THE C.Y.A.
This title, which attaches to all Australians during a period of
superficial precocity, has great local significance. It means clever
young Australian, and it originated in the newspapers, where the phrases
are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. For instance, no
Australian editor would let the name of Chatterton pass without adding
"Wonderful boy."
C.Y.A. is, therefore, a newspaper degree. It is conferred most
heartily--and with rather less discrimination than Ally Sloper's award
of merit--by junior reporters. Mothers just yearn for it, and the local
newspaper is obliging.
An Australian mother tells her daughters to be clever--and let who will
be good. The result is much cultivated mediocrity--mechanical pianists,
and thin voices taught to sing Tosti's "Goodbye" for the inevitable
subscription concert to raise funds for further futile study. There is
in every town in the Commonwealth, a coming Australian, but none of
them ever seem to do any arriving. Someone is, all the same, for ever
getting a benefit (of the doubt) in the shape of the aforesaid
subscription concert. It is given out that she is going to the old world
to study under Marchesi or someone sufficiently afar to make the passage
money a consideration. It's a regular confidence trick, for no sooner
does the shock of the beneficiary's awful singing blow over, than she is
back about town again. Perhaps she has realised enough by the fraud to
buy a piano and a brass plate and she sets up teaching others to follow
in her devious ways.
Strict justice to the Australian songster compels me to say that a few
of them do achieve to the position of chorus girls. I heard some chorus
girls of the old school complain in a cafe one night that "what with
these Conservatorium girls cutting the screws the profession is going to
the dogs."
There have been some Australian women who have reached London and hit
that city hard. Melba--Nellie Armstrong that was--managed it. She was
not a C.Y.A., however. She has outlived one of the adjectives before she
went "Home." When she was singing at shilling concerts her fellow
Australians hadn't the gumption to hear anything wonderful in her
notes. Melba recently swept through Australia in a semi-regal way, and
was queen of a champion grovelling match.
Ada Crossley also found London. She came back and found Australia, which
wouldn't look at her at a 1/- some years before when her notes were
fuller and richer, ready to pay half a guinea a time of its creditors'
money to see what her gowns were like.
Of the many other singers who left Australia's shores the most have been
engulfed in the city of the Thames. Some bob up now and again, when
their voices are to be heard at pops. But most of them would like to
raise a return fare, and that is probably their last illusion.
And then, of course, the stage attracts the C.Y.A. Anything that looks
easy and is likely to bring adulation always does. But I have made
exhaustive inquiry and failed to discover one actor or actress who
learnt the business in Australia that has turned out anything worth
mentioning. I have traced several to London and there given them up--the
men in pity and the women in disgust.
The founder of the drama in Australia was Barrington, a convict-actor.
Some idea of his ability as an actor may be formed from the fact that he
was ever convicted.
In the drama Oscar Asche is the only man I can find doing fairly well,
but he did not learn his business in Australia. Indeed, it is part of
Australia's ignominy to see English and American artists being imported
to play any parts requiring the exercise of intelligence. Managers, when
interviewed as to why they don't employ Australians have given it as a
reason that the Australians cannot pronounce English properly, and that
they have a distorted idea of love-making. The fact is that by the time
the Australian gets a part he is so furtive with dodging creditors that
he cannot get apprehension out of his face when any other character
makes an entrance.
The artistic Australian also gets to London. Mortimer Menpes was a
C.Y.A. He went from Adelaide--a town which also produced the late Mr.
Guy Boothby, C.Y.A. Menpes, in writing his biography for "Who's Who,"
stated that he was "inartistically born in Australia." What does he
mean? He was before the time of incubators.
Then Boothby--late Guy Boothby! I don't know how he could ever have
looked a bookstall in the face after what he wrote--or his fellow
Australians. Nat Gould or Fergus Hume either, for that matter. Between
them these Australians used to average four books a month, fifteen short
stories and two puff interviews by Mr. Boothby with himself, written up
for the magazines. Mr. Boothby found plenty of good material in himself
for interviews. Haddon Chambers, C.Y.A., also gives the magazine readers
glimpses of himself, but of late years he seems to spend all his time in
protesting that he _did_ write the "Tyranny of Tears."
Then in the realm of high art is Longstaff, C.Y.A., painter, Mackennal,
C.Y.A., sculptor. The first is head and shoulders above the other
Australian daubers, but he'd have to get on stilts and wear the highest
stove pipe to be classed eminent in London; the second gets odd jobs
which the cableman chronicles betimes.
Probably if you asked any Australian the best Australian book he would
say "For the Term of His Natural Life," by Marcus Clark. Well, I just
recently read in Duffy's "Life of Two Hemispheres," that Charles Gavan
Duffy wrote it. He particularly says so.
Rolfe Boldrewood, C.Y.A., is also classed a literary man in Australia.
He wrote numerous tales of colonial improbabilities.
There is a paper in London called the "British Australasian," and it
follows the doings of the C.Y.A.'s in London as far as it can with
self-respect. But when frequent changes of address make it too plain
that the C.Y.A. is bilking his landlady, and the change of locality is
from humble to worse--well, it discreetly draws the curtain. The
"British Australasian" is a most genteel publication. It was one of the
first to drop De Rougemont, C.Y.A.
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Transcriber's note:
_Underscores_ have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts.
=Equals= have been used to indicate =bold= fonts.
Obvious typos have been corrected.
Inconsistent hyphenation has been left as written.