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.