilettante, the
feminine dabbler. She has a pretty, graceful way of deprecating too
much knowledge of her subject. She rarely comes into prominence except
at election times. She is convinced that Smith is a better man for
the country than Jones, but she is far from pretending to know what
Smith’s views are on the fiscal question, whether he is a single taxer,
a preferential trader, or a person of secret anarchical tendencies. If
you ask her why she supports Smith she will probably tell you that she
dislikes Jones. She is an expert and resourceful canvasser; like the
_pallida mors_ of the Roman poet she knocks impartially at the huts
of the poor and the mansions of the rich. She goes to the poll if a
conveyance is handy, or if it is not too far to walk, and she wins, or
helps to win, many elections.
Unlike her is the other type of political woman--the intensely
serious, aggressive type. This type is not numerous, but what there
is of it is formidable. It is the very latest thing in Australian
public life. It is determined to regenerate the world by the _deus
ex machina_ of the ballot box. It has a mania for contesting seats
in Parliament. Its opinion of the opposite sex is quite unfit for
publication--nevertheless it is often published. The type of this
description is unusual and rather abnormal, yet there are not wanting
indications that it is growing in numbers.
Another kind of woman often met with has made a special cult of
æstheticism. With the sex in Australia, æstheticism and theosophy
usually go together. The writer has been unable to discover what
difference, if any, exists between the two, or where the one
begins and the other leaves off. It is surprising to think what a
number of girls, particularly during recent years, have taken to
professing themselves theosophists. The Anglican curate and the
young non-Conformist preacher have but a modified social success
in Australia. They are not the toys and darlings of any but a
very limited sisterhood. On the other hand, the man who can talk
mysticism, and quote Plato or Edwin Arnold, can be sure of a wide
and growing feminine _clientèle_. If, in addition, he can play
the violin, he leaps at once into a blaze of popularity. It is an
interesting phrase of the feminine temperament, this leaning towards
a spiritualistic-cum-theosophic-cum-Buddhist-cum-æsthetic School. The
underlying principle, the subtle essence pervading the whole, is a
yearning for the higher life. This yearning is not actually expressed
in common words “understanded” by the vulgar, but is implied in certain
lines borrowed from _The Light of Asia_, in certain names taken from
the Sacred Books of the Vedas, in a certain transcendentalism of
appearance, a certain intensity of manner, a certain trick of the
voice, now and then in a certain severe simplicity in arranging the
hair.
At the opposite pole from the æsthetic, is the athletic woman. This
latter type is very often to be met with. Considering the languorous
and enervating climate that she has, for the most part, to contend
against, her performances are more than creditable. She sweeps a wide
gamut of athletic achievement. Golf is one of her specialties, but it
does not operate to the exclusion of other things. She plays tennis
with a tremendous amount of energy, more particularly when it is a
question of a ladies’ four, and the masculine onlooker or player is
absent. In the curious and indefinite pastime known as “mixed doubles,”
she is a perpetual source of astonishment, alternating between sudden
fits of energy and a graceful quiescence in the middle of the court.
Her partner is never quite sure whether she is secretly wild with rage
at him for taking her shots, or whether she is disgusted with his
laziness in leaving so much to her. The athletic woman will also row
vigorously, walk untiringly, play hockey till she is red in the face,
and dance the strongest male partner off his feet. In the ordinary
course of things she is independent of companionship, and has no use
whatever for a chaperone. The least attractive feature about her is
her language. In this respect she can out-Herod Herod, and out-slang
the slangiest barracker at the most exciting football match that was
ever played on the Australian field. Even Professor Morris has no clue
to certain of the terms which she evolves either from the recesses
of her memory, or from the depths of her inner consciousness. It is
stated that she can, on occasion, skip lightly across the border of
colloquialism into the stormy regions of profanity. That may be so.
In any case, there is not a great deal to choose between the lady who
sometimes borrows an Australia curse word, and her whose ready-money is
the aforesaid awful vernacular.
Yet another type is the scholastic woman. The lingering mediævalism of
Oxford and Cambridge would be surprised if it knew to what an extent
in Australia masculine prerogative in the matter of higher education
has broken down. We teach our girls everything from classics to
metaphysics, from the theory of music to the practice of medicine,
from botany to jurisprudence, from dressmaking to trigonometry, from
cookery to architecture, from domestic economy to Egyptology, from
plain sewing to conic sections. There is nothing in which they are not
being perpetually instructed; and for the result you have only to look
around. The erudite woman is everywhere. Sometimes she teaches in a
High School or College; sometimes she is to be encountered at home,
just returned from a finishing tour to Europe, half shuddering at the
prospect of contact with numerous illiterate and unfinished persons,
half inclined to envy her sister the loaves and fishes of common
domestic life. This scholarly woman--not the one who possesses merely a
smattering of scholarship, but the one who has used her cleverness in a
sustained attempt to acquire knowledge--the one who has taken degrees
and passed examinations by the dozen--is usually unattractive to the
eye. She is inclined to be pale, inclined to be angular, inclined to
wear spectacles. She has learned too much to have any illusions. She
has worked too hard to have much feminine fancy remaining. It is
impossible for her to make a hero of a man, because through a long
course of scientific and experimental observations she has become
perfectly well acquainted with his thousand weaknesses, vices, physical
failings, and mental limitations. The man knows that he stands before
her like an open book. Knowing this, he trembles, as he has every
reason to do.
As a matter of fact no one of these four types, nor all four together,
nor any others that might be given a place in the category, represents,
in any general sense, the Australian woman. There is reason for
believing that most, if not all the phases of activity just mentioned,
together with others that might be mentioned, are sublimely insincere,
are magnificently built up on shams. The political woman does not
really care for politics. The æsthetic woman is only interested in the
picturesque side of æsthetics. The athletic girl considers fame at
golf or lawn tennis as at best a means to an end. The lady graduate
is not in love with her degree. The woman has not yet been identified
who can lay her hand on her heart, and swear that the study of higher
mathematics, or even a profound analysis of the Latin poets, is an
altogether satisfying pursuit. The age is one of experimentalism,
so far as the Australian woman is concerned. She is attempting many
things; she is looking for new interests in many directions; she has
taken to playing several fresh parts; she has learned quite a number of
new tricks. Yet there is a suspicion that they are only tricks after
all.
The Australian girl--with the accent on the definite article--remains
yet to be defined. Some of her attributes, or accomplishments, or
phases are readily enough made out, but many of these are merely
incidental modes of the moment; others are to be regarded as streaks of
colour on an always variegated landscape; they are not the landscape
itself. We know well enough that certain things will invariably take
her fancy. A love of dress, a fondness for jewellery, a passion for
display, a taste for theatres, a tendency to gush, a dislike for
solitude, a mania for admiration--all these are manifestations that
are continually meeting the eye of the casual observer. But they
are not peculiar to the Australian woman, or to the sex in any one
country. And, on the other hand, there are discernment, subtlety,
artistic sensibility, grace of movement, warmth of temperament,
quickness of sympathy, and much else that could be mentioned. These
latter qualities, for all that is known to the contrary, may be in the
majority of cases more outward than inward. That is to say, they may
be dexterously woven into the garment for purposes of effect. In any
case, it does not matter. If the resulting product can please the eye
and satisfy the sense it is foolish to begin raising doubts about its
precise texture or its wearing capabilities.
Womanhood, _per se_, apart from incidental gifts and graces, apart
from what it can do, and cannot do, seems to be a curious mixture
of practicality and sentiment; in other words, of water and fire.
The elements are so blended that nature cannot stand up and say with
confidence, This is a woman. There is nothing a woman dislikes so much
as being called sentimental; but there is nothing she takes to so
kindly as sentiment. It is her essence, her _metier_, a part of the
air she breathes; she repudiates it in words, but acknowledges it in
practice every day. And yet, with all this extraordinary sentiment,
with all this drift towards emotionalism, the Australian girl combines
in some mysterious and inexplicable fashion a singular faculty for
holding her own, and a marvellously clear eye for the main chance.
In the vagaries of her wildest mood there is a concealed art and a
sound method. In the whirlwind of her emotionalism there is a certain
immovable common-sense. The storm may blow hither and thither, but it
blows on sufferance. The cold Angel of reason, with the ruling rod of
prudence, is never out of sight and hearing. To understand the position
it is only necessary to recollect that the Australian girl, albeit
disinclined by temperament to hard routine and cold formality, has been
instructed from infancy in many things that were quite unknown to her
English sister, at any rate until recent years. She has been taught to
rely much upon herself; she is not chaperoned and she is not shut in.
Thus it is that, while she is artistically susceptible to every mode of
emotion, she will not, except when she is under the age of seventeen,
throw herself recklessly away on the first individual who is to be
encountered strolling in the garden of Romance; not even though he be a
pleasant person and goodly to look upon.
For the reasons just stated or implied, a love affair with an
Australian woman is usually an interesting, and often an instructive,
experience. In suggesting for his bored and _blasé_ King of Ruritania
(or some such place) a love affair with a red-haired woman, Mr Henry
Harland was following slavishly in the tracts of physiology. But that
kind of science is always unsatisfactory, and, more often than not,
misleading. The woman of this continent--Mr Harland had never been
in Australia--does not require red hair to prove an antidote for
dulness. Her inborn strain of sentiment makes her the finest of natural
players in the game of hearts. Her marked individuality and abundance
of common-sense render her anything but an easy bird to capture. As
a matter of fact, she is more often the pursuer than the pursued. If
she sustains a reverse in one direction she recovers it in another.
She does not stand to be shot at; she has a thousand subterfuges, a
thousand weapons both of defence and attack. It is only experienced
players who can encounter her with safety. The crude beginner is almost
certain to sustain damage, if, indeed, he is not battered out of
recognisable shape.
It is the histrionic faculty again. The more one observes it, the more
admirable and the more dangerous it appears. A clever woman talking to
an eligible man in a drawing-room--or anywhere else for that matter--is
undoubtedly the noblest work of art. Observe how her own individuality
and her own ideas are kept in the background, while she seems to be
waiting with prettily veiled impatience for the words of wisdom that
she knows are about to fall from the man she is talking to. Observe
how the electric light has a habit of falling on her profile every now
and then. Observe how on occasion it lights up her eyes. Observe also
with what artless art she will bend forward her rapt soul in her eyes,
and again lean musingly or languorously back. She gives the man every
opportunity. If he has anything to say she flatters him by wanting to
listen, by drinking it thirstily in. If it becomes evident that he
can’t talk, or wont talk, she will talk for him, rally him, entertain
him, be brilliant for him, make him imagine that _he_ is brilliant in
listening to her. Glancing across the room, we wonder why she does it.
We don’t know her motive, but we recognise that the man isn’t worthy.
We see that she is wasting her time, throwing herself away. She should
be talking to us. We should be talking to her.
“Nature,” said a well-known painter to me only the other week, “is
hateful, horrible; it is only art that can make her endurable.” He
was speaking in the Melbourne Gallery, and he pointed to a picture of
his--a “Symphony,” it was called--which he had given away for a couple
of hundred pounds. The finished work was a symphony no doubt; but the
copied thing was to any but the artistic eye a dull conglomeration of
twig and leaf and timber. We have to thank this painter for creating
out of common and unattractive material a feast of colour that must
appeal to every beholder. We are not always as grateful as is necessary
to the individual who makes himself look other--and incidentally
better--than he really is. The world is full of intensely natural and
intensely uninteresting people. The unrefined product of nature when
presented in its native shape is alarming and calculated to make the
beholder flee into the wilderness. To be natural is to be condemned.
Let us thank the Australian girl for the fine example, for the clear
lead she has given. Let us endeavour to be as artificial, as histrionic
as we can.
IX
TWO CITIES
Where, O Earth! is a fairer city
Than this by night, when the Quay’s half circle ...
Lights the dusk of the city’s face?
Miss Mack’s verses to Sydney are the kind of tribute one would wish
to pay to a lover of happier days. For that reason they may awake
some kind of echo in the breasts of many hundreds of persons who will
confess to a fondness for Sydney, but who are indifferent to the ways
and methods of the lofty rhyme. For the place has a strong personality.
One never thinks of it as merely so many houses and so many people.
An entity, a living thing, a friend, a mistress, a consoler, a woman
with soft breath and warm-tinted hair, a queen of men and yet their
servant--it is any or all of these, and much besides.
The new-comer should arrange to enter Sydney by night. If he does
this he will experience the strong and always remembered sensation of
emerging from Cimmerian darkness into the blaze of a lighted arena. The
waters of the Tasman sea are usually cold and stormy. If you have been
ploughing across them for the best part of a week, if you have been
beset with bad weather, or sea-sickness, or boredom, or with the three
combined, you will hail as one of the pleasant sounds of a lifetime the
news that there is visible a glimmer from South Head. Thereafter the
transformation is rapid. Sydney by night does not _grow_ upon you; it
_bursts_ upon you, and the impression is not soon forgotten. Whatever
you have read and whatever you have dreamed of Eastern cities by the
Tigris; whatever you have seen of lime-light effects on a brilliant,
gaily coloured, thronged and animated stage; whatever you have pictured
to yourself of islands and gardens and palaces by the water’s edge--all
these and more are around you and in front of you as the ship winds
past promontory after promontory, island after island, on its passage
towards a mooring place in Darling Harbour. The panorama has an
unreal and fairy-like splendour. For a minute or two, perhaps for half
an hour, you expect that everything will presently dissolve, and the
conditions of blackness and vacancy reassert themselves. But the boat
passes on, and the picture remains. You realise after a while that it
is the city itself welcoming you, beckoning to you, smiling at you with
all its arcs and crescents and its glittering phantasmagoria of lights.
In the daytime all this is changed. Sydney by day is the real Sydney,
the working Sydney, and like every other place in which men work and
congregate, it has its dull and drab and depressing features. But
the strangely marked personal characteristics are there still. They
have taken on new phases, and they make a different kind of appeal.
Your mistress has no longer the sparkle in her eyes and the diamonds
on her brow; she no longer scintillates to dazzle you, and no longer
challenges you to admiration by her life and movement. She has grown
languorous as the land of the lotos-flower, enervating as the Island of
Circë. True, she has her marts and her merchandise, her busy streets,
her ships, and her people who toil and spin. But they are a people on
whom she has set her imprint, and who have drunk the wine of love and
of laughter at her hands. The fact is that neither by day nor by night,
neither in summer nor winter, can Sydney look consistently hard or
repellant. Now and then a bracing wind blows up from the waste places
of the Pacific and talks menacingly of storm and stress and shipwreck.
But it loses itself or dies to nothing when in the heart of the
city, or when endeavouring to make its way along such good-tempered,
well-protected thoroughfares as George and Pitt Streets. Sometimes
it rains, sometimes it blusters a little, but only with an amusing
semblance of anger. In an hour or two the sun is shining again.
A city that has grown has always an advantage, in point of
attractiveness, over one that has been merely made. It is easy to
understand the reason. No one cares for the display of qualities
that seem to be the result of artificial training. Every one admires
spontaneity, or rather the appearance of spontaneity. The thing itself
may be a product of the finest art. But that matters nothing. As it is
with individuals, so it is with a city. The straight, uncompromising
lines which appeal to the draughtsman are of interest to no one else.
It is a mistake to cultivate a prim demeanour or to attempt to keep
a straight face if Nature has in view something else. The friend who
keeps calling “Duty, duty, duty” in your ear is not really wise, and
is always certain to be disliked. Equally tedious is the architect, or
the surveyor, or the mathematician, who says dogmatically that certain
streets should always meet at such and such an angle; that there should
be certain spaces for parks and certain widths reserved for traffic;
that there should be buildings modelled on particular lines, and
conglomerations of houses arranged after a particular fashion; that
there should be a scientific method observed in building the thing to
be called a city, just as there are particular rules for turning out a
baker’s oven or for making a carpenter’s box.
Sydney, as it does not take long to discover, has grown up after a
careless and wilful fashion of its own. It is neither consciously
straight, nor consciously irregular. Of modern improvements it takes
what it pleases, and leaves what it does not want. Buildings cluster
round the harbour and bedeck themselves with red-tiled roofs and
flaunt their pleasant inertia in the sun. Some of the more recent
structures--hotels, warehouses, public markets and the like--are
showy and even magnificent. But the main streets make no pretence to
symmetry or modernity, and are strongly reminiscent in their narrowness
and grime of second and third-rate towns in France and England. The
resemblance would be more striking did not Australia lack the pointed,
old-world architecture that gives historic quaintness and interest
even to the dirtier and more tumbledown villages of Europe. Sydney is
suspicious of new inventions, and would prefer that the disturbing,
scientific spirit of the age left it alone. Until lately it knew of no
better means of locomotion than its steam trams. It is only within the
last year or two that it has had its electric cars. The energy with
which these gigantic structures rush to and fro and disturb traffic
is quite out of keeping with the atmosphere of the place. There are
numerous accidents, because so many of the Sydneyites have not the
energy to get out of the way.
The people, as a rule, are not ambitious. They have not the restless
unquiet temperament associated with the Anglo-Saxon race in other
and less pleasant parts of the globe. For that reason they are often
excellent companions. They know how to enjoy life, and they are willing
to share their knowledge with the stranger. They have no cast-iron
formulas, either of etiquette or of morals. They have not yet succeeded
in reducing orthodoxy to a fine art. It matters comparatively little to
them, before or after they have made your acquaintance, whether your
education was finished at Oxford or in Lower George Street, whether
your father was a pawnbroker or an admiral, whether your nearest
relations keep a grocer’s shop, or are something connected with the
Established Church. Are you an agreeable person? Have you a pleasant
humour? Do you know how to make life entertaining? Can you help others
to pass the time? If the answer to any of these questions is in the
affirmative, the gates of many desirable places will be thrown open
to you. You will be allowed to tread the primrose path to the music of
lutes, to the sound of soft voices, to the rustle of silk and satin
embroideries, to the rhythm of Government House waltzes, to the popping
of Vice-regal champagne. The possession of wealth is an advantage, but
it is not indispensable. The Sydney creditor is as accommodating as
most creditors. Even this class is not absolutely proof against the
influence of climate and surroundings.
Among the men who do the mental work of Sydney--the writers, the
scholars, the financiers, the preachers, the politicians, the social
reformers, and the rest--you find this lack of ambition and of
sustained effort particularly noticeable. A degree of ability is
common enough. But it is not husbanded and utilised with that fierce
concentration of purpose which marks the North of England man when he
packs his bag for London, or the Western American when he sets out for
New York. The journalism of Sydney is intermittently clever, sometimes
brilliant, never consistently good. It may be that a man has a vein
of humour, a descriptive faculty, a sense of colour in words. It is
little use telling this man that if he works and waits, and waits and
works--if he denies himself the cheap laurels of newspaper favour, and
the thin rewards of journalistic achievement--he may ultimately win a
place in the inner circle of approved and recognised authorship. He
knows that he can get a guinea for a couple of hours’ application. What
is the advantage, then, of going elsewhere? A guinea is a guinea; and
Sydney is an excellent place in which to spend it. Thus he reasons in
act, if not in words. The consequence is that the intellectual tone
of the city, as set by the writers and thinkers, is for the most part
a blend of opportunism and of _laisser faire_. If you want to learn
something, if you want an incentive to act, if you want to live the
strenuous life, you must leave Sydney and go somewhere else.
The women of Sydney are in a class by themselves. They are as
distinctive in their way as the city in which they live is distinctive
in its way. There is little doubt that in a measure they obtain their
character from the place, though it is also true that they assist to
give the place its character. To think of them, after the lapse of
years, is to conjure up pleasant memories. There is reason to believe
that the Cytherea of the ancient Greeks was born in Sydney, or at least
lived there in prehistoric days, long before settlement crowded the
approaches to the harbour, long before Governor Philip sighted the
Heads, long before the country knew anything of modern habitations,
and while it still slumbered in the embraces of the Golden Age. The
waters still smile when they remember the vision that once rose from
them; and to this day they impart something of the warmth and colour
of the foam-born Aphroditë to the women who dwell by their fringing
shores. Not that the daughters of Sydney are classical, or Grecian,
or faultless in form and feature. The symmetry of the marble statue
is no part of their equipment. They are deficient, for the most part,
in correct outlines. Such charm as is theirs is mainly the result
of manner, of temperament, of suggestion, of look. They convey the
impression that their sympathies would not soon be alienated, that
their welcome would never be ungenerous, that they could, if they
wished, make of existence a pleasant thing.
The character of the people has been a subject for uneasy speculation.
It is darkly hinted that the city is a refuge ground for many strange
sins. The majority of the residents do not trouble about these matters.
But there are a few estimable people who do. The women belonging to
the W.C.T.U., and the I.O.G.T., and the I.O.R., and the rest of the
alphabet devoted to temperance and the higher life, work consistently
hard. In their display of zeal they almost make up what they lack
in numbers. They are troubled voices calling in a moral wilderness,
but they do not despair. They have one friend and confidant--the
Colonial Secretary for the time being. The tales of depravity that are
poured into the ears of this patient individual each month would fill
many volumes. His official life is a round of dreadful discoveries.
He begins his Ministerial career a cheerful optimist, and ends it
with every vestige of illusion gone. Virtuous and estimable women
belonging to every reforming agency in the metropolis are constantly
at his elbow, are constantly telling him of fresh detachments of
young children found in opium dens, of fresh batches of drunkards
picked up in the gutter, of new contingents of women discovered on
the street. The Colonial Secretary is asked, entreated, and commanded
to do something. Exactly what it is his auditors do not know, but
_something_, he is told, must be done. The unhappy man listens,
shudders, sympathises, and protests that he is passionately grateful to
the earnest women who have thought fit to lighten his mental darkness.
He agrees that something must be done, and knows in his heart of hearts
that nothing can be done. Meantime the social life of Sydney goes on,
and the place, with its agreeable men and graceful women, is a place to
be desired and pleasant to the eyes.
It is always pleasant--pleasant to linger in, pleasant to look
forward to, pleasant to look back upon. Not very intellectual, not
very strenuous, not very inspiring, it has all the aids to enjoyment
that have been discovered in the last twenty centuries, and all the
ingenious devices that have ever been invented to make time pass. A
city that has from its birth been cradled in soft airs; a city that
spreads against the storm and stress of dissatisfied ambition, the
protection of mild and lulling wings; a city intended by Nature to
please the artist and bring the practical man relief and rest; a city
that rescues humanity from the stern and unlovely asceticism of a gray
and narrow school; a city that is indifferent to morals, and cares
for religion only on the picturesque side; a city that holds always
with the Persian poet and tells its people to enjoy themselves, for
to-morrow they may be with yesterday’s seven thousand years.
To leave Sydney and to go to Melbourne is to enter a new world. Instead
of resemblances there are contrasts. In place of Australianisms there
are Anglicanisms, Americanisms, and foreign “isms” of various kinds.
Climate may have something to do with the difference, and topographical
conditions may have something more. The reception that Sydney gives
you is that of a woman in a luxurious room, with soft lights falling
on rich curtain hangings, with glitter of glass and silver ornament,
with lavish display of elegance and outward charm. The woman rises
seductively, looks at you languorously and invites you, not so much by
word as by gesture, to make yourself at home. It is delightful; but
yet there is something wanting. The reflection comes that you are not
being specially favoured; that this is the manner of the hostess to all
and sundry; that there may be something unhealthy in this mellifluous
atmosphere; that the smile of welcome is less that of the friend than
that of the courtesan. The reception you get from Melbourne is of quite
another character. The woman this time is cold and calm, and superbly
indifferent. If she seems to smile it is probably the reflection of
your own hopefulness. She offers you nothing; she barely acknowledges
you; she does not want you; it is certain that she is not anxious to
know you. All her panoply of architectural ornament is arrayed against
you. And yet the thought supervenes that this cold woman may be better
worth knowing in the end than the other one; that her harder outlines
may conceal a more genuine worth; that her good opinion may be better
worth striving for than that of the other--the one with the redder
lips, and the flaunting, unchanging smile.
But the wide streets and the flat unoccupied spaces of Melbourne
are an outward semblance calculated to strike the newcomer with a
shuddering sense of chill and desolation. More especially if they
are encountered for the first time on a winter’s afternoon. For the
winter that merely dallies and trifles in Sydney, and makes but a
pretence of bringing with it cold weather, is genuine in the Southern
city. There is no bleaker thoroughfare on earth than Collins Street
or Burke Street on a blustering July day. From Spring Street to the
railway station there is a clear, unbroken passage for the Arctic wind.
The occasional tramcar and the infrequent pedestrian are cheerless
objects around which the Sou’-Wester disports itself, seeking always,
in return for some ancient grievance, a grim and unnecessary revenge.
If the day happens to be a Saturday, or a public holiday, the outlook
is rendered ten times more dismal by the deathly appearance of the
streets, from which all but an unreal semblance of life and movement
has departed. A wilderness of grim-looking window shutters, and a
Sahara of pavement--that is all. The wind drives the dust in front of
it, then follows on shriekingly. When it has finished playing with the
dust it brings in the rain. And Melbourne, with its wide, shelterless
streets swept from end to end by a rain-storm--Melbourne with its blank
spaces and its vanished crowds--is the one place on earth where the new
arrival would choose _not_ to be.
But this appearance and mannerism of the Queen city--it clings to
the name, though the boom era which gave the name a meaning has
departed--must be lived through, and lived down. Presently the sun will
shine again. Presently the holiday will be over; and the people who
have been abroad in the suburbs, or cultivating their garden patches,
or hiding themselves in their own houses, will be once more visible,
and the pavement will once more echo to the sound of feet. By a seeming
miracle the streets have become almost full. Melbourne has become an
intelligible place to live in. The shops, now that the window shutters
are down, are seen to be beautifully fitted up. The buildings are for
the most part new, and they are never grimy. One remembers that in the
heart of Sydney there are pervading evidences of smoke and grime. One
must give Melbourne its due. It has something to boast about. It has
been magnificently laid out. Its measurements are on a generous scale.
It is fine and large and bracing. One forgets the chill sensation left
by those deserted streets and those grim-looking window shutters. The
Block has become a centre of bustle and animation. Again the thought
presents itself that this place may have a heart of its own, that it
may have a personality, even a warmth, concealed behind those set
features and those formal lines.
Further acquaintance with Melbourne increases the respect felt for it.
One gets to like it for the same reason that the Londoner gets to like
London. It is not a question of beauty, or simplicity, or gentleness
of form and feature. One gets to like it because of its greatness,
and because of its strength; perhaps also, in the case of the older
residents, because of the thought of the splendid life and animation
that were part of it fifteen or twenty years ago, and that may be
part of it again. The Melbourne man, after a certain lapse of time,
acquires a personal feeling for his self-contained, self-respecting
city. He learns to recognise its various moods--for even Melbourne has
moods--and to enter into them all. He would not care for it if it were
flashy and volatile like other places. He can admire it for its reserve
and its silences. He knows that, go where he will, he will not find a
cleaner, wider, more spacious city to dwell in. And he is fully aware
that for him Melbourne reveals much of what she keeps hidden from the
stranger; that she will show to him as to one of her lovers a warmth
and friendliness that are the more satisfying because not universally
shared.
Commercially, Melbourne is not what it used to be. It has lost the
sparkle, the animation of other days. Yet, whatever else it has lost,
it has retained its consciousness of former prosperity. It is as proud
as ever; in fact more proud than in the days when people were pouring
into it by thousands, and when fortunes were being made every five
minutes in its principal streets. Diminished prosperity has caused
it to hold its head higher. And at stated times, like some proud but
impecunious beauty, it insists on recalling itself to the mind of the
world. On Cup Days and _fête_ days it scores a triumph: it arrays
itself in the festal garment of the early ’nineties, and queens it to
the admiration of the stranger within its gates. On these occasions
Melbourne is incomparable. It has no need to be envious, because it is
the admired of all admirers. When the cheering is over, and the crowds
have departed, and the lights are being put out, Melbourne retires
moodily into itself, goes about its daily business with an abstracted
air, and consoles itself intermittently by talking of the long deferred
prosperity which it insists must come.
For if the place fails in this or in that respect, it never fails to
keep its expectations high. It has been doing this for the past dozen
years or more. It has long outgrown its happy-go-lucky, red-shirted,
soft-collared, mining, pioneering days. It has no wish to recall these
outward symbols of an earlier and a vanished generation. With the
memory of many losses and many disappointments, there is still the
determination to put the best face on everything. Though the crowds no
longer hum and vibrate round its chief thoroughfares, it retains its
streets and its houses, its spacious theatres and commodious public
buildings; its magnificent Houses of Parliament, its squares and
gardens, its network of railways and tram lines, its villa residences
at St Kilda and its mansions at Toorak. The outward shell of things
is still there. Every now and then there is a sign of movement, an
agitation as of returning life. The people are convinced that something
is going to happen. The period of depression, they say, cannot last for
ever. In imagination they can see the Golden Days ever returning.
Meantime, the business of keeping up appearances goes on. Melbourne has
become accustomed, through sheer force of insistence on its individual
merits, to regard itself as everything that a modern city ought to
be, and as most things that other cities are not. It prides itself on
a great deal--on its music, its art, its culture, its architecture,
its good looks, and its intelligence. In the matter of dress it
aspires to set the fashion for Australia. Men and women join in this
amiable rivalry. The girl of the Victorian capital is more severe
in demeanour, more classic in pose, and more punctilious in attire
than her Sydney sister. She takes herself more seriously. She has few
_negligé_ airs and graces; she does not cultivate the irresponsible
freedom of the gown of Nora Creina; she arrays herself for the Block
with a firm resolve to compel critical admiration. And in this she
generally succeeds. The men of Melbourne live in starched shirts and
expensive broadcloth. They cling tenaciously to that fading relic of
an earlier civilisation--the bell-topper hat. Social life in the city
would be impossible without one. The Universities keep up their quota
of students, whether the parents can afford to pay or not. The theatres
can attract audiences even for a performance of Wagner, or a revival of
Shakespeare. The city fathers set an example of dignity to the rest of
Australia. The politicians rarely call each other bad names, and never
indulge in free fights on the floor of Parliament.
Behind all this outward seeming there is, it need hardly be said, a
great amount of make-believe. Melbourne is only the temporary capital
of the Commonwealth, but it is the permanent centre of--to use an
ecclesiastically sounding word--attitudinarianism. Its mental life is
more the expression of a desire to be thought superior to others than
the outcome of any set of inborn predilections. Its intellectuality has
the motto _videri quam esse_. There is not one of its learned pundits
or its _litterateurs_ or its native born poets who has won much outside
reputation. Its scrupulous regard for dress is the screen for much
actual poverty. Its vaunted cosmopolitanism has no real existence.
Its social circle is, only too often, the playground of snobs. Its
professed public virtue deceives no one. In Sydney the spectacle of
vice undraped, and of Lais plying her profession in the public streets,
is more insistent and more familiar. But in Melbourne there is as much
for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to grieve over, though there
may be less that meets the casual eye.
When the last word has been said on the subject--when it has been
admitted that Melbourne pretends a great deal and poses a great deal,
and hides a great deal--it is yet a fact that the city retains among
its people much of sterling worth, and many of the elements of
greatness. From the army of those who are not what they claim to be,
or not what they would have you think them to be, may be picked out a
leaven of those who are entitled to respect, and perhaps to something
more. Alert, quick-witted, well-read, well-mannered, tolerant, and
scrupulously fair--that is the type which may be encountered if the
search is keen enough. Hereafter, this type may set the standard. At
present, all that can be said of it is that it is there.
The fact must always stand to the credit of Melbourne that it is
capable of generous enthusiasms. When it lets itself go, it does
so without reserve. Carlyle has remarked that a man who can laugh
unrestrainedly, even if he only laughs once, is not wholly bad. A city
that can cheer unitedly and unreservedly, whether for a singer, an
orator, an actor, or a returned contingent, has at least some prospect
of emerging from the wilderness of shams in which it happens to be
located. Melbourne rises to greatness the moment it forgets itself.
X
THE NOVELIST AND HIS SELECTION
Some are born great, some achieve
greatness, and some have greatness
thrust upon them.--MALVOLIO in _Twelfth Night_.
He is a remarkable figure. It has remained for Australia to produce
him, and he is peculiar to Australia. He stands now in the full blaze
of the limelight. It has been centred on him for the past couple
of years or more, but the operator has not thought it necessary to
move the screen, and the audience, for its part, is quite satisfied.
Business is keeping up splendidly. There are some who say that a
prophet, and especially a literary prophet, must be without honour
in his own country. True as the statement is in the main, there are
occasional exceptions. One of these is furnished by the young man in
the shirt sleeves and the riding breeches, the young man with the
resolutely modest expression on his features, the young man who has
been photographed and paragraphed throughout the continent. He is a man
of much talent. English _Punch_ and Sydney _Bulletin_ both say so. Sir
John Madden declares that a copy of one of his books should be in the
hands of every boy and girl in the Commonwealth. That should be enough.
Let us, therefore, sing Viva! Let us sing it unitedly, for the winter
of our literary darkness is passing, nay, _has_ passed away.
Every one is aware by this time that Mr “Rudd” writes about the
back-blocks of Australia. He has discovered them. In fact, he has
almost invented them. What a region it is! To the casual observer it
may lack something in variety of scenery, in charm of association,
in human interest. But then the casual observer is not one who need
be taken seriously. Still less is he one whose opinion on literary
matters is of much value. In this interior region of the great Southern
continent there are shingle huts, and wire fences, and occasional
gum-trees, and the dry beds of creeks, and the thin crops struggling
above the surface of the ground, and, for the rest, a flat monotony
of desolation. For human interest there is an occasional sun-browned,
dirt-begrimed settler, an occasional ragged and vacant-faced youth, an
occasional dull-eyed, but stout-hearted woman. These people are part of
the life of the nation, and it is instructive to read about them. In
“Steele Rudd’s” pages they have their exits and their entrances, their
humorous, tragical, quaint, fantastic, sordid, and pathetic phases. The
novelist has done them every justice. So much justice has he done them,
that they have come, in a manner of speaking, to obscure the horizon.
Three books have been written about them, and the reading public is not
yet satisfied. It is still--or was a few months ago--clamouring for
more; it will take as much more as the author cares to give.
It is admitted that “Steele Rudd” has done a great thing; but it may
still be asked whether it is possible to praise a local writer sanely
and temperately, without going into ecstasies about him, without making
both himself and ourselves look ridiculous. Is there only one man in
Australia whose books are worth purchasing? Has the city life, the
business life, the artistic life, the ambitious life, the intense
social and political life of civilised Australia nothing to say for
itself? Must we reserve _all_ our superlatives, _all_ our limelight,
and _all_ our hard cash for this writer who keeps telling us, with
persistent and applauded iteration, about the shingle hut and the awful
wire fence, and the frightfully monotonous prospect of ragged selector
and sunburnt plain? What of our million and a half city residents?
What of the light and the love and the laughter of Collins Street and
Circular Quay? Is it not a fact that these have been crowded out,
unfairly crowded out, of the canvas? It is no wonder that outsiders
call us parochial. It is no wonder that they say we are lacking in
perspective. It is no wonder that, when we go to London, they judge us
by our odd pieces of _genre_-painting, and tell us that there is no
market for that sort of thing in the metropolis--that we had better
have stayed at home.
It is astonishing how few people, even of those who have lived in
Australia all their lives, have succeeded in discovering Australia. It
gives one almost a shock to reflect upon the amount of misconception
that has been spread throughout two hemispheres by Mr A. B. Paterson,
Mr Henry Lawson, Mr “Rudd,” and one or two others. Incredible as it
seems, it is yet a fact that there are several varieties of soil and
climate to be met with in this benighted part of the world. A man may
take himself out of sight of the seacoast, he may even settle on the
land, and yet have no experiences of drought, of duststorms, of dry
creek beds, or of thermometers at 120° in the shade. He may even find
that the weird melancholy of his place of abode has to be manufactured
out of his own imagination. In one part of the continent, and that a
part getting well up towards the Equator, there are the Darling Downs,
which are neither monotonously melancholy nor afflicted with recurrent
drought. And at the opposite end of the continent, in the south of
Western Australia, there are magnificent forests of karri and jarrah,
a soil capable of luxuriant growth, a hundred thousand square miles
of rain-fed land waiting for the plough. In the western district of
Victoria is to be found the Southern home of English grasses, of
European cereals, and of leafy trees. Another land of streams and of
fertile country stretches south from Port Jackson to Twofold Bay.
Within a couple of hours’ train ride of Sydney there is the western
mountainous district, than which there is no finer tourist ground in
this or in any other continent. When will some one write for us the
romance of the jarrah and the karri forest? When shall we hear, as a
change from the foreign sentiment of the Tyrolean Alps, the love story
of Katoomba and of the Blue Mountains? Is there ever going to be an
Australian Hardy to make lifelike fiction out of the Victorian western
district? Are these scenes, these places, these happy hunting-grounds
of the nature and humanity lover, to be, like the brave men who died
before Agamemnon, always unknown because of the want of an inspired
bard?
It is true that there is a dry and dusty and drably monotonous side
to Australia. This is the side that is most constantly written about.
Geographically it is of the greatest importance, because it takes up
so much space. So far as its population is concerned, it amounts to
little more than a bagatelle. The people who inhabit it are about
as numerous as the ghosts of lost explorers in the Arctic Circle.
Everything is against it as a residence for white men--its blare of
relentless and scorching summers, its bleak and rainless winters,
its dry creek-beds, its brick-like plains, its ungenerous soil, its
tremendous distances, its fearful monotony, its unspeakable isolation.
Yet it is an extraordinary circumstance that white men go there. They
go to live at Burke, and at the back of Burke. Other land is waiting
for them, other and more genial parts of the continent are clamouring
for settlement. Yet, for some unknown and inexplicable cause, because
of some hope that is greater than experience, because of some
pioneering instinct that is superior to reason, because of some courage
that is stronger than death, men are to be found ready to plunge into
this hard wilderness, believing they can tame it and break it in.
The books of the most successful Australian novelist are concerned
with the doings of these agricultural pioneers. He has exploited them
for all they are worth; a critic might be inclined to say for more
than they are worth, if he had not in mind the extraordinary result of
the recent flotations. There has been quite a sensation on the local
literary exchange. Mr “Rudd’s” debentures, after three successive
issues, are as firm as ever. He has monopolised the market. Who else
can command a price for this kind of paper--the paper that gives a
mortgage over Australian literary securities? The promoter of Dad and
Company, Limited, has had on his side the most experienced “bulls”
to be met with in Melbourne and Sydney. The “bears” have so far had
no voice in the matter. One particularly useful “bull” is he who
operates with a pencil. The illustrations of “Our Selection,” and of
“Our New Selection,” and of “Sandy’s Selection,” are very striking
and effective. If there is something that the terse language of the
novelist has failed to convey, or if the imagination of the reader
is not quite vivid enough to conjure up the whole picture, there is
the artist’s sketch or portrait to help out the illusion. Another
individual, whose value in sending up literary stock can hardly be
overestimated, is the journalistic fugleman. He has been unanimous
from end to end of Australia, and his share in the “Steele Rudd” boom
must not be allowed to go unrecognised.
It is a game that many play at, this game of novel-writing; and when
some one appears with dramatic suddenness, and carries off the one
prize worth having, it is necessary, it is inevitable, that we should
endeavour to find out how the feat has been accomplished. We know that
he has succeeded, but how, and by virtue of what gift, or mannerism,
has he succeeded? Is it by sheer virtue of literary merit, style,
finish, or that kind of attribute? These are what one would naturally
look for in any contest where pen and ink are the chief weapons. But
the search in this instance would upset preconceived ideas. “Steele
Rudd’s” literary garment is pure homespun. There is no embroidery, no
tapestry, no rich colouring of any sort. Even the favourite Australian
expletives are much watered down. One character says “damn you” to
another character, and says it often, but otherwise the vocabulary of
profanity is not drawn upon. The Australian novelist might have been
tempted to take a leaf out of the book of Rudyard Kipling, but he
has not done so. For this we can thank him. He gives no fresh terms,
puts no strain on the meaning of adjectives, and takes no liberties
with the English language. He deals very largely with monosyllables.
Often he leaves out introductory and connecting words, thus giving
his paragraphs a jerky, staccato effect. It is a style that Henry
James would marvel at, but one that the man in the street thoroughly
understands. The intelligibility constitutes its great merit. Yet, even
this latter quality, though it may be rare, is hardly rare enough to
carry the possessor to affluence and fame.
In what, then, does the supreme virtue of “Steele Rudd’s” novels
consist? Is it in the character-drawing? Here again the answer must
be in the negative. A thousand readers will rise to their feet as one
man, or as one woman, and point to the figure of Dad, the original
selector, as a supreme triumph of characterisation. But what has Dad
done to render himself original, or in any special way distinctive? As
he appears in these pages he is ragged, sun-browned, simple-minded,
good-hearted, optimistic, and persevering. It is a character one
likes, a temperament one admires. It is a figure that the Australian
public has taken to itself, and one that only a sacrilegious person
would speak of in disrespectful terms. We pass by Dad with all
deference, only venturing to remark that while we admire his courage
and perseverance, we find his optimism somewhat reminiscent of
Micawber, and his simple-mindedness faintly suggestive of my Uncle
Toby. And we say without any deference, that the subsidiary figures,
the Dan’s, and Joe’s, and Kate’s, and Sal’s of the “Selection” series,
exhibit very little character-drawing worthy of the name.
There must be some other reason for the author’s triumph. If the cause
is not to be found in a superlative literary quality, or in the subtle
analysis of character exhibited by Meredith and others, it may be
discoverable in the absolute fidelity to nature of certain scenes and
incidents. Have we unearthed in “Steele Rudd” the Australian painter of
real life--a man who can emulate in the Southern Hemisphere the example
set by Gorky in Russia, or Zola in France, or Gissing in England?
Scarcely this, either. From the pen pictures of these back-blocks
novels the element of realism is, for the most part, dexterously
eliminated. There may be--there are, pages out of real life. But if the
author, or any one else, told the whole truth, or half the truth about
the stunted growths and dull intelligences that result from too long
and too intimate an acquaintanceship with the Australian desert, the
book would not be considered pleasant reading. The people who buy it
now would put it on one side with a slight shudder, and a Chief Justice
would not refer to it as the kind of volume that should be in every
household, and studied by every boy and girl. Mr “Rudd’s” so-called
lifelike pictures are much idealised. The palace of Claude Melnotte by
the Lake of Como was not more preferable to the gardener’s hut, than is
the cheerful, breezy existence of Dad and Mother and their _entourage_
to the soulless, hopeless life-struggle of a certain kind of Australian
family. To be a genuine realist, you must not only give the hard
facts, but reflect the atmosphere of your characters and places. The
atmosphere of “Steele Rudd” is nothing if not buoyant; the writer is
always confident, and always smiling, even when he is telling about
ruined crops, and suffering adults, and hungry children. If he is not a
true romanticist, neither is he an absolute realist. He is as far from
being a Zola as he is from being a Beaconsfield.
Yet a triumph is a triumph; there must be some reason for it; it
cannot be built, or, at least, it cannot be sustained on air. If we
put aside the literary quality which is not stipulated for, and the
character-drawing which scarcely exists, and the realism which is
mainly imaginary, we are driven back on the humour--that impregnable
Torres Vedras behind which every devotee of the “Selection” novel
sooner or later entrenches himself. It must be the humour. The word is
one that has a very wide meaning. A man might more profitably endeavour
to number the stars than to bring the elusive quality of humour within
the four quarters of a satisfactory definition. For practical purposes
it may be observed that a humorous thing is that which strikes you
as humorous--though how, and when, and why it should strike you, are
matters that rest entirely with yourself. The most learned pundits
have laid it down as an axiom that there is great humour in the
spectacle of the fool in _Lear_ reminding his mad and weather-beaten
master of the sorry spectacle he is making of himself. “Steele Rudd,”
beyond all question, is a humorist, and not the less one because his
comic episodes take place in an atmosphere that is compounded much more
of tragedy than of mirth. The incidents themselves--say, for example,
those of the parson and the scone, of the racecourse and the worn-out
brumby, of Dan and the snake-bite, of Dad and the hoe--are scarcely
calculated to make a sympathetic reader laugh. But running through
the episodes as a whole, and colouring the work as a whole, there is
a certain suggestion of humour which it is difficult to locate or
analyse; a certain lightness of touch which can hardly be explained
in words; a certain buoyancy of treatment that makes reading easy; a
certain creative quality that is rarest of all, and hardest of all to
define.
The humour and the local colour would appear, therefore, to have
carried the day. An author has arisen in this country who can make
his readers smile, and who can convey to them an impression of certain
places and of certain people peculiar to Australia. It does not matter
so much why they smile, so long as the smile is visible. In regard to
the local colour, it is necessary to remark that this is not quite
the same thing as realism, though the two are often associated. Local
colour is the mask behind which realism may or may not exist. With the
aid of these two qualities, or gifts, or attributes, the young man who
writes under the pseudonym of “Steele Rudd” has travelled a long way.
Perhaps no one is more surprised at the distance he has compassed than
himself. There is evidence in his latest work that he is beginning to
collect himself; that he is recovering from the shock of his literary
advancement, and is beginning to attempt stronger and less fantastic
things. He may do better even than he has done yet. Every one will hope
that it may be so; for the writer with a gift like his is not common in
this or in any other country.
But there is another phase of his literary enterprise that must be
considered. It has to be borne in mind that the “Selection” novel does
not exhaust the methods of communication between Mr “Rudd” and his
public. The people who acclaimed the author in book form, are--or were
until a few months ago--getting him in magazine edition. The monthly
print which has sprung into existence on the strength of its editor’s
reputation is not only baptized with his pen name, but contains regular
instalments of his wit and fancy. Once again the familiar figures rise
before us. Once again we are invited to gaze on Dad with the whiskers,
and Joe with the patched trousers, and Mother with the arms akimbo and
the round face. Once again we breathe the atmosphere, once again we
hear the language. Once again we are reminded of the simple economic
truth that, so long as there is a demand for any commercial or literary
product, a supply will be forthcoming.
It is distinctly a matter for congratulation that there should be
original effort, and individual style among the writers of Australia.
The continent should be well able to maintain two or three magazines
of its own. One has only to think of the talent that is running to
waste. In a majority of the Sydney and Melbourne daily papers, brains
are allowed to show themselves, and are occasionally encouraged. If any
one takes the trouble to read, critically and carefully, six successive
issues of one of these big “dailies,” he will find much that is
calculated to surprise him. If he is not surprised, it is only because
he has been long accustomed to the menu. A great deal of skill in the
use of sentences, some vivid delineations of men and places, much
artistic discernment, undoubted eye for effect, literary or dramatic
criticism of a bright and illuminative character--all these, and more,
can be found now and then in the columns of the metropolitan press.
Talent is going to waste for the reason that the authors are usually
unrecognised, the work is underpaid, the public take all for granted,
and the writers, when their brilliancy begins to wane, are expected to
remove themselves and their fading fortunes to another arena. There
_should be_ Australian magazines strong enough and popular enough to
win for the man--the really able man--who grinds out his soul on a
morning or evening paper at least an Australian recognition. There
should be, but there are not. The reason, if sought for, is to be
found in the deep-rooted, the seemingly ineradicable habit of obtaining
magazines, along with the latest book, the latest melodrama, the most
up-to-date hat, and the newest thing in waistcoats, from London or
Paris, and from nowhere else.
“Steele Rudd’s” magazine can claim the great merit, the unusual
distinction, of standing on its own feet. Whatever else it does, or
does not do, it gets its materials from within the continent. When
it deals in new ideas--a somewhat rare occurrence for a monthly
magazine--the ideas can be set down as its own. It finds no trouble in
filling up space. The old friends are there, but they dance to slightly
different tunes. Here and there a costume has been altered, here and
there is a fresh streak of colour, here and there is a new dab of
paint. There is nothing _décolleté_ about any of the literary figures,
or about those supplied by writers in this magazine. All are decent
and proper on the moral side. The one stipulation is that they must
be Australian. How they grin and twist and tumble, these subsidiary
performers whom the “Selection” novel has called into existence!
Here is the contributor who is to speak a piece about art and the
Bohemian quarter--save the mark!--of Sydney and Melbourne. Here is our
amusing friend of the red page. Here is our local story writer, with
his rather tragical humour, and his rather humorous tragedy. Here is
our minor poet, tuning his lyre and tearing his hair. And here is the
editor himself, smiling genially, conscious of his triumph, but modest,
inflexibly modest, the while. They are all writers for “Steele Rudd’s”
magazine. The trail of “Steele Rudd” is over them all.
What is to be thought of this latest development? Is there scope for it
in Australia? Will it be permanent? Or is the author giving us a little
more than we originally bargained for? Does he recollect the parallel
case of Tithonus:--
I asked thee: Give me immortality;
And thou didst grant mine asking with a smile,
Like a rich man who cares not how he gives.
The analogy is obvious. We, the suppliant public, are Tithonus; Mr
“Rudd,” the person supplicated, is Aurora. We asked him to give us more
of his “Selection” literature, and he, the rich man mentally, granted
our request--granted it with a smile. But, again like Tithonus, we
scarcely realised what we were asking for, or how much we were likely
to get. For Mr “Rudd” _himself_ we have always a welcome, and always
some pieces of silver. But for a whole school of “Rudds”--a recurring
atmosphere of “Rudds”--a monthly and ever present edition of Joe and
Sandy and the rest--we were not entirely prepared. The significant
circumstance is that writers in Mr “Rudd’s” magazine are beginning to
imitate Mr “Rudd.” When a young lady contributor is found beginning a
sketch of a place out back with monosyllabic question and monosyllabic
answer--when “Mick” and “Sam” and “the girls” are once more brought
forward--it is to be apprehended that the influence of the master is
at work, and that others are attempting a task which can be _safely_
entrusted only to one.
The story of the “Selection novel” as popularised in this country
teaches a useful, if rather obvious, moral. In any world, literate or
illiterate, there is nothing succeeds like success. There is no fixed
law or principle about these matters. There is no critic whose opinion
is worth anything when weighed against the opinion of any other critic.
“What am I, the dreamer, but a dream?” writes Victor Daley, _à propos_
of the riddle of existence. How can we, the lookers on at the game,
know what the verdict of the public will be, or whether thumbs will be
turned up or down? One man has a fondness for the poetry of Shelley,
and another prefers the prose of Mr Lorimer; one man has a passion for
_Lohengrin_, another would rather have three hours of _The Country
Girl_. And if the majority prefer it, if it gives them more genuine
pleasure, _The Country Girl_ is the better work of the two, whatever
some opinionated critic may say to the contrary. It is useless to argue
about opinions. There is only one recognised criterion, and that is
success. There is only one way of measuring success, and that is by the
monetary standard. When cast into the scales, the third, and in some
respects the weakest of “Steele Rudd’s” books, weighs out at £500. And
this for an Australian literary man is the most conspicuous success yet
achieved.
XI
THREE WRITERS OF VERSE
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music, too.
Yes, we have our own music: and it is not all thin in quality, nor is
it all played upon a single string. A rare value, a special distinction
attach to the achievements in verse of Victor Daley, who is one of the
latest to join the great company of poets in the shades. He did his
work for a people who were somewhat indifferent and who, when they
appreciated, showed their appreciation in no very practical way. And
now, when he is
Far too far for words or wings to follow,
Far too far off for thought or any prayer,
these fitfully poetical, but wholly good-hearted people of the
continent in which he lived are inclined to regret him. It is a regret
that does them credit, though it can be tempered with some reflections
of a more satisfying kind. For Daley was honoured probably as much
as--perhaps more than--most poets are by their contemporaries. It
is possible to believe that in the long twilight which preceded his
earthly eclipse, he believed that he had given lasting shape and form
to some of the more beautiful, more intangible things of life, and
found sufficient consolation in the belief. There is not a great deal
to be said about the life history of Victor Daley. Some one of those
who rhymed with him, drank with him, joked with him, or sat up all
night quoting verses with him may yet write his biography. But it will
not be a startling or an eventful document. He was of Irish parentage
and came to Australia--unless a statement made by one of his most
intimate friends is erroneous--when nearly out of his teens. He drifted
into journalism, as many men of restless temperament and uncommercial
principles do. He wrote a great deal both in prose and verse for
Melbourne papers, for Sydney papers, and for up-country papers in New
South Wales. He married early, and children grew up round him. When he
died in Sydney towards the end of December 1905, he was but forty-seven
years of age. The lingering illness that preceded his death left him in
straightened circumstances; so straightened, in fact, that his friends
thought less, at the finish, of his chances of immortality than of the
prospects of keeping a roof over his and his children’s heads.
His most important publication was the volume _At Dawn and Dusk_, which
appeared about eight years before his death. It consisted for the most
part of occasional pieces, reprinted from various papers. It brought
the author a certain amount of intelligent and appreciative criticism,
and a slight--but only a slight--monetary reward. Thereafter he went
on his way; the fitful and uncertain way of one whom circumstances had
forced into journalism, but whom temperament had made a poet. The book
mentioned is his permanent record.
There are certain moods that are not easily expressed in the forms
of common speech; that are not easily expressed at all. There are
occasions when the average man wishes--it may be only for an instant
or two, but he wishes--that he had some better medium of thought
transference than the ordinary prose of ordinary use. For those few
moments he could desire that the gods had made him poetical, even
if for the remainder of his life he would prefer that they made him
anything else. Then, it may be, there comes beating across his brain
the recollection of a similar mood interpreted adequately and finely by
another. He is grateful for the chance of appropriating and taking to
himself that which he did not individually create.
One of these less prosaic, less frequent moods is that of sentimental
regret. Every one knows it, every one has been through it. When looked
back upon, it is an experience to be valued. It is always a relief
from the harder outlines of the present. It need have no bitterness
and scarcely a tinge of remorse. This mood, or the indulgence in it,
is the tribute the man of sensitive mind pays to his better nature, to
the woman he might have loved, to the ideal he might have attained.
It is a mood that the million recognise, but that only the one in
a million--that is to say, the genuine poet--should be allowed to
express. Another mood, and a more impersonal one, is that which implies
discontent with the present surroundings, and longing for more distant
fields, for ampler opportunities, for less prosaic realities. The
discontent may be merely petulant or it may have in it something of the
nature of the Divine. All depends on the temperament of the individual.
Yet another mood, and a still more pronounced and easily recognised
one, is that of erotic or of semi-sensual desire. In its cruder and
more direct form it is the mood that finds voice in the Shakespearian
poem of _Venus and Adonis_; in its etherealised essence it is the mood
of Shelley in the poem addressed to Emilia Viviani.
The first of these moods--the half-regretful, half-sentimental and
wholly idealistic one--is finely interpreted by Daley in the verses
entitled _Years Ago_. He voices a passion that is no longer a passion,
but rather a figure of remembrance, from which the poetic temperament
can draw Memnon music. The woman of these verses is not described, but
suggested. There is no need to describe her. The reader must build
her up out of his own experiences. She must always be looked at from
a distance, and must always live in the mind of the man for whom the
intenser passion of desire has become the soft glow of remembrance.
Daley shows her silhouetted against the sky-line at the moment when his
ship, the inevitable ship of Destiny, goes sailing:
Across the seas in the years agone;
And seaward set were the eyes unquailing,
And landward looking the faces wan.
The poem is a very fine one. It is musical, rhythmical, dreamily
sensuous, and never crudely realistic. The workmanship is even, and the
high level reached in the first verse is maintained to the end. The
words and the treatment create their own sentiment, and always suggest
more than they say.
There is another mood in which Daley has been equally successful--the
mood of picturesque romance. This is the frame of mind in which he
sails “into the sunset’s glow.” Here, also, he strikes a note that
awakens a universal echo. Every man has wanted, at some time or
another, to sail into the sunset, understanding by that word the whole
untrodden, unattainable, indefinable, but brilliantly lighted and
always glowing region that lies beyond the boundaries of the place in
which he follows out the round of his allotted tasks. It is only on the
wings of imagination that one ever arrives within sight of this region.
And the wings themselves must be of a certain texture, or they will
melt more quickly than did those of Icarus. There are only one or two
people who can supply materials calculated to take the voyager there.
Victor Daley is one of these. He has himself explained the necessary
equipment:--
Our ship shall be of sandal built,
Like ships in old-world tales,
Carven with cunning art, and gilt,
And winged with scented sails
Of silver silk, whereon the red
Great gladioli burn;
A rainbow flag at her masthead,
A rose flag at her stern....
And perching on the point above,
Wherefrom the pennon blows,
The figure of a flying dove,
And in her beak a rose.
It is an auspicious, even a brilliant commencement. Dull and ungrateful
must be the mind or temperament that refuses to acknowledge either the
skill of the builder, or the perfection of the craft.
A third phase of Daley’s is one common to all poets, whether good,
bad, or indifferent. Its impression is conveyed in what, for want of a
more exact term, is called love poetry. It is not composed either of
sentimental regrets or of sunset fantasies. It deals with the present
and associates itself with one object--a living one. A certain class of
writer conveys in this form of poetry a direct appeal to the senses.
Daley rarely does so. He is always imaginative rather than realistic.
He can play on more than one emotional string; but it is never so
much the woman herself as the memory and the thought of her that he
appears to caress. In the verses entitled _At the Opera_, which recall
Browning’s _A Pretty Woman_, he puts his poetic creed into a sentence.
Others may pluck the rose and watch it fall and die; “but I--
Love it so well, I leave it free.”
And even in _Blanchelys_, warmly tinted as it is, he suggests in the
opening four lines an atmosphere that is far more idealistic than it is
intense or burning:--
With little hands all filled with bloom,
The rose tree wakes from her long trance,
And from my heart, as from a tomb,
Steals forth the ghost of dead romance.
It stands to the author’s credit that his touch never vulgarises. He
never drags his objective to a lower level; when his theme is woman he
raises her to his own level, or to the one that he has created for her.
Victor Daley has written on a variety of subjects, and some of his
work is in a lightly humorous and descriptive vein. His signal merit
as an Australian writer is that he is not wedded to the soil. He is
not dependent on the gum tree or the wattle, or the dusty plain. His
best work is cosmopolitan in character and tone. It is difficult to see
how the foremost place among local writers of imaginative literature
can be denied to the man whose name is appended to the collection of
verses _At Dawn and Dusk_. A strictly conscientious critic might find
it incumbent upon him to add that while Daley has done some things
well, he has done other things not so well. He might begin with a major
premise to the effect that the poet was conspicuous for some gifts,
and add as a minor premise, that he was not so conspicuous for others;
and the syllogism might be completed by a pronouncement to the effect
that when the indifferent work had been weighed against the good work,
the latter much preponderated. Sometimes it seems as though there were
a clog on Victor Daley in his flight towards the empyrean. He wants
something of the lyric quality, not merely of a Shelley or a Swinburne,
but of such a musical rhymester as Will Ogilvie. The man who wrote
_Blanchelys_ is in the same family as Cassius; he thinks too much. The
idea is sometimes better than its setting. Imagination, atmosphere,
creative power, selection, beauty of thought, beauty of phrase---he
has all these. But that resistless melody which flows like water, and
chimes like a bell, is only attained by him now and then. It is only
occasionally that harmony of thought and expression are complete. There
is no doubt that Daley lacks much of the rousing, resonant quality
that always appeals so strangely to unpoetical people; that is to say,
to the majority of people in most countries under the sun. Thus a few
still pass him in the race for recognition; there was scarce one in his
lifetime that did not pass him in the pursuit of tangible reward.
Yet it should not matter a great deal to Victor Daley, living or dead.
He was never a great popular success. He never aspired to be a great
social success. His personal gifts and graces were reserved for the
comparatively few. The average individual, who deals in groceries, or
who has laid hands on mining shares, could have bought and sold him
many times, even in his most prosperous days. There are a large number
of prosperous tradesmen in the country who could, metaphorically, have
driven over him--who would certainly have done so literally, unless
he had scrambled out of the way. He dealt in brains, in sentiment,
in imagination, in the beauty of life and the romance of life. He
was not outwardly successful, because that kind of success belongs
principally to the coarse-grained men, to the rough-fibred men, to the
unimaginative and the uncreative or the essentially lucky man of the
world. But it does not greatly matter. He has his audience, and it is
a growing one. It is the only kind of audience whose good opinion is
really desirable. It will remember him and cherish him in that region
of fancy to which all good poets make their way hereafter--a region
in which tradesmen cease from troubling and self-made merchants never
intrude.
* * * * *
It may be putting a stress on the word to call Henry Lawson a poet;
but a writer of many verses, some of them very good ones, he certainly
is. He is a prominent figure in Australian literature, or what passes
for Australian literature. He covers a great deal of ground; he is
always suggestive of one country, and that country Australia; he has a
great deal of talent; he is--or was--very restless and ambitious; he
is extremely versatile; and after ten or twelve years’ work he finds
himself still pursuing editors to their sanctum, and still wondering
where the latest manuscript is likely to find a resting-place. _Tantæ
molis erat_--to win fame by writing prose or verse in Australia.
And yet Lawson, if he has won nothing else, has won a very considerable
measure of local fame. Of the five million people in Australasia, it is
only the very uneducated and very unintelligent who are not acquainted
at least with his name. He is better known than Victor Daley, only
less known than Gordon and Kendall. This, at any rate, is something.
The pity of it is that those who know what he has done are aware also
of what he has failed to do, or of what the people he wrote for would
not let him do; of the manner in which he has drifted or been driven
from pillar to post; of his peregrinations throughout this continent,
through New Zealand, throughout England, and back again; of his
inability to lay up for himself treasure upon earth; of his frequent
discouragements following upon his fitful successes; of his shaken
firmness of purpose and of mind. The liking and admiration felt for
him are tinged with the sympathy that one feels for a man who has been
cheated by destiny of the stakes he fairly played for, and should have
fairly won.
Daley’s genius is essentially cosmopolitan; Lawson’s temper and
colouring are always Australian. Therein lies the main difference
between them. Lawson attempted at the outset an almost impossible task.
He aspired to make both a living and a name for himself as a literary
man. It was a noble aspiration, but in the circumstances quixotic. What
he needed, what he should have been given, was some professional, or
even some mechanical training that would have brought him in an income,
while his audience and his reputation were growing. Some one ought to
have taught him shorthand, or got him into the Civil Service, or made
him a lawyer’s clerk, or instructed him in the art of making bricks, or
driving cabs--anything to save him from drifting round the continent
with unpublished manuscripts in his pocket. Some one should have done
this for him; but who? His father he never really knew. His mother, a
large-hearted, large-minded woman, happened to be proud of her son. He
grew up without a professional training, but with a rich inheritance of
ideas.
He has offered himself to the reading public of Australia; has, in
fact, thrown himself upon it. He has not been rejected; but he has
learned that the path of the literary free-lance is one of the rockiest
and most discouraging that ever presented itself to a man cursed with
a hatred of routine, and an ability to write. The recognition that he
has won has never had an adequate cash value. He acknowledges the fact
with much candour and some bitterness. But he has taken the good with
the evil. He has never lost heart. He is not unmindful of his author’s
prestige, and is not lost to its compensations. Yet he writes to his
son:--
You are a child of field and flood,
But with the gipsy strains,
A strong Norwegian sailor’s blood
Is running through your veins.
Be true, and slander never stings;
Be straight, and all may frown--
You’ll have the strength to grapple things
That dragged your father down.
Be generous, and still do good,
And banish while you live
The spectre of ingratitude
That haunts the ones who give.
But if the crisis comes at length
That your fate might be marred,
Strike hard, my son, with all your strength,
For your own self’s sake, strike hard!
Lawson himself has struck often and dexterously, but with a somewhat
uncertain aim, a wavering objective. He realises now that success is
won only by a striking hard and relentlessly at the one thing in front
of you; by striking also at the heads of all who happen to get in the
way.
In estimating the published work of this bard of the bush and the open
plain, it is desirable to allow something for the special circumstances
that have both made and hampered him. He has had to write for his
living; and he has written too much. His typical and humorous verses
were never out of place in the columns of a newspaper, but their
careful collection and subsequent reproduction in book form were not
necessarily a service to the memory of the author. Lawson would admit
quite candidly that they were written, many of them, to fill up space
and to earn a guinea. They were not intended as pure literature; and if
regarded in that light may be the cause of an injustice to the author.
To get to what is worth preserving it is necessary to rummage about
among a mass of what belongs only to the moment.
There is scarcely a type, or a class, or a feature in the life of his
continent about which he has not rhymed and written. The station-hand,
the rouse-about, the shearer, the bullock-driver, the jackaroo, the
up-country selector, the swagman, the drover, the dead-beat--he has
made verses and extracted humour out of all of these, and out of many
more of the same kind. He has shown great ingenuity, great powers of
observation, wide-reaching sympathy, and a great deal of very clever
phrasing in this class of work. The result may not be poetry, but
it forms in the aggregate a rare and valuable picture of a mode of
life and of a people who are still a people apart from the rest of
the world. No one has described them quite so faithfully as Lawson
has done. Some of these verses, for example those entitled _When the
Ladies come to the Shearing Shed_, will stand reprinting and, for the
purposes of the comic reciter, committing to memory.
But Lawson is, or until recently was, genuinely ambitious. He knows
what is poetry and what is not. He has fine ideas. He has felt
something of the sentiment of life and something of the weird romance
and tragedy of life. A starry night in the wilderness, a woman standing
by the water’s edge, a homestead where there was once a garden, a
sunset, a tree, a flight of wild birds--all these have spoken of him,
and he has answered back in kind. His handling of romantic and of
patriotic themes marks clearly both his achievement and his limitations
as a poet. From such pieces as _Reedy River_, _The Old Stone Chimney_,
_Faces in the Street_, and others of the kind, we understand what he
has felt, and what he would wish to say. Such verses show that he comes
near to the goal of true poetry, and even occasionally places his hand
upon it. But his final word and his strongest word is that in which
he voices the longing of the man who wishes to do more than fate will
let him do. The world, he says, is not wide enough. The scope is not
great enough. The chances are not attractive enough. The fetters are
becoming more cramping as each generation goes by. But once--once there
was a time. Listen to the resonant ring of it, that other time:--
Then a man could fight if his heart were bold, and win, if his faith
were true,
Were it love or honour or power or gold or all that our hearts pursue,
Could live to the world for the family name, or die for the family
pride,
Could fly from sorrow and sin and shame, in the days when the world
was wide.
Henry Lawson should, for his own happiness’ sake, have lived in that
other and more spacious time.
* * * * *
As the third representative of the school of contemporary verse writers
we may take Miss Louise Mack. We may take her for several reasons. In
the first place, she is a woman and represents the woman’s point of
view--the Australian woman’s attitude towards art and life. In the
second place, it has been claimed for her, by some of those who have
followed her work most closely, that her achievement in verse is the
most considerable that stands to the record of a woman in Australia.
In the third place, it is a fact incapable of disguise that she has
distinctive promise and distinctive merits of her own.
Setting apart for a moment the attainments of Miss Mack as a writer of
poems, it is impossible not to appreciate and “affect” the nature and
temperament of the woman. She has both strength and delicacy. She has a
genuine, inborn habit of tenderness, combined with a certain power of
artistic restraint. She is by no means colourless. She is not a mere
imitator. She _understands_ a great deal even if she does not in her
literary work always _realise_ a great deal. It is this combination of
strength and tenderness, added to an artistic, womanly sensibility,
that makes her already a distinctive figure in the world of letters,
and gives promise of yet greater achievement and wider appreciation in
the future.
What this Australian authoress needed at the outset was a measure
of candid, though kindly, criticism, and a certain amount of
disappointment. Instead of these she was given an intoxicating draught
of praise. To a Daley or a Lawson this recognition, this flattery,
might not have proved in any sense harmful. The man’s faculties are
harder, more firmly knit. His temperament is less emotional. His
judgement is less easily swayed. If he possesses an original vein
he will, in nine cases out of ten, let it take its course. But Miss
Mack, when scarcely out of her teens, had held to her lips a cup of
intoxicating quality--a cup for which hundreds of men and women,
of perhaps equal ability wait all their lives and which they never
obtain. The people who championed her not only printed her poetry,
as they well might do, but printed her prose. This prose, though it
did not rise above mediocrity, found its way into book form, and was
despatched with much enthusiasm to different parts of this, and of
the other hemisphere. The ambitious girl was taken on the staff of
one of the Sydney papers. She was grateful and anxious to please. She
knew that her predecessors in office had been smart and flippant; she
knew that she was expected to be the same. She did her best to fulfil
expectations. And though she never quite got down to the level of the
tiresomely smart and painfully clever society writer, she at least
succeeded in suggesting, through her prose writings, the atmosphere
of the circle amid which she wrote. She could not be vulgar, therefore
she was only moderately smart. She avoided being serious, and she
realised--what? The pity of it is that when she emerged from this
groove, and began to write books of travel and of personal experience
she wrote as if still under the impression that it would never do to be
herself; that it was necessary to be smart, or to perish in the attempt.
However, it is possible to forgive her for conveying that impression.
It is possible to forgive a great deal to a mind like hers, to a talent
like hers. Her verses, collected into book form and published under
the title of _Dreams in Flower_, form a compendium which is of genuine
value, and which possibly justifies its claim to be considered “the
most distinguished body of verses” written by a woman in Australia.
It is the peculiar merit of Miss Louise Mack that she almost invariably
suggests more than she actually conveys. The intangible thing called
inspiration is hers. The ether waves that play upon the surface of her
imagination are of the subtlest and rarest kind. Neither her ideas
nor her method are commonplace. Continually she seems to be opening
the door to an enchanted region of fancy, to vistas of the loftiest
conception, to palaces of purest gold. But the glimpse is a fleeting
one. The door is no sooner half opened than it is shut again. Or, if
the enquirer is allowed to enter, if he makes any progress beyond
the rich and splendid portals, he usually meets with disillusion. He
finds that the initial grandeur will not go with him to the end of
the journey. He realises that the authoress has given him a promising
start, but that if he follows her too expectantly he is likely to get
left in the wilderness.
Considering that poetry is mainly impressionism, and that it is not
like logic, where a weak link in the chain of reasoning makes the whole
fabric worthless, it is necessary to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to
this writer for her fine individual passages, for her rich idealism,
for her many musical lines. She can play on more than one string. Her
lines on Sydney, which stand at the commencement of _Dreams in Flower_
have a trick of haunting the memory. The sentiment is warmly human,
but is so far from being commonplace that it deserves to be called
pantheistic. The opening invocation would disarm criticism:--
Oh! to mix in my soul this city,
That lies with feet in the fairest waters,
This young, unformed Australian city!
In the harbour’s arms the isles, her daughters,
Dream all day in a perfect sleep.
Oh! to hold in my heart those waters,
Flowing east with the sun behind them,
Through great gates to the outer deep!
There are two following verses almost equally good, and it is only in
the fourth and last that the inspiration is seen to flag:--
Oh! to sing of this little city
A true strong song that no years can weaken:
A song that tells how the sea-girt city
Cast her light o’er the seas, a beacon
Seen and sought by the farmost sail;
Made a name that no years could weaken,
Fought a way to the fore of nations,
All lands owning her vast avail!
The repetition of “weaken,” as applied first to the song and then
to the name, is not effective; there seems to be confusion of ideas
between a place that is merely a glimmering beacon and one that has
attained to “the fore of nations,” while the meaning of the last line
is not clear. The inspiration which carried the writer brilliantly
through three verses failed her in the last.
Yet there are individual poems in this collection which betray
no serious defects of workmanship. They are short and strong and
self-contained. They are the exception to the general rule which makes
Miss Mack a poet of exceptional promise but of uneven performance. The
lines _On Wairee Hill_ are imaginative, and always musical. _Illusion_
strikes more than one resonant note. In the verses entitled _Vows_ we
get the woman’s emotional and intellectual strength in revolt against
the trammels of conventionalism; and in _As long as any May_ there is
as much intensity as the brainy Australian woman usually allows herself
to feel--or, at any rate, to express.
There is a certain intellectual force, as well as a genuine poetic
vein, in the verses of Miss Louise Mack. One imagines her to be always
mistress of herself. The lyric mood may interpret her, but it does
not master her. We find here no hint of the school which delights in
“sense swooning into sound.” To quote from her poems is hardly to do
her justice. She is stronger mentally, and finer artistically, than her
published work.
There is one short piece entitled--it might be _Silences_--which seems
to interpret, as nearly as possible, her independent, woman’s view of
life. It begins:--
I take my life with my hands,
You shall not touch, you shall not see;
I hold it there away from you,
The fitful shining soul in me.
Ah, but you do not know ’tis hid,
Because you did not know ’twas there;
You look along the curving lip,
Search the deep eyes, and touch the hair,
And cry, “Oh love me, woman, love
Your eyes are stars, your mouth a flower”;
And all the while a low voice says,
“This is a fool without the power
To look beneath and find a free
Unfettered spirit serving none,
A heart that loves, and does not love,
A space untrod by any one.”
So let us keep our silences!
I’ll honour yours, or mine will break;
And you, guard well the sacredness
Of mine for your own soul’s shrine’s sake.
These are only flashes of ideas, but they will suffice. The
Australian woman of the advanced, intellectual type requires careful
treatment. You may admire her, but you must not pretend to a complete
understanding of her. You may marry her, but you must not expect to
absorb her. She will give you confidences, but only when in the mood;
she _may_ give you kisses, but behind them there is a splendid shining
soul that laughs and draws away--
A heart that loves, and does not love,
A space untrod by any one.
XII
FOUR PRIME MINISTERS
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in
faculty! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how
like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!--HAMLET.
In every important transaction, in every impersonation of life, it
is of advantage to be able to look the part. History, when it comes
to deal with the first Prime Minister of Australia, will say that he
possessed this advantage in a superlative degree. We are all more or
less susceptible to appearances. In very many cases we can judge only
by appearances. In very rare instances are we given the opportunity of
getting behind the outer shell of things and judging personality.
That fortune was generous to the pioneer of the Union movement in
Australia, is universally admitted. He not only spoke well, but he
looked well. He won votes in country districts before he had uttered
a syllable. Some of his critics said that he travelled the country
on his hair. The statement was at best a half truth, and at worst a
trifle libellous. For the Goddess, in emptying her horn into the lap of
the future Prime Minister, gave him something more than an idealistic
head of hair, useful asset though that has been. It gave him a large
skull-index, a massive forehead, an impressive set of features that
look their best when on a platform surmounting a vast concourse of
people. It gave him a certain faculty for looking like a great man.
To hear Edmund Barton concluding one of his elaborate and lawyer-like
periods, to watch him closing his lips firmly and looking out with that
Roscius-like gaze over the heads of the audience, is to experience an
unreasonable desire to rise up in the middle of the hall and cheer.
The crowd is always amenable to proper discipline, and it has been
disciplined by its eyesight into believing that it could do no better
than exalt Barton to the highest offices within its gift.
To endeavour to get at the personal and intellectual quality behind
this imposing framework is to receive a somewhat vague, a somewhat
indeterminate impression. Only the Creator and Edmund Barton himself
know what is at the back of those fine eyes when the audience is
intensely listening, and certain well-sounding phrases are telling
their tale. Only they know, and one is no more likely to tell than is
the other. The word histrionic suggests itself in this connection.
It is not by any means a bad word; it is by no means intended to be
used in a disparaging sense. The first Prime Minister of Australia
has a knowledge of effect; he appreciates and loves effect. In that
fact lies his strength and his weakness, his greatness and his less
than greatness, his virtues and his demerits. There is no part he
could not play if it looked well enough, there is no _rôle_ of which
he could not seem worthy, and there is no height to which he could
not histrionically attain. You could fit him with no robes, place
him in no position of dignity, load him with no honours to which he
would not appear entitled. Whether representing the Commonwealth in
London, whether taking precedence of Dukes and Earls at a banquet at
Guildhall, whether voicing the aspirations of the new Commonwealth
in the councils of the Empire, whether facing the flashlights of the
Mansion House, or looking lofty rebuke on the disorderly ruffians of
Wooloomooloo, there would never be any doubt as to his capacity for
looking the character. You would say instinctively that the best man
had been chosen. Personally he knows in what his strength consists. He
has the confidence which comes from the consciousness of great powers;
but he knows also that certain effects are obtained in a certain way.
Putting his rare dramatic faculty on one side, it is impossible to deny
the ex-Prime Minister the credit of being unusually gifted, unusually
able, unusually subtle-minded. This is the type of intellect from
which very little could remain hid, provided that investigation seemed
worth while. Edmund Barton, in the course of his half century or more
on earth, has investigated quite a number of things. He has read and
studied a great deal. His public career has been marked by an erudition
rare in any country. But he has owed less to his reading than to the
quality of his mind. It combines in a singular degree two contrasted
gifts--that of close analysis with that of fervent enthusiasm, or
(what is the same thing for a public man) the appearance of fervent
enthusiasm. In the thousands of speeches which Edmund Barton has
delivered in this and other continents, you will look in vain for any
crudeness of thought, for any narrowness of vision, for any lack of
illuminating powers. The daily newspaper men of Australia know well
enough how the ex-Prime Minister’s utterances used to be inlaid thought
on thought, word upon word, qualifying phrase on qualifying phrase.
There was an absence of directness, often, but there was never an
absence of mentality or of idea. When a man of such impressive gifts
and of such histrionic faculty undertakes to play Peter the Hermit;
when he says that such and such a thing ought to take place; when he
declares, as he did in the Sydney Town Hall on a memorable occasion,
that, “God means to give us this Federation”--for all the world as
though he had received a direct communication from the Almighty on the
subject--the result on the average individual is usually convincing,
not to say overwhelming.
The less than complete political success of Edmund Barton must be
attributed, not to his intellectual qualities, but to his character. It
was his character that, from the day of his great appointment, fought
against him. The fact is that he possessed too good a character. A
worse man would have held office longer, if not with better results;
his conspicuous lack of badness, of hardness, of callousness, was his
chief enemy. It is not to be assumed, because this fact was so, that
the great advocate of Australian Union set himself to live a life of
austerity to which the vaunted virtues of Edward the Confessor or of
a modern college of Cardinals would be as riotous excess. He had his
redeeming faults, and, unless the Supreme Court Bench has scourged
them out of him, has them now. But they were not the faults that tell
most in the strenuous business of Party warfare; they were not the
faults that help a man to vanquish his deadliest enemies. Sir Edmund
Barton was not quite cunning enough, or, rather, he would not stoop
low enough; he was not hard enough, he was not unscrupulous enough;
there was much of the Macbeth temper in him; what he wanted highly,
he wanted holily, or, if not holily, at any rate respectably. Whether
from inherent principle or because he was averse of certain lines of
conduct, or because the _cui bono_ precept had struck too deep a root
in his philosophy, he would not try ways that were open to him. He
compromised, conceded, refined, and yielded more than once. In his
place in the House he was always a splendid, an impressive figure; but
the bull-dog tenacious quality that is the possession of many lesser
men was never his. When he took a seat on the Supreme Court Bench, it
was recognised that Parliament had lost the man best worth looking at
within its walls, but it was recognised also that the probabilities of
complete success were brighter for him in the new sphere than in the
old.
To speak of Alfred Deakin, the second man to hold office as Prime
Minister of Australia, is to speak of a unique personality. There is
no doubt that Nature, when it conceived the idea of giving an Alfred
Deakin to the world, intended him to be much disliked. It specially
designed him for that purpose. To begin with, it gave him all those
agreeable and outwardly attractive qualities which make a man suspected
by his fellows. As in the case of Byron, all the fairies were bidden
to his cradle. They came in smiling enough fashion, but they had
a malignant purpose. So it was that the future Prime Minister was
loaded with gifts and graces intended to drag him down. He grew up
tall and straight and comely to look upon. A quick-minded, receptive,
intelligent man of ideas, he was voted a most agreeable person to
talk to. No one could quote the romantic poets more aptly, or talk
the language of culture with better accent and discretion. When he
went upon a platform, words flowed from him in a silver stream; when
he stood for Parliament, audiences felt that they were being honoured
above their deserts. He was member of the Victorian Legislative
Assembly at twenty-three, Minister of the Crown at twenty-seven, Senior
Representative of the Imperial Conference in London before he was
thirty-one, member of the National Australian Convention four years
later, and Prime Minister of the Commonwealth when he was forty-seven.
His flatterers have combined with Nature to do their worst: there is
nothing on which he has not been complimented, from his management
of the affairs of a nation to his smile, or from his oratory to the
way in which he holds the hand of a lady at a dance. When he made his
first official visit to London the late Queen Victoria enquired, in a
sentence that became famous, whether there were many men like Alfred
Deakin in the Australian continent. He has been belauded impartially
and comprehensively as an Adonis and a Demosthenes, as a Caius Gracchus
and a Marcus Aurelius, as a Beau Brummell and a William Pitt. It is
no wonder that newspaper men, knowing him only by repute, and seeing
him for the first time rise in his place in Parliament, have shuddered
inwardly to think what manner of insufferable and awful person such a
petted individual must be.
Yet Alfred Deakin, to do him justice, has struggled manfully against
his disadvantages. Nature intended him to be disliked, undoubtedly,
but it is well-nigh impossible to dislike him. He has fought a great
and, on the whole, a successful battle against the load of adulation
that has been pressed upon him. This circumstance must always stand
to his credit, while it explains a great deal that would otherwise
be incomprehensible. With every inducement to develop into a snob,
he has made conscientious efforts not to become one. Any unknown and
undistinguished person, aware of the blighting effects of success on
the average temperament, would hesitate to approach Alfred Deakin. He
would say that such a man could not retain his sense of proportion,
could not judge except by appearances. As a matter of fact, the Prime
Minister is at his best when talking to little-known people. If you
happen to be a newspaper reporter, travelling in the same train with
Mr Deakin--and the present writer has often been in that position--you
need not bother either to entertain him or to keep out of his way. It
is more than likely, unless circumstances keep him otherwise occupied,
that he will make it his business to entertain you. There are certain
qualities he recognises. He has always time to spare for a man who is
intelligent and earnest and anxious to get on. He does not worship
success; because he has had too much of it, he knows how to value
it. My own opinion is that Alfred Deakin is intensely tired of all
this talk of himself as a “silver-tongued orator.” If some one could
convince him that he was not really an orator at all, and had only a
blundering acquaintance with the fine points of the English language,
he would be intensely grateful. I remember an incident, slight but
significant, which took place when he was moving, in presence of a full
and adoring House, the second reading of his High Court Bill. There was
only one individual--a rash and sacrilegious individual--who ventured
to interject. The House was astonished; one or two members looked as if
they expected the roof to fall. The Speaker’s wrath blazed out against
the offender, but Mr Deakin took the latter’s part. “It was a friendly
interjection, sir,” was his comment, as he replied to the rash person’s
remark. The episode may have been trifling, but at least it went to
show that Mr Deakin is weary of his very remarkable reputation; that he
dislikes being looked upon as either a tin god or a hot-house flower,
and that he would welcome anything that brought him to the ordinary
level of political war.
It is necessary to get away from the glamour of Alfred Deakin’s
oratory, and the shining white light of his character, in order to
arrive at some reasonable estimate of his value as a politician. On
the latter subject a great deal has been written, and a great deal
could be written, not _all_ of it in the language of extravagant
eulogy. It is said that the “tempers” of the man of words and of the
man of action are necessarily distinct. That may or may not be the
case. What is certain, is that there is no instance on record of a
politician combining such a gift of speech as Deakin’s with an equal
faculty for wise, clear, vigorous, and resolutely determined action. As
a State Minister, this darling of the gods was chiefly remarkable for
what he wished to do, but failed to do, in connection with Victorian
immigration. He had a great poetic conception of what might be achieved
in the arid regions of Northern Victoria by letting in healing streams
of water, and causing wildernesses to rejoice and blossom as the
rose. He constructed channels, built reservoirs, and expended public
money; but the channels ran dry, the reservoirs became barren, and
the local bodies repudiated the debt. It was a splendid failure on
the Minister’s part, but none the less a failure. As an advocate of
Federation, Mr Deakin was a complete success. Eloquence was required,
and it was forthcoming. As Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, Mr
Deakin did little during his first term--as a matter of fact he had
time to do very little--but he spoke finely, and went down heroically
on a question of abstract principle. If he had vanquished a continent
he could not have been more vociferously applauded on the manner of his
downfall. He has now another magnificent opportunity, and it remains to
be seen how he will use it. If he has done nothing else he has lifted
the dull business of politics out of the rut of the commonplace. And
that of itself is no mean achievement.
The third Prime Minister of the Commonwealth was, and still is, the
chosen of the organised democrats of the continent. Careful observation
of Mr Watson, both in and out of Parliament, impels the writer to the
reflection that Nature intended him to be undistinguished. The reasons
for coming to this conclusion are not far to seek. To begin with,
Mr Watson has no aggressive, or specially assertive characteristics,
whether physical or mental. He has not the gift of dazzling beauty on
the one hand, nor the still more useful gift of excessive ugliness
on the other. In appearance he is just an ordinary, good-looking,
well-set, upright man. In times of crisis there is nothing so
calculated to help its possessor as fanaticism; and Mr Watson cannot
boast of being a fanatic. Fortune was never kind enough to him to treat
him very unkindly. He was never assisted in his campaign on behalf of
Labour by any act of injustice or sense of gross personal wrong at the
hands of privileged persons. No friendly capitalist helped to make him
a statesman by turning his wife and family out of doors. He has had
a few ups and downs, but they have been of a minor sort. Undoubtedly
it was the intention of Nature that he should go through life without
attracting too much notice, that he should set up type and cultivate
a garden, and assist in his spare moments at those illuminating
debates that shake to their foundations the suburbs of Carlton and of
Wooloomooloo.
These original designs have been upset. Certain political currents
took possession of Mr Watson, and he could not get away from them. As
a matter of fact, he did not wish to get away from them. He was shrewd
enough to realise what an important bearing they might have on the
future of a continent, and incidently on the future of Chris. Watson.
The Federation movement was a timely one, so far as he was concerned.
The inauguration of the Commonwealth Parliament brought with it the
division of political parties into Free Trade and Protectionist, with
neither of the two sides sufficiently strong to crush or always to
out-vote the other. It was a great opportunity for a Labour party,
which did not care two constitutional straws about either Free Trade
or Protection, to hold the balance of power, and practically to usurp
the functions of Government. But the Labour party wanted a leader. It
wanted a man who would be sufficiently strong for the purpose--and it
was a tremendously important purpose--but not one who would err from
excess of strength. It did not want a notorious man, or a violent man,
or a man whose name would cause any sort of alarm. It did not want
a man who had been too extensively advertised in connection with
socialistic movements in the past. It did not want a distinguished
anarchist or a social outlaw. It wanted neither a Danton nor a
Robespierre. It discovered Mr Watson, and it has made the most of the
discovery.
It is not too much to say that this man, who was intended to be
nothing, has become the most important political figure in the
English-speaking world--or, at least, of the English-speaking world
south of the Equator. That is not to assert that he has been the most
talked of, or has wielded the most power. But the movement that he
leads in Australia is the most momentous political-cum-social movement
known to the present age, and in Australia it has gone further than in
any other part of the British dominions. It happened three years ago,
for the first time on record, that a man who was the avowed leader
of a socialistic party--for the Labour party is socialistic in aim
and purpose, if not always in detail and in method--was chosen as the
political head of four million English-speaking people. That man was
Watson. Without much notice and without much warning, he found himself
raised to a giddy height. All eyes were upon him, all responsibility
rested with him, all honours that were the gift of the electors were
showered on his head. It was a trying situation, and the predictions of
immediate and disastrous failure were numerous. However, the expected
did not happen, and the deluge, though on general principles due to
arrive, held off. Mr Watson as head of the Commonwealth Ministry acted
precisely as he had acted when private member, or when leader of the
irrepressible Labour party. Probably he knew that a tremendous head of
limelight was being turned upon him; but he gave no outward evidence
of the knowledge. If he suffered from self-consciousness, he kept the
circumstance from the world.
The man’s whole career is an object lesson in the importance of keeping
cool. Any study of the ex-compositor’s character must impress one fact
on the mind. It is a terrible thing to suffer from what the French
call _tête montée_; it is a magnificent thing to be able to keep cool.
Whether Mr Watson’s coolness is the result of temperament or of will
power, might be difficult to say. It is more than probable that it
is due to the latter. So far as temperament is concerned, the man
is impressionable, and many sided. You can tell by glancing at his
good-looking, half-oval, half-practical face, that he has sensuous as
well as mental perceptions; that he is not naturally a stoic; that the
taste of power and pleasure is not wasted on him; that “the laurel,
the palms, the pæan” are to him something more than names. If it were
merely a question of temperament, he could let himself go with the best
or the worst of us. But the man is master of himself. If Nature and
preliminary training have not given him all things; if certain magnetic
gifts such as oratorical fire and intellectual fervour are not his; if
it be that
Knowledge to his eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll,
it is yet a fact that he has a marvellous faculty for showing the _mens
æqua in arduis_, for keeping his head, for being true to himself in
every emergency and at any hour. Temperament may have something to do
with the faculty; but it seems to be mainly the result of a resolute
and altogether admirable will. People who know Mr Watson best have
never been able to detect any difference in his manner as applicant
for work in Sydney, as political chief of a sectional party, or as
head of the Commonwealth Government. He performed the impossible when,
for the better part of a session, he led the House of Representatives
in the face of a large and hostile majority. A man who listened to
the extremists behind him, a man who could not think and reason with
bullets whistling all round him, could not have done this for a week.
Mr Watson did it for four months, and he did it very well. It is more
than likely he will have the opportunity of doing it again.
The fourth member of this famous quartette is Mr George Houston Reid.
It is melancholy to think what vast quantities of bad writing and
indifferent caricaturing have been called forth by this Prime Minister
of the Commonwealth of Australia. Melancholy, because the subject is
such a good one that it should have been reserved for adequate and
original treatment. It is only possible now to repeat a few truisms
which are known and recognised of all men. One of these truisms is
that Mr Reid represents the _apotheosis_ of intelligence, the triumph
of mind over matter. He is not beautiful, or graceful, or slim, or
heroic-looking. No one ever accused him of being a glass of fashion, or
a mould of form. The ingenious Mr Crosland tells us that a man has no
business with a figure; that it is his duty to look like a clothes-prop
in youth, and like a balloon in middle life. Mr Reid and Mr Crosland
are at one in this matter, with the difference that the Premier has put
into practice what the mentally and physically smaller person merely
suggested. Certain well-meaning but bat-eyed individuals have accused
the ex-Prime Minister of being inconsistent; they point out--good,
worthy souls!--that he is found talking in favour of a project at one
time, and talking against it at another. These people, well meaning as
they are, do not understand. Mr Reid, for his part, does understand.
We see here the whole secret of his vast popularity, of his wonderful
rise to power. He UNDERSTANDS. When one recollects how few people
understand, there is little further to be said.
The ex-Prime Minister is a wonderful talker; and for want of anything
better to talk to, he talks to public audiences. The general impression
seems to be that he enjoys himself on these occasions; that he likes
to hear the plaudits that greet his appearance, the laughter that
echoes to his jests, even the interjections that he turns to such good
account. But the writer’s opinion, derived not only from watching Mr
Reid on a platform, but from private conversation with him, is that he
knows himself to be mentally adapted for other and better things. What,
after all, does the crowd know or care about such gifts of speech, such
exquisite verbal delicacy and grace as this man possesses? True, they
can appreciate what he gives them, for he is wise enough to give what
they require, not what he himself knows to be most select and valuable.
Whenever I think of what is rare and beautiful in the mind or heart
of woman; whenever I think of those gracious and grateful beings who
flitted across this planet and died in disappointment because they
had found no intellectual mate; I regret that a mysterious Providence
did not put me in their path after endowing me with Mr Reid’s gift
of speech. It is a pity that such talent should be dissipated among
the vulgar; it is a pity that it should be harnessed to any political
engine; it is ten times a pity that it should have so often to put up
with the wrong audience, the wrong hour, and the wrong place.
Like all great men, Mr Reid has been responsible for some erroneous
impressions. One of the most popular and widespread of these is that
he is, by instinct and temperament, a humorist. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The late head of the Commonwealth Government
is undoubtedly the most serious man that the political exigencies
of Australia have ever produced. He has too much insight, too much
intelligence not to be serious. Every man who possesses the faculty
of making other people laugh must do so by presenting an effective
contrast to their own habit of thought. In other words, he must be as
different as possible from themselves. Mr Reid is entirely different in
thought and disposition from ninety-nine out of every hundred of those
who listen to him and laugh with him. _They_ are volatile, fickle,
amusement-loving; _he_ is none of these. That is the reason why, when
he throws for their delectation certain verbal pictures on a rhetorical
screen, they laugh with such boisterous mirth and such riotous abandon.
The reason why Mr Reid came to take up the _rôle_ of jester is easy to
understand. If he followed out his own inclinations, he would be either
a transcendental philosopher, or a poet of the mystic school. He would
never speak a word about politics, and he would never make a joke. He
is too clever not to recognise the essential meanness of politics; he
is too sombre in disposition not to revolt from the tinkling merriment
of a crowd. But he has never got quite free from the idea that success
is a desirable thing to obtain. It is the one infirmity that sticks to
him. He knows that distinction for a man, physically constituted as
he is, is not to be won through the channels of transcendentalism, or
by the agency of the lofty rhyme. He knows that for a clever man the
best and surest way to success is to play the fool. That is why he has
talked on such a commonplace subject as politics to tens of thousands
of people; that is why he has so successfully, so brilliantly played
the fool.
As already stated, Mr Reid is too intelligent to be wedded exclusively
to any one faith or shibboleth. But if he has one political leaning
over another, it is in favour of Protection. It is true there is a
popular idea to the contrary; but then many popular ideas flourish on
the most unsubstantial foundations. There is no difficulty whatever
in showing that Mr Reid’s one marked characteristic as a statesman is
his fondness for Protection. The importers of New South Wales chose
to make him their idol. It was not for him to object. It was apparent
to him as an intelligent man that if the importer was no better, he
was no worse than other people. So it came about that Mr Reid and Free
Trade went hand in hand for quite a number of years. But to be strictly
devoted to one faith, is to argue oneself blind to the merits of other
faiths, and therefore mentally defective. To prove his catholicity of
taste, Mr Reid put a few doses of Protection into the Free Trade dish
which his fellow colonists were asking at his hands. When at a later
stage the invitation came to him to drop fiscalism and merge his free
trade in the high-tariffism of Mr Deakin, he gladly did so. There is
no doubt that he was getting tired of the old formulas. How could it
be otherwise? Mr Reid owes it to himself, and to his reputation as a
man of broad views, to give Protection a turn, and in that direction,
beyond doubt, his desire lies. There is a foolish idea, fatuously and
blatantly insisted upon by newspaper writers, that, because a man has
been harnessed to a party at one stage of his career he should remain
harnessed to it for ever. The only universal genius is he who has come
to recognise the essential quackery and futility of all political
faiths now being foisted upon the community. I do not assert that Mr
Reid is, or is not, a universal genius. I merely repeat that he is a
man who understands. It is possible to look forward to the time when
circumstances, and his own desire to be impartial, will bring him out
as the champion of Protection in Australia. This is necessary to the
complete and artistic balancing of his career. No one knows this better
than himself. And whatever we say of G. H. Reid, whatever we think of
him, whatever broad or narrow views we take of him, we are bound to
admit that he touches nothing, and has touched nothing, he does not
adorn.
XIII
THE IMPERIALIST
Regions Cæsar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway.
The Imperialist plays an important part in the life of Australia. His
influence is to be detected everywhere. It is not always proclaimed
in words or manifested in deeds; but, like a subtle essence, it runs
through every political and social institution of the country. No one
can pretend to understand what goes on in this part of the world unless
he makes allowance for the curious blending of the Imperialistic with
the local point of view. The two currents do not always flow in unison;
but if it were a question of opposing forces, the Imperialist would
always carry the day. He is predominant both in the political and in
the social world. He is much stronger than his occasional rival, the
little “Australian.” He colours most of the legislation, and insensibly
affects the habit of thought of the people. Take away the Imperialist
from Australia, or even reduce him to a minority, and an entirely new
set of conditions, a fresh pathway of national development, would come
immediately into view.
The man who calls himself by this term, or even the man who, without
assertiveness, acknowledges that it applies to him, is apt to believe
that all who differ from him are small-souled and narrow-minded
persons. He is inclined to be egotistically self-righteous. He talks of
Imperialism as though it were not merely a justifiable political creed,
but something superior in the realm of philosophy, something splendid
in the domain of morals. The word itself is a large and impressive one.
It conjures up wide expanses of territory, great vistas of achievement.
It affords unrivalled opportunities for mouth-filling rhetoric and for
fine-sounding, platform periods. Its every association is calculated to
impress the receptive mind. There need be no astonishment, therefore,
at the fact that those who confine themselves to the local point of
view, and acknowledge no fondness for world-stretching dominions, are
not highly regarded by the majority in Australia.
Yet it is by no means difficult to show that the essential doctrines
of Imperialism are incapable of defence either from the rationalist
or from the ethical standpoint. They are, in fact, both illogical and
immoral. They are illogical, because they are based on the assumption
that a wide expanse of territory can be better looked after by a
central authority, than can a relatively small district. They ignore
the elementary truth that every community is the best judge of its
own requirements. The Imperialist is not satisfied to let any one
alone. Every race, as far as practicable, must come under the yoke
which he himself acknowledges. Every individual must slumber under the
form of Government which he himself prescribes. He believes, quite
illogically, that his own prestige is in some fashion enhanced whenever
his countrymen dethrone another potentate or lay hands on a fresh piece
of territory. He is convinced that the welfare of Australia is enhanced
by the circumstance that certain gentlemen, living at a very remote
distance, can, if they so choose, veto some of our most important
pieces of legislation, and overset some of our most intimate concerns.
If it be admitted, as it must be, that the underlying principle of
Imperialism is illogical, it will also be admitted that the same
principle is decidedly immoral. Every empire is more or less built
up by the sword. Every empire is more or less maintained in the same
fashion. And it is an elementary truth that the sword and morality
have nothing to do with each other. We can judge these things better
from a distance. We can see plainly enough that it was wrong and
immoral of Xerxes to wish to add to his territories by annexing
Greece; that it was grasping of Julius Cæsar to reach out after Gaul
and Britain; that it was wicked of Napoleon to covet Egypt; and that
it was sinful of Russia to lay hands on Poland and Manchuria. But we
are not prepared to speak thus definitely of the moral significance
of another nation’s attitude towards Cape Colony and Egypt and India.
What we do say in that connection, is that the white man has a burden
to shoulder and a duty to accomplish. We are inclined to get angry,
and to call the strict moralist--whenever he attempts to dictate the
policy of nations--a narrow-minded, insufferable prig. And so, as a
matter of fact, he may be. But no harm would be done by admitting, in a
general way, that the doctrines of Imperialism and of morality are not
precisely identical.
But neither cold reason nor hard rules of conduct can build up and
vitalise a nation. There is such a quality as _sentiment_; and it is
just this quality that gives the Imperialist his pre-eminent place.
For sentiment always has been, and always will be, the most useful and
valuable, just as it is the most illogical, faculty that an individual
or a nation can possess. When we recollect what it has given us in
the domain of poetry, of imaginative prose, of art, of music, of
sculpture, we recognise that logic does not deserve to be mentioned
with it in the same breath. Sentiment is even greater than morality,
because it creates its own morality--a morality very much finer and
very much truer than that of any conventional school. The Imperialist,
therefore, in spite of his unreason, contains within him a spark of
that which illumines and creates. The sentiment of race, the sentiment
of religion, the sentiment of patriotism, the sentiment of devotion to
an ideal, to a memory, to a national past, to a series of great names,
to a battlefield, to a grave--all this is, from the logical point of
view, incapable of a moment’s defence. It is fantastic, illusory,
absurd. But when one comes to think how unspeakably unlovely would be
any existence that was mapped out by reason, and supported by dogma,
and guided from infantile beginnings to senile decay, by a cold and
brutal calculation of the practical advantages likely to follow on
certain acts, one can only feel grateful that the sentimentalist, and
not the economist or the calculator, has still the dominating voice in
the life of the time.
The Imperialist, therefore, in the sense now being made use of, is a
person to be lightly regarded by disciples of Bentham and Bain, and to
be warmly admired and applauded by all other sections of the community.
This is he who, though he has never been within ten thousand miles
of Great Britain, speaks of it as “home,” and incidentally refers
to the place of his birth as a land of exile. This is he who, a few
years ago, talked often of the necessity of wiping out the memory of
Majuba, and who even now does not like to be reminded of Nicholson’s
Nek and Magersfontein and the Tugela River. As a member of the human
race he might be proud to think that at these places some farmers, his
fellow-beings, performed praiseworthy feats in the face of tremendous
odds. But the Imperialist assumes that the feats were performed by
the wrong people, and is not proud of them. This is he who, by virtue
of some curious and unintelligible process, manages to feel himself
a larger and more sublime personality because of the fact that, long
before he was born, men wearing red uniforms and living at the opposite
end of the world purchased with their lives the barren glory of
Badajoz, and stood unshaken through the fiery ordeal of Waterloo. And
this is he who refers to such and such an action as conceived in the
interests of that large and vague thing known as the Empire; who is
fond of talking about what “we” ought to do in Afghanistan, and what
should be “our” policy in Cochin China; who sublimely ignores the fact
that neither he himself, nor the community in which he lives, has any
more to do with Afghanistan and Cochin China than it has with the North
Pole or the mountains of the Moon.
“Even a Cecil,” observed an Irish member in the House of Commons
recently, “will not die for the Meridian of Greenwich.” The remark
illustrated a great truth. A man will only die for something that has
a history, for something that calls forth an emotion, for something
that appeals to his individual or his national pride. He will not
die for the Meridian of Greenwich, any more than he will die for the
peak of Kosciusko, or for the Sydney Town Hall, or for the Melbourne
Parliamentary buildings, or for the Federal tariff. Of what avail
is it for a poet to write about the star of Australia? It is likely
enough that the star will arise some day, and it is perfectly certain
that the event, when it does take place, will be heralded by clouds of
war. Every national constellation must rise, if it rises at all, from
such a cradle. But in the meantime there is nothing in the history of
Australia to awake sentiment of any sort--unless it be a sentiment of
disgust at the manner in which the aboriginals were treated, and of
shame for the early records of Botany Bay. A nation must have some ties
of remembrance and of vanity to hold it together. Australia is still
mainly Imperialistic--because of the force of heredity, because of the
triumph of unreason, and because of the part that sentiment plays in
the life of the people.
Apart from the genuine Imperialist into whose faith the calculation
of material advantages does not consciously enter, there is the
professing Imperialist of the political type. This individual is to
be met with in Parliament, at public meetings, and in the newspapers.
Often his opinions are elaborately thought out, and now and again
they are adequately expressed. Imagination may have a part, but not
the leading part, in his composition. Neither is he a product of any
one emotion, or set of emotions. He has usually a large measure of
prudence, and always a certain capacity for looking ahead. He talks
a great deal about the balance of power in Europe, and the possible
shifting of that balance owing to Japanese successes in the Far East.
He advocates a larger Australian contribution to the British Navy,
and remarks with solemn emphasis that the only guarantee of safety
held by this Southern continent--the continent which he inhabits--is
afforded by the existence of English ships of war. This political and
professing Imperialist will declaim from any number of platforms on
the necessity of keeping intact all the existing bonds of Empire, and
of manufacturing as many new ones as possible. He foresees a yellow
peril, a Russian peril, a German peril, an American peril--in fact any
number of perils. He is strenuously alive to the possibility, in fact
the imminent probability, of some nation, whether it be white, brown,
black, or yellow, casting acquisitive eyes on the new and tempting and
half unpeopled continent. Though not imaginative, he can picture the
probable result of a conflict between Togo’s vessels and the auxiliary
Australian squadron. And he is sincerely desirous that nothing should
occur, for the present, to mar existing relations with Great Britain,
or to cause the habit of reliance upon the most powerful navy in the
world to cease.
The objection to this variety of Imperialist is that he cannot be
relied upon. For the motive that animates him is self-interest. And
national self-interest is not a whit more dependable, while it is even
less admirable, than the self-interest of individuals. It may be that
a certain line of conduct appears, for the time being, advantageous.
Then the balance of power is shifted, and a diametrically opposite
course becomes advisable. The unit may be forgiven for seeking the
unit’s good. It is a way that units have. But from the nation, or from
the collective spirit of the nation, something more lofty and inspiring
might be expected. The political Imperialist reduces everything to a
formula. He may deal in high-sounding phrases, but he does not mean
them. He may not tell his audience, but he tells himself that a certain
course of action pays best. He has no illusions. He is not an idealist.
He does not pretend to be heroic. His eye is ever upon the main chance.
So far from being a buttress of Imperialism he is in reality its chief
danger--the chief danger, that is to say, to its existence as a
permanent factor in the life of the world. For undervaluing sentiment
as he does, dealing with supposed advantages and disadvantages as he
does, he is morally certain to adjust his views to successive changes
on the international horizon. The moment Australia becomes, in his
opinion, strong enough to protect herself; the moment she can afford to
be independent of Downing Street; the moment she is powerful enough to
resent interference; that moment becomes, in the view of the political
Imperialist, the moment to cast adrift. Manifestly the bonds must be
different from those of temporary self-interest if they are to have any
holding power.
There remains the important problem of improving the position--assuming
that it can be improved--from the Imperialist point of view. We want,
first of all, to know where we are. Our relations to Great Britain
are of two kinds, the one definite and precise, the other indefinite
and somewhat vague. The political relationship is the definite one,
the one that exists on paper, the one that is subject at any moment
to constitutional readjustment. It implies a certain amount of
formalism, a certain hint of subserviency, even a certain suggestion
of force. It means that we cannot legislate on all subjects exactly
as we like. It means, also, the payment of a certain sum of money in
the upkeep of Vice-regal establishments, and in the contributions to
the British Navy. As a set off to this political dependence, and to
this necessity for paying away occasional sums of money, there are a
number of material gains. There is the commercial gain represented by
the protection of the British flag. This is a consideration that runs
throughout the whole domain of trade and industry, and gives to every
transaction a security and confidence that would otherwise be absent.
Then there is the financial saving on the defence vote. Instead of
spending less than £900,000 a year on defence we should have to spend
several millions if there were no reliance on the Imperial forces.
Further, there is the social advantage--a great advantage in the eyes
of some people, a negative advantage in the eyes of others--implied in
the presence of a number of titled personages who represent the Crown
in Australia, and add greatly to the importance of a number of socially
ambitious individuals. Looking at the constitutional problem as a
whole, and weighing material gains against certain definite losses, it
may fairly be agreed that the former much preponderate.
Yet the political tie as such is never binding. “A fig for these paper
agreements!” exclaimed Mr C. C. Kingston in the Federal House of
Representatives a year or two ago. The accompanying snap of the fingers
meant a great deal. The first Australian Minister for Customs was, and
at the time of writing is, a democrat of the democrats. No one knows
better than he that it is not only useless, but criminally foolish to
attempt to hold together peoples living on opposite sides of the globe,
if their hearts are not in the bond. Australia is mainly Imperialist
to-day, because of certain considerations that lie outside the track
of any huxtering politician, or of any self-important statesman
residing either north or south of the Equator. It is Imperialist
because it is susceptible to the breath of impulse, and of memory, and
of something finer and more intangible still. It is loyal not so much
to a dynasty, or to an individual, or to a parchment bond, as to the
tie of race, the idea of kinship, the value of tradition, the glamour
of history, the pride that springs from the knowledge of certain
achievements--achievements that have helped to make the country and its
people what they are.
This Imperialism, which is the result of sentiment, and not of any
political arrangement, is to be met with in the street, in the train,
in the tram-car, in the hotel, in the private house, in the social
circle. The writer was in King Street, Sydney, when the news of the
surrender of Cronje was posted outside a newspaper office. And he was
in Collins Street, Melbourne, when the announcement of the relief of
Mafeking came to hand. The demonstration that took place in either
city was instructive from any point of view. When a crowd, and more
especially an Anglo-Saxon crowd, becomes fervid with excitement and
metaphorically stands on its head, and turns itself into one vast
menagerie, it is safe to assume that the motive power is a fairly
strong one. It is no explanation to say that the people were merely
anxious to create a disturbance--that they were devoid of political
convictions and had no definite idea on the subject of international
or pan-Britannic relations. The splendid foolishness that everywhere
manifested itself on account of the improved fortunes of the
defenders of Mafeking--on account, if you will, of the avoidance of
whatever national dishonour would have been caused by the fall of the
place--was, and is, the most eloquent testimony to the existence of
Imperialism as a vital force in Australia. What did it matter to the
people in the streets? What was Mafeking to them, or what were they
to Mafeking? And yet they mafficked--and in the folly of the moment
demonstrated more than a whole tribe of philosophers could disprove in
a life-time.
But there are people--anxious, untiring, well-meaning people--who are
not satisfied. It is not enough that Australia should have shewn its
feelings in the only way in which they can be shewn. It is not enough
that the country should have sent soldiers to the war, should have
yelled itself hoarse for the cause in which they went, and should have
rioted with frantic enthusiasm when they came back. It is not enough
that the streets of Melbourne and Sydney should have been converted
into Pandemonium. The statement is being made that the bonds of
union must be drawn tighter. The necessity is being urged for the
taking of steps to prevent any drifting apart. Somebody imagines that
constitutional relationships can be improved. The political wheel
is asked to be set in motion. There is declared to be danger to the
Empire because of possible commercial friction. One Parliament sits at
Westminster, and on its own responsibility takes steps that may not
only imperil the trade and commercial interests, but place at stake the
national honour, and the life of men residing at Brisbane and Ballarat.
The political Imperialists say the position is alarming. They are
certain that something ought to be done. But what is it to be?
It has been contended by very respectable authorities that there
should be representation of Australia at Westminster. And it has been
contended, just as ably, that there should be preferential trade.
Both contentions can be strongly supported on a logical basis. It
is unreasonable to expect educated and civilised people to submit
to interference from bodies whom they have no share in calling into
existence. It is unreasonable--and yet the submission takes place.
No doubt there are advantages by way of compensation. But the broad,
and self-evident, and theoretically objectionable circumstance is that
the people who have left England to build up Greater Britain agree to
be governed without representation on their part by the people who
have stayed at home. Then, again, the fact has been rediscovered that
competing tariffs make the commercial relationships of the United
Kingdom and Australia increasingly difficult, and tend to drive the
two countries further apart. The brilliant idea has occurred to one
statesman that it is possible to unite Britain and Greater Britain
more closely together, and to keep the foreign gentleman at a more
respectful distance, by the simple process of manipulating the
customs duties. From one point of view--in fact, from many points of
view--he is quite correct. Preferential trade implies a bond of mutual
self-interest. And there is no reasoner in the world who would not say
unhesitatingly that nations and individuals are more likely to hang
together when there exists a tie of self-interest between them.
Every man or woman possessed of rudimentary intelligence would say
this. But he or she would almost certainly be in error in applying the
abstract principle to the union between England and Australia. Let it
be said again that the bond is not one that has grown strong by reason
of political adjustments, or of commercial necessities. Its virtue
consists in the fact that it has not been manufactured in the mills of
diplomacy. The more it is tampered with, the weaker it becomes. It is
made of impalpable materials--of such materials as memory, sentiment,
self-abnegation, heredity, pride. To attempt to trim it in one place
or to buttress it in another is to attempt to alter its character,
and thus bring about its decay. The Imperialist, if he is a genuine
Imperialist, requires only to be let alone. He should not be irritated
and thwarted, but he does not need to be artificially fed and pampered.
Whether he will last for many more generations is an open question.
But for the present he must be considered as a survival of a splendid
age--the age of unreason and of chivalry and of people wisely unwise.
XIV
THE LITTLE AUSTRALIAN
Masters of the Seven Seas,
Oh, love and understand!
The little Australian, despite his name, is not a product of the soil.
He is manufactured abroad. In the main, he is the outcome of English
criticism and of English public opinion. He is the result of influences
at work outside Australia. Very often he is born with an Imperialistic,
or it may be a jingoistic, temperament. But circumstances tend to
drive him in upon himself; to dwarf his incipient ideas of Imperial
greatness and of pan-Britannic confederation; to limit his vision and
his sympathies to the country in which he lives; to substitute for his
racial affinities a narrower feeling of kinship and a more local point
of view.
“Forgive them,” exclaimed the first Christian martyr, “lay not this
sin to their charge.” The tragedy of Stephen, though terrible and
heart-breaking, was yet a tragedy in purple. The victim was, and is, a
sublime figure. It is comparatively easy to ask forgiveness for those
who, in putting a period to your material existence, lift you at once
to a pinnacle of undying fame. But it is not easy to forgive a series
of acts, or even an attitude of mind, that is a continual source of
belittlement, annoyance, and exasperation. This task is difficult,
whether for the nation or for the individual. It may be unwillingly
undertaken for a while, but in the long run it is usually abandoned.
There is much in England’s attitude to Australia that is calculated
either to put a strain on sympathy, or to sow the seeds of active
discontent. This attitude cannot be brought within the four corners
of one generalisation. And anything said about it in a comprehensive
way must be subject to numerous exceptions. It is necessary to be
fair to the people in England who know Australia personally; to those
who, without knowing it personally, have taken the trouble to learn
about it; and to those rare souls who appear to have an instinctive,
undefinable sympathy with all efforts and achievements of their
countrymen either at home or beyond the seas. Yet the fact remains,
after all the circumstances have been considered, and after the last
exception has been allowed for, that the Englishman’s conscious or
unconscious bearing towards the man who lives outside of England is the
best reason and excuse for the growth of the product that has come to
be dubbed “little Australian.”
In the political relationships of the two countries a certain amount of
aloofness, a certain spirit of alienation, has always been noticeable.
It is about half a century, or more, since a British Prime Minister was
in the habit of making allusions to “these wretched Colonies.” This
member of the privileged classes was candid enough to think aloud.
Other statesmen have thought as much, but have said less. The House of
Commons represents Great Britain and misrepresents Ireland. It has no
wish to add to its aims of representation and misrepresentation the
maladministration of the affairs of Australia. It does not desire
closer union with that country. Colonial politicians are not wanted at
Westminster. Downing Street does not love them, although it tolerates
them, and on great occasions invites them to call. It sends them an
occasional Governor-General, and a more frequent State Governor. It
sometimes leaves the impression that the choice has been hastily made,
and that the people responsible regarded the matter as of no great
importance. Such an opinion, it may be said in passing, is the greatest
mistake possible. An era of _perfect_ Vice-regal representatives might
mean an era of universal Imperialism. Owing to the large amount of
_indifference_ that prevails in British political circles, it has come
about that a feeling of strangeness has been accentuated. Even the
fervid Imperialism of a Chamberlain, if it abide alone, will not alter
the trend of events.
But the views, or lack of views, of English statesmen towards Australia
are far from being the chief cause of complaint in the younger country.
Neither are they the source from which the little Australian most
naturally springs. The stolid, unyielding, invincible prejudices of
the English middle classes are a more important factor in the case.
What does the man who has lived his life in the Midland Counties, or in
Yorkshire, or in London, know about the Antipodes? What does he care to
know? What is the use of telling him that at the Antipodes life may be
as artistic, wit as polished, society as versatile, conventional codes
as precise, manners as decorous, wealth as prodigal, intellect as keen,
and the indefinable something known as _savoir faire_ as pronounced
as in England? The Midlander would not believe it. And his wife would
believe it still less. The Englishman should make it his business to
learn something of the land that his countrymen have peopled. His
geographical ignorance should be less complete, less appalling. One
obstacle to lasting cohesion will be removed when the man who picks
up his paper in Yorkshire or Warwickshire is aware that Victoria is
not the Capital of New South Wales, and that people in Brisbane are
debarred by distance from paying afternoon calls upon people in Geelong.
Another of the centrifugal forces at work is the attitude of the older
nation towards the incipient art and literature of the new one. It
is always a mistake to despise the day of small things. The error is
one that is being constantly made by the English critic, the English
reviewer, the English publisher, the English artist, and--to some
extent--by the English reader. You will hear it said in London that
the Colonies have been “overdone.” You need not believe it. They have
never been anything but _under_done. They have always been fighting
for recognition and very imperfectly obtaining it. The young men from
Oxford and Cambridge have come to regard Fleet Street as their special
domain. They have never been anxious to greet the outsider. They do
not actually forbid intrusion, but they do not welcome it, and they do
not wish it. The newspaper proprietors and editors are of the same way
of thinking. A Colonial reputation to them means nothing, or less than
nothing. The very fact that it is Colonial is enough to damn it. The
word “Colonial” is unfortunate. Such a term, with such associations,
might damn anything. Its use in this way is an injustice to the people
to whom it is applied, a reflection on the manner of thinking of the
people who apply it. It is a significant fact that the man who has
done brilliantly in Melbourne or Sydney finds it harder to make a
commencement in the metropolis _of his own race_ than does the man who
has achieved nothing better than failure in Birmingham or York. English
experience, good, bad, or indifferent, is understood to be better than
Colonial success.
Still another factor calling for consideration is the tone of English
society. In some respects this is the most important of all. Were it
not for this, much could be forgiven. The Australian could overlook
the majestic indifference of the Assembly that sits at Westminster;
he could smile at the profound lack of topographical information
possessed by the middle-class Briton in reference to Australia; and
he could put up with the hard suspicion that greets his claims to a
place in the literary or the artistic world. He could put up with
these, and endeavour to overcome them. But he finds exasperating and
well-nigh unendurable the slight movement of the shoulders, and the
imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows, that, in certain exclusive
circles, greet the mention of the word Australian. These indications of
opinion are trifles. Society itself is the most futile and absurd of
trifles. But the ridiculous prejudices of the most trifling individuals
may have more influence upon international relationships than years of
actual misgovernment or oceans of wordy vituperation. The Australian
is aware of one or two things. He knows that although his erudition
may be sound, his clothes faultless, and his hands as clean as his
linen--though he may have much knowledge, much tact, much eloquence,
much refinement--his acceptance among the people who can trace their
descent for a couple of centuries will be achieved in spite of, and in
no way because of, the land of his birth. He knows that in a particular
circle, a circle that is largely the preserve of soulless aristocrats
and commonplace millionaires and pushful Americans, there can be heard
every now and then the exclamation, “Oh, Australians!” The delicate,
almost imperceptible, irony of the tone in which these words are
uttered may yet bring about the dismemberment of the Empire. No man
cares to be thought ridiculous. No man relishes the suggestion--even
the most faintly implied, ostensibly denied suggestion--that in the
social sense he does not know how to live.
Mainly as the result of what is going on in England, partly because of
other reasons, there is growing up in Australia a feeling of antagonism
to constitutional ties as they now exist. I say “growing up,” although
the shoots are at present hardly noticeable, and the vitality is taken
from them by the vigour of other trees. But no one can afford to be
blind to the signs of the times. In the Southern continent there is a
strong and developing Labour party. Politically it is of the utmost
importance. Where it does not actually choose Ministries and pass
legislation it is the controlling or balancing force without which the
Government in office could not carry on. This political Labour party
is leavened with Republicanism. More than that, it is in spirit and
essence Republican; that is to say, anti-Monarchical, and in a measure
Separationist. So far, it is not actively disloyal. It has by no means
shaken off old associations. The influences of race and of heredity
are with it yet. The name and fame of England are more to it than the
name and fame of France or Germany, or America, or Japan. Many of its
members took part in the honourable folly of the Mafeking celebrations.
But old associations become older each year; and even heredity is not
in the long run proof against environment. A party that has to fight
for its existence in Parliament, and to earn its own living outside of
it, has not much time for sentiment. It comes down to bed-rock sooner
than do other parties. All the patriotic ideals, all the associations
of remoter kinship, all the far-off memories of battle fields, all
the impalpable nothings that help to bind an Empire together, are not
proof in the long run against the practical tendencies of the man who
knows only his own surroundings--who is chiefly occupied in supplying
material wants, and who wishes to be let alone.
Outside of political circles, and outside of the Labour party, there is
a certain body of opinion that sees, or professes to see, indications
of coming change. Causes of irritation are always arising. English
newspaper criticism of Australia is one fruitful source of complaint.
The returned Australian--the man who has battled hard for a living in
London and has more or less failed--comes back with the conviction that
racial sentiment is a vain and foolish thing. For him it is dead; its
embers lie strewn about the pavement that runs past London newspaper
offices, and are trampled under foot by the indifferent millions on
their passage to and fro. The thoughtful and clever Australian, looking
to the prevailing signs of the times, looking to the attitude of
Downing Street, of Fleet Street, and of Belgravia, begins to pin his
faith to a future that is not the future of the old world, but of the
new.
For the present, old ties, old institutions, old associations are in
the ascendant. The continent is owned, and to some extent governed, by
men of peregrinating habits; by men to whom the Red Sea is as familiar
as Collins Street; by men to whom the journey from Tilbury to Adelaide
is no more formidable, and not much more unusual, than a cab-drive from
the Marble Arch to London Bridge. These people, though they live in the
Southern Hemisphere, have most of their financial, commercial, and
social interests in the world’s metropolis. These people own most of
the property and possess a preponderating, though a diminishing, share
in the Government of the new country. Assisting them, and co-operating
with them, is the racial and Imperialistic sentiment of the Australian
middle classes. But the other type of individual--the man who believes
that formulas have no hold over him, and who declares that he “may not
call a throned puppet Lord”--is making himself felt more as a silent
than as an eloquent factor in the life of the people. This is the
type that is known as “little Australian.” On A.N.A. platforms, in
suburban debating societies, at Trades’ Hall councils, and at Yarra
Bank gatherings, it succeeds in making its aspirations heard. In social
circles, in the region of practical politics, it is dumb and futile.
But it is ambitious, and expects to grow.
For many reasons one might sympathise with the little Australian, and
even feel some sorrow for him. He has so few materials with which to
build. He has no national flag, no history, no bead-roll of fame, no
justification for enthusiasm of any kind. He wishes to feel, and to
spread around him, an atmosphere of enthusiasm for the land in which
he was born. He wishes to see the embers removed from England, and
relighted in Australia. But how is the thing to be done? National
sentiment is largely the product of memories. And the Australian, as
an Australian, has no memories worthy of the name. If he looks back a
century--and he can look back no further--he finds merely the trail of
the unattractive aboriginal, of the nomadic gold digger, and of that
other man who, like Barrington, left his country for his country’s
good. Hamlet declares that you cannot feed capons, that is to say,
young cocks, on air; and you can hardly nourish the flame of patriotic
sentiment on recollections such as these. So it is that in Australia
the shrine of the local patriot is difficult to tend. The altar has
not been stained with crimson as every rallying centre of a nation
should be. A large expanse of territory, some trees, a whitey-grey or
dull green landscape, a number of new buildings, a hard blue sky, a
succession of fine days, and alternating periods of drought--these
must be the outward and visible symbols, in default of others more
histrionic and less tangible, on which the sentiment of the nation has
to feed. It is no wonder that the result is a slow and fluctuating and
uncertain growth.
But the little Australian lives on, and believes that time will have
its revenges. He believes that each year as it passes is fighting
for him. He knows that he is not strong enough to found a party that
will carry any weight in the Government of the country. He is aware,
also, that he can get no audience to listen to the gospel that is
dearest to him, elsewhere than by the banks of rivers, at the less
reputable street corners, or in the open spaces of a city domain. He
recognises that the earth belongs to those who think very differently
from himself. He has no hope of achieving a _tour de force_. But he
is by no means idle. He does what he can. His voice is raised against
all proposals that seem to have an old-world origin, or to be actuated
by sympathy with old-world forms of Government. Thus he is an active
opponent of the agreement under which Australia pays a naval subsidy
of £200,000 to Great Britain. He is not candid enough to say what he
really thinks--that he desires his country to be quite independent
of the parent nation. But he talks, with an amusing sophistry that
deceives no one, of the advantages that would accrue to the people of
England if Australia possessed a navy of her own. Besides objecting
to the naval subsidy he objects to State Governors, to all appeals
from his part of the world to the Privy Council, to contingents
such as those that went to South Africa, to the right of veto upon
colonial legislation. All these are principles or practices that can
be protested against without openly enlisting under the Separationist
flag. The little Australian is not sure that the time is ripe for
objecting to an English Governor-General, or to the appearance of
the head of the Sovereign on the coins of the realm. But where there
is a chance of doing something, he does it; where there is a head
unprotected, he hits it as hard as he can.
What is the future to be? No one knows, least of all the little
Australian. Sometimes he sees visions, sometimes he dreams dreams. But
he lacks constructive ability, and he is wanting in definite aim. His
antecedents are of a heterogeneous character. It may be that he is
of Irish descent, and that memories of Drogheda and Vinegar Hill are
running in his blood. Perhaps he has a Gaelic strain and refuses, as
some Scotchmen still refuse, to forego the hereditary instinct which
meant war to the knife against the race across the Border. Or possibly
he is a German for whom loyalty to Great Britain has no meaning; or
possibly an Italian, the child of a country that is always talking
about liberty, but has for gotten how to use it. Perhaps he is an
Englishman who for adequate personal reasons has a vendetta against
his fathers’ country, and everything connected with it. There are a
number of local causes, a number of nationalities, a number of racial
prejudices helping to build up the little Australian. But for the
present the Imperialists of the continent can afford to smile at him.
They know that his day is not yet.
INDEX
A
Achilles, 122
Actors, 138-141
Actress, Young American, 147
Adams, Francis, 113
Adelaide, 53, 306
_Adonais_, 114
Adonis, 260
Æstheticism, 168
Aetius, 37
Afghanistan, 284
Agamemnon, 209
_Age_, 55-58
Aide-de-camp, Government House, 28, 34
Amaryllis, 110
America, 142, 144, 305
Amurath, 81
Aphroditë, 190
_A Pretty Woman_, 232
Araluen, 92
_Argus_, 55, 56, 66, 93
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 169
_As long as any May_, 249
Astoria, 145
_Atalanta in Calydon_, 39
_At Dawn and Dusk_, 227, 234
_At the Opera_, 232
Attila, 37
Aurelius, Marcus, 260
_Australasian_, 128
A.N.A., 307
Australian men, 1-22, 199-203
---- society, 23-44
---- women, 32, 160-180, 251
Authors, dramatic, 141
_Autumn Song_, 124
Azores, 115
B
_Bab Ballads_, 148
Back-blocks, 215
Badajos, 283
_Ballad of Dreamland_, 123
Barrère, 1
Barrington, 308
Barton, Sir E., 89, 252-258
Bayard, 133
Beaconsfield, 216
Beau Brummell, 260
Beersheba, 112
Belgravia, 306
_Belle of New York_, 146
Bent, Thomas, 78
Birth-rate, 36, 37
Bismarck, 1
Bjornsten, 146
_Blanchelys_, 233, 234
Blue Mountains, 209
Boers, 283
Botany Bay, 57, 285
Brighton (Melb.), 113
Brisbane, 53, 153, 158, 300
Brisëis, 122
Browning, 1, 68, 74, 91
Bryne, Desmond, 113
Buddhists, 3, 169
_Bulletin_, 103, 108, 109, 205
Bunthorne, 124
Burke, Edmund, 9
---- Street, 195
Burney, Miss, 124
Byron, 133, 259
C
Cæsar, Julius, 280
Cambridge, 171, 301
_Camille_, 150
Carlton, 265
Carlyle, 203
Cecil Family, 284
Cereals, 209
Chamberlain, Joseph, 299
Charters Towers, 158
Chateaubriand, 1
Circë, 183
Circular Quay, 142, 162, 207
Cochin China, 284
Collins St. (Melb.), 195, 207, 291, 306
“Colonial,” 301
Colonial Secretary, 16, 191, 192
Commonwealth, 36, 56, 259
Como, Lake, 215
Condorcet, 15
Confucius, 3
Contingent, S. A., 203, 310
Cowper, 277
Cricket, 155, 156
Cromwell, 1
Cronje, General, 291
Crosland, Henry, 24, 161, 162, 271
_Cui Bono_, 127
Cup Day, 199
Curate, the Anglican, 169
Cytherea, 190
D
_Daily Telegraph_ (Sydney), 55-58
Daley, Victor, 23, 92, 94, 225-236
Danton, 267
Darling Downs, 208
Darling Harbour, 182
Darlinghurst, 142
Deakin, Alfred, 89, 258-264
De Brett, 26
Demosthenes, 260
_Deus ex machina_, 168
Dibbs, Sir George, 78
_Dolores_, 150
_Doubtful Dreams_, 127, 130
Downing Street, 288, 299, 306
_Dreams in Flower_, 246, 247
Dress, love of, 174
Drogheda, 311
Dumas, 146
Dumplings, 158
E
Edward, the Confessor, 257
Egypt, 280
Egyptology, 172
_Elegy_, Gray’s, 269
Eliot, George, 23, 24
English middle classes, 300
---- newspapers, 111, 143, 145, 301, 305
---- society, 24, 25, 302
Epicurus, 1
Epsom, 156
Established Church, 187
_Euphues_, 123
Evans, Essex, 94
Expediency, 287
F
_Faces in the Street_, 242
Federation, 256, 264, 266
Flinders Lane, 162
Flippant style, 107
Forests, Australian, 208
_Fra Lippo Lippi_, 91
Free Trade, 266, 275
_From the Wreck_, 128
G
Gambling, 11, 34, 153, 156
Gamins, 14
Geelong, 300
Germany, 19, 305
_Girl, The Country_, 224
Gissing, George, 214
Godwin, William, 15
Golden Age, 190
Goose-step, 14
Gordon, Adam L., 113-136
Gorky, 214
Government House, 28, 30, 34, 47, 67
----, N.S.W., 37
Gracchus, Caius, 260
Graduates, lady, 173
Groperism, 54
Guildhall, 254
H
Hackett, Dr, 54
_Hamlet_, 252, 308
Hardy, Thomas, 209
Harland, Henry, 177
Harte, Bret, 96
Heine, 1
_Henry V._, 105
Holt, Bland, 142
Hooligans, 14
Horace, 168, 269
Hospitality, 5
_How we beat the Favourite_, 128, 130
Humorous style, 106, 217
I
Ibsen, 145, 146
Icarus, 231
Illegitimacy, 10
Illiteracy, 97
Immigration Restriction Act, 3
Immorality, 17
Imperial Defence, 289, 310
Imperialist, 277-295
I.O.G.T., 191
I.O.R., 191
Inner life, society’s, 32
Irrigation, 263
Irwin, W. H., 78
_Island Lover_, 94
J
Japan, 142, 286, 305
Jarrah, 208
Jones, H. A., 145
Journalism, 45-67, 220
Jugurtha, 25
K
Karri, 208
Katoomba, 209
Keats, 48, 225
Kelly Gang, 142
Kendall, Henry C., 8, 119
_King Lear_, 79, 217
Kingston, C. C., 290
Kipling, 296
Koniggratz, 19
Kosciusko, 284
L
Labour party, 81-83, 265-268, 305
Lais, 202
Lamartine, 133
Lancelot, 133
Larrikin, 8, 15
Lazzaroni, 14
Lawn tennis, 170
Lawson, Henry, 42, 99, 208, 237-243
_Leah Kleschna_, 146
_Lear, King_, 79, 217
Le Gallienne, Richard, 161, 162
Legislative Council, 84, 162
Leicester Square, 98
Leonidas, 39
_Light of Asia_, 169
_Lohengrin_, 224
London, 197, 207, 300
---- Bridge, 306
Lorimer, Mr, 224
Lotos-flower, 183
Louis XIV., 40
M
_Macbeth_, 257
Mack, Louise, 181, 243-251
Mafeking, 291, 292, 305
Magazines, Australian, 219, 220
Magersfontein, 283
Majuba, 283
Manchuria, 280
Mannerisms, 31
Mansion House, 255
Marble Arch, 306
_Marriage of Kitty_, 150
Melbourne, 53-61, 193-203
Melnotte, Claude, 215
Melville, Whyte, 128
Men, Australian, 199-203
_Mens æqua_, 209
Meredith, George, 214
Micawber, 214
Midlands, 300
Milton, 20, 137, 160
Mirabeau, 14
Molière, 40
_Morning Herald_ (Sydney), 55, 56, 63
Morris, Professor, 171
_Mouse, The Country_, 150
Mulhall, 10
Musical comedy, 151
N
Nadjezda, 145
Napoleon, 280
Nature and Art, 179
Navy, British, 289
Newspapers, English, 111, 143, 145, 301, 305
Newton, Sir Isaac, 153
New York, 52, 188
---- Zealand, 237
Nicholson’s Nek, 283
Nora Creina, 201
O
Octavian, 1
_Old Stone Chimney_, 242
_Omar Khayyam_, 193
_On Wairee Hill_, 249
“Oriel,” 63
Orpheus, 132
Ouida, 30
Oxford, 171, 187, 301
P
_Pallida mors_, 168
_Pall Mall Gazette_, 111
Paternoster Row, 98
Paterson, 48, 208
_Patience_, 124
Payments, literary, 224
Perth, 54, 153
Petticoat Lane, 145
Phantasmagoria, 183
Philip, Governor, 190
Pigmies, 16
Pinero, Mr, 145
Pitt, William, 260
Plato, 169
Plutocrats, 35
_Podas Okus_, 122
Poetry, Australian, 225-251
Poland, 280
Politics, the game of, 68-90
Port Darwin, 153
Potts’ Point, 67
Prejudices, 303
Proserpinë, 132
Protection, 266, 275, 276
Publishers, 100
_Punch_, 205
Q
_Quex, The Gay Lord_, 150
Quinn, P. E., 99
---- R. J., 99
_Quo Vadis_, 150
R
_Reedy River_, 242
Reid, G. H., 79, 89, 270-276
Resources of Australia, 208, 209
_Rhyme of Joyous Garde_, 122, 133
Richardson (novelist), 124
Roberts, Earl, 16
Robespierre, 267
_Roll of the Kettledrum_, 128
_Romance of Britomarte_, 129
Rostand, 146
Rudd, Steele, 204-224
Rugby football, 158, 171
Russia, 280
S
Sahara, 195
St Kilda, 200
Salamanders, 158
Salamis, 40
Salvation Army, 16
Samaritan, the good, 6
San Francisco, 52, 57
Sardou, 145
Sempach, 40
Sentiment, Imperial, 281, 295
_Seven Seas_, 296
Shakespeare, 105, 146, 152, 175, 201, 204, 217, 229, 252, 257, 308
Shaw, Bernard, 96, 149
Shelley, 114, 125, 224
Sheridan, 146
Slang, 171
Slums, 186
Smith, Sappho, 108
Snobs, 202
Society, 23-44
Solomon Islanders, 154
_Song of Autumn_, 127
Sou’-wester, 195
_Spectre Bride_, 117
Spring St. (Melb.), 195
Squadron, Australian, 286
Star of Australia, 43
Stephen, St, 297
Stowe, H. B., 45
Sudermann, 145, 146
Sweating, 17
_Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, 150
_Swimmer, The_, 124, 131
Swinburne, 39, 110, 123, 125
Sydney, 53-55, 61, 181-193
---- Town Hall, 256, 284
Supreme Court, 59, 257
Syme, David, 55
Symmons, Davison, 63
T
Tasman Sea, 182
Tennyson, 222
Theatres, 137-152
Theosophy, 168
Thermopylæ, 16, 39
Thurston, Mrs, 155
Tigris, 182
Tilbury, 306
_Tithonus_, 222
Toby, Uncle, 214
Togo, Admiral, 286
Toorak, 67, 142, 200
Torres Vedras, 216
Trades’ Union, 72
Trams of Sydney, 186
_Trip to Chinatown_, 146
_Triumph of Time_, 123
Trumper, Victor, 157
Tsu-shima, 4
Tugela, 283
Twain, Mark, 96, 106
Twofold Bay, 209
V
Vallambrosa, 93
Vedas, 169
_Venus and Adonis_, 229
Vices, national, 9, 13, 192
Victoria, Queen, 260
Vinegar Hill, 311
Virgil, 209
Virtues, national, 7
Vitellius, 1
Viviani, Emilia, 229
Von Kotze, 94
_Vows_, 249
W
Wagner, 201
Waldorf, 145
Warwickshire, 300
Waterloo, 47, 283
Watson, Chris., 89, 264-270
Wellington, Duke of, 103
_West Australian_, 54
Westminster, 145, 293, 299, 302
_White Heather_, 150
Wildman, Ina, 108
Wilkes, John, 1
Winkelreid, A. von, 40
Winter in Melbourne, 195
Woman’s suffrage, 163
_Women and Wine_, 150
Women, Australian, 160-180
W.C.T.U., 191, 202
Women, English, 176
Wooloomooloo, 255, 265
Wordsworth, 45, 153
Working classes, 44
X
Xerxes, King, 40, 280
Y
Yalu, 16
Yarra Bank, 307
_Years Ago_, 229
Yellow peril, 286
Yorkshire, 300
Young American Actress, 147
Z
_Zaza_, 150
Zeno, 1
Zola, 214, 216
Transcriber's Notes:
Repetative heading, ‘The Real Australia’, has been removed.
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
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