THE AMUSEMENTS AND THE ARTS
ONCE I lived in a house where there was a dog kept named Turk, presumably
a watch-dog, but only presumably so, for he would follow anybody, welcome
anybody, and almost go into hysterics of joy at a word of favour even
from the veriest sundowner. At the gate-house of the railway crossing
near by dwelt a fat old Irishwoman with a brood of children, one of whom,
little Jack, a most lovable rascal of some seven or eight years, made a
regular practice of stealing Turk, bringing him back after several days,
and claiming a reward for having _found_ him—usually in the most unlikely
places. First of all he was paid for his trouble with a shilling, then
sixpence, then the reward dwindled to a penny or an apple, as we all
began to realize how we were being had, though we still kept up the
solemn pretence just for the sake of the amusement we got out of it.
Little Jack was a born bragger. His great boast was: “We’ve been keepin’
gates fur years and years, ever since I wur quite a little chap; and we
ain’t never ’ad our gate carried away, all the toime we’ve been at thur
job. Why thur’s some as ’as thur gates carried away pretty near every
week!” Jack had a great idea of fair play for everyone. Once he brought
a very small brother with him, when he came to return Turk, and the
master of the house took both of the boys into the orchard for the
so-called reward. The tiny one, enchanted with the quantity of fruit,
the pink-cheeked peaches and golden apricots, ran hither and thither
ejaculating, shouting, and appealing for sympathy in his delight, till at
last his elder brother, out of all patience with the constant
interruptions to what the master of the orchard was saying, caught him by
the shoulder, and, with a sharp shake, whispered hoarsely: “Can’t yer
’old yer jaw, an’ give the bloomin’ bloke a show.” It was his way of
showing respect for his elders and betters.
Some time later I was away for several months, and on my return was met
by a still older brother—with all Jack’s rascality and none of Jack’s
lovableness—who was returning Turk, oozing with easy affection, after
some days’ absence.
“Where’s Jack?” I inquired, not at all in the mood to waste pennies.
The boy’s eyes opened wide, with the peculiar hard stare of Australian
youth. “Ain’t yer ’eard?” he demanded. “Our Jack’s drowned; we gets
knocked out, an’ our Jack drowned the sime day. Australia goin’ ter
’ell, that’s wot it is.”
True enough the Australian eleven had lost the first test match of that
season against the Britishers, and little Jack had been drowned in the
river the very same day. What does the boy’s calm account of the two
events show? An immense patriotism or a lack of natural affection.
Neither the one nor the other, but simply and entirely that the very
heart and soul of the Australian of to-day—even of the smallest
larrikin—is completely engrossed with games and sport; not so much
personal sport, such as hunting or shooting, but anything that brings
with it a chance of gambling. If you walk through any wide bit of park
land or open country near Melbourne, in some hollow or other—perhaps in
many—you will chance on groups of men squatting on their haunches, with
bent heads, engrossed in some mysterious occupation, while one of their
number stands at a little distance on watch. If a policeman comes
anywhere within sight the sentry whistles, and the men—or youths, as they
mostly are—disperse aimlessly in every direction; hands deep in their
pockets, hats on the back of their heads, complete vacuity on their
countenances; for it is a “Two-Up School” that they have been forming,
and Two-Up is illegal, though it is still played persistently in every
quiet nook and corner.
Australians are born gamblers. It is in their blood, I suppose, like
restlessness, for there are still to be found in Tasmania secluded spots
in the middle of the forests, much like the old native “corroboree”
grounds where cock-fights used to be held by the convicts in the early
days, and every possible stake that could be mustered laid on the
contending birds. Now the tiniest children bet, and bet on anything and
everything, while the newspaper boys have a bit on each important race or
football match, and an intricate system of gambling with cigarette cards.
I think Melbourne is, on the whole, a very sober town—most
extraordinarily so—considering the dry heat and the dust. Men go on the
“bust,” and “paint the town red,” but there is very little of that
persistent soaking that one meets with in London, where the drunkenness,
particularly among the women, strikes me as more and more horrible every
time I return there. I have been in Melbourne during elections, and high
days, and holidays of all sorts, and have always been struck with the
good-tempered sobriety of the people. During the five years, 1893–1897,
which was a period of general drought in Australia, there was even a
further decrease in drunkenness, people having no money, I suppose, for
what out here they call “irrigating.” Now that good times have come
again the convictions for drunkenness have, unfortunately, also
increased. Still, though Victoria drinks more wine than the other
States, she consumes considerably less beer and spirits than any,
excepting Tasmania. While as for Denmark, which has been held up to her
as a model, it consumes 2.54 of spirits per head to Victoria’s 0.67, and
20.6 of beer to Australia’s 11.92. Might it not therefore be suggested
that some of the pats of butter, on which Mr. Foster Fraser lays such
stress, may perchance have been seen—and counted—twice over?
By some irony of fate it seems as if the different vices and virtues in
different countries are in the end pretty nearly balanced. England needs
a society to protect the health and lives of its children from
unutterable cruelties, though it holds up holy hands at the way an
Italian treats his horse. It is shaken through its length and breadth at
the idea of the Portuguese persisting in slavery, and yet when the women
slaves of the North—who, naked to the waist, swing a heavy hammer at
chain and nail making for ten hours a day—strike for a princely minimum
wage of 2½d. an hour, the Board of Trade decides that they shall go on as
they are for another six months—or, if they can be cajoled into it, for
yet another six months—or eternity.
The people in Victoria are not cruel either to their children or their
wives, even among the lowest classes, as they are in England. Ask anyone
who has nursed in the slums of London—if you doubt this cruelty—how many
of the women with cancer in their breasts owe it to their husbands’
playful habit of knocking them down and kicking them; or examine some of
the reports of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Neither do the Australians, as a nation, ill-treat their horses or their
cattle, or give way to the sexual excesses of the Latin races, but, on
the other hand, they most certainly are inveterate gamblers; a far less
repulsive vice than many, I admit, but all the same as far reaching as
any in the trouble that it causes.
Every Saturday there are races somewhere within easy distance of
Melbourne, and by tram and train, carriage and motor, people flock to
them. It is part of their religion, their Sabbath falling on a Saturday,
like the Jews.
Of course the Cup week in November is the high festival of the year, but
the race for the Caulfield Cup runs it close. The Caulfield course is
most beautifully situated in wide, open, common-like country, dotted with
dark masses of pines, and fringed in the distance with blue tinted
mountain ranges, while the air blowing from the sea, across the almost
untenanted land, is extraordinarily clear and exhilarating. Then the
race is run at the very apex of spring, and the day is as inevitably fine
as the week of the Agricultural Show is inevitably and hopelessly wet.
Everybody dons their best and newest clothes, the men for the most part
showing their sense of the festive season by the exuberant colouring of
their socks, which, like the burnished dove, of which Tennyson speaks,
shows an even livelier purple than usual. The Australian men do not, as
a rule, dress well. If they are commercial or intellectual their clothes
are too loose; if they are sporting they are too tight, with overmuch of
“fit” and not enough “cut.” But they make up for it with their
waistcoats, and socks, and ties. I remember once being at a seaside
picnic where there was a beautiful youth in a pale grey suit; his straw
boating-hat was bound and banded with mauve, his tie mauve, his shirt a
paler tint of the same, his socks a discreet violet. In clambering about
the cliffs a bramble impertinently ripped a long tear in the nether part
of his nether garments; but he bore it with the sweetest equanimity, in
the full knowledge that his under-clothes, thus inadvertently exposed,
were also mauve—of the palest tinted silk. It is rather the same with
the women. They are very dainty in all the accessories of the toilet,
colouring, and trimming, but they do not pay as much attention to cut and
material as their English sisters; which is perhaps why they look
infinitely better in the summer than the winter, while the girls in white
muslins, and silks, and flower-trimmed hats that one sees at the Cup or a
Government House garden-party are very hard to beat.
There is an idea that the Australian women’s complexions are not good,
they themselves being the first to rave about English roses; but I think
their complexions are exquisite, though far more delicate in tint, and
perhaps not of so lasting a quality as those seen at home. Still the
Melbourne girls resemble the English girls infinitely more than do their
Sydney sisters, who are more exotic and altogether fragile in appearance.
New fashions come in slowly and dubiously, for the people luckily possess
a strong sense of the ludicrous, and are very much afraid of being made
to look foolish, some snapshots taken of the wearers of the hobble-skirt
at the last Cup sealing once and for all its inevitable doom.
To this day I smile at the remembrance of the one and only true
Directoire costume which ever graced a Melbourne racecourse—worn as it
was by a beauteous, though unorthodox, lady—I believe on the Oaks day,
the most exclusive and smart day of the whole Cup week. The dress was
slit up one side in true Directoire fashion, showing a length of shapely
leg well to the knee, and—or so some whispered—a jewelled garter. When
scandal reaches a certain point it becomes almost fame, and certainly
that particular lady on that particular day was the most discussed person
in Australia; her name and that of her protector being on everyone’s
tongue.
It was the year in which Lord Nolan won the Cup. He was a complete
outsider, and nobody had the slightest idea that there was any chance for
him. Just before the race a man belonging to our party came up to me,
and advised me to put something on him; for he had got a tip that he was
bound to win. But I was adamant. I very rarely bet, and I never win if
I do; while it takes such a terrible amount of hard work to make any
money that I dare not risk losing it.
I shall never forget the excitement of that race. Opposite the Grand
Stand—where the Government House party is always enthroned among a
perfect flower-garden of gaily-coloured frocks—and another small stand,
over the far side of the course lies the hill, where people do not have
to pay any entrance fee, while they have a most perfect view of the
races, so that whole families camp there day after day. One could see
the people plainly through a glass as Lord Nolan began to gather up the
course in his stride, and it seemed as if the whole hill-side shook and
swayed with the wild excitement of the swarming masses upon it, while a
roar rose on the air like the sound of an inrushing tide upon the
shingle. People on the lawn beneath—with all its roses, a mass of quiet
and delicate beauty—began to run, mostly backwards and forwards in sheer
excitement, waving programmes and shouting. The first round the
occupants of the Grand Stand kept quiet, a sort of thrilling quiet—then
they arose, and shrieked and waved, just like the crowd on the hill. A
little way off I heard a woman’s voice rise to the highest note that I
should think possible for any human throat to compass, and remain there,
vibrating in a long-drawn out scream, while a well-dressed man in front
of me kept tearing at the lapels of his coat, and calling out “My God! my
God! my God!” at the top of his voice.
The whole stand seemed to sway. Everyone was shouting wildly, while more
wild and amazing than all was the atmosphere of utter savage abandonment,
as if for the moment the garment of civilization were literally ripped
from hem to hem. I do not think I screamed, but I know my hands and feet
were stone cold, while my cheeks flamed, and I felt as if someone were
pouring icy water down my back in one small continuous stream.
“There’s a cool hundred for me—whoever would have thought it!” said my
companion when it was all over, trying to speak indifferently. “Come
along and have some tea.” And I went, regretting my strength of mind too
deeply for any words—even more deeply next morning, when I fared forth,
prepared at least to get a little change and amusement out of life by
paying my debts, and had my bag cut off my wrist by some thief, unnoticed
in the jostling of the crowded street; so losing alike my hardly-earned
money and my belief in the beauties of self-denial.
Flemington racecourse—where the Cup week is held, and many lesser races
run throughout the year, and which covers an area of 301 acres—is most
beautifully kept, and in some spirit of alliteration is almost as famous
for its roses as its races. I never saw such standards, arches, bushes
of them as there are, all aglow with colour. In front of the Grand Stand
and the smaller stand is the lawn, as smooth as a billiard-table, and
affording a splendid show-ground for the women’s dresses. To the right,
beyond the Grand Stand, is the paddock, and the ground where the less
wealthy people are massed, shot through by the smart costumes of those
who penetrate there from among the more select, to have a look at the
horses, and so on to the betting paddock, where numberless bookies
congregate, shrieking themselves hoarse. The crowd is simply
gigantic—and well it may be, seeing that not only is pretty well every
soul there from within easy reach of Melbourne, but all who can afford
it—sometimes by means of a year’s strenuous saving—from other States and
up-country districts. But though the actual size of the crowd is
perfectly amazing to any newcomers, who have heard much in regard to the
scanty population of Australia, what is even more amazing is to see so
enormous a concourse of well-dressed, thoroughly prosperous-looking
people; for though individual toilettes may not reach to the same high
pitch of extravagance and costly beauty as they do at Ascot, the average
is very much higher; shop-girls, servants, mothers of large families,
factory hands, and sempstresses alike all having embarked on something
new for this great festival of the year.
[Picture: Cup day at Flemingtun Racecourse, Melbourne]
Generally speaking, it is the New South Wales people who—apart from the
Victorians—have flooded Melbourne during the Cup week, with the addition,
after a good season, of a fair sprinkling of Queenslanders. But this
last racing festival has been marked by a quite new influx of South
Australians. Of course, some of the very wealthiest have always come up
for the week; but the ordinary South Australian farmer is a slow,
steady-going person who does not take any risks. Lately, however, the
system of close culture, which he has practised with the greatest
possible success, and a series of magnificent seasons, have not only
given him a feeling of security, but have rendered him so prosperous that
he and his family have flocked to Melbourne for this year’s sport with
light hearts and full pockets. The New South Wales man would venture if
he had as much as his train fare, and trust to luck to get back again,
but one may feel sure that the South Australian is conscious of a solid
balance at the bank before he will come so far away from home for his
amusement, nothing showing the difference in the character of the people
of the Australian States so plainly as the way in which they take their
pleasure. In itself the very fact that there were some 150,000 people at
the Cup this year is a very fair sign of the country’s prosperity—150,000
well-dressed and keenly alive people, all intensely alert and charged
with the nervous energy that is such a characteristic of their race, all
hanging like one, with heart and soul and the stored-up excitement of
days and hours, on the result of two and a half minutes: no wonder that
the very air seems charged with electricity so intense that the only
possible relief is to be found by forgetting that we are the civilized
product of an artificial age, and by yelling as a savage or a child would
yell.
All the shops, excepting the tobacconists and confectioners and
restaurants, are shut on Cup day, which is, indeed, a national holiday,
and rather amusing efforts are made by the religious authorities to get
their flock out of the way of temptation on such a day. One year, I
remember, there was a large Sunday-school picnic at a public park some
three miles from Melbourne, under the command of a portly Church of
England dignitary. All through the earlier part of the day he was bland
and cheerful, though occasionally absent-minded. About five o’clock,
however, he became distinctly restless. He walked up and down the park
gravely discussing the affairs of Church and State, but I observed that
each turn landed us distinctly nearer to the fence abutting on the public
highway, while again and again he paused to take out his watch and glance
at it with an air of elaborate carelessness. As dog-carts and traps of
all sorts—buggies they are called here—began to rattle along the road
from the direction of Melbourne it became very evident that my companion
was, as they say, “talking out of the back of his head,” while constantly
interspersing his remarks with ejaculations regarding those misguided
souls who had by that time lost their little “all,” or been precipitated,
by their unholy gains, further than ever on the downward grade. At last
he could bear it no longer, and with a decided step, which absolutely
disregarded my mischievous attempt to turn, reached the fence, and hailed
a passing vehicle: “Hey! hey! You there! who won the Cup?”
He might just as well have said “How did it go?” or just raised his
eyebrows, with an interrogatory glance, for anyone in Australia that day
would have known what he meant, or merely have kept silent and waited for
the gratuitous information to be tossed to him. I did not dare to ask,
but I wondered then—and have wondered since—what he “had on.” Something
considerable—and misplaced—as I should guess by the expression with which
he received the reply.
Everyone goes to the theatre the evening after the Cup race; at least,
everyone who has any money left, or can find even standing room. The
plays produced during this famous week are usually of the lightest
description of musical comedy, or at the Royal and King’s the most
sensational melodrama; the managers seldom taking the trouble to stage
their best play, for people will go whatever happens to be on, while they
are too completely in the humour to have a “good time,” or too sleepy
after long days spent in the open air, to be severely critical.
Though the totalizer is not legal in Victoria, and the State does not
stand to make anything by the betting, 10 per cent. being deducted from
the proceeds where it is in use—7½ for the State and 2½ for the
race-course expenses—still it gathers in a matter of some £5,800 a year
from licence fees and the percentage of legitimate receipts, the annual
sum payable being 3 per cent. on a gross revenue over £1,500, 2 per cent.
under that sum, and nil on anything less than £600.
The Melbourne people are inveterate theatregoers, everyone, even the
artisan and his wife, regarding a visit to the play as a fitting ending
to their week’s work; so that, though the theatres are always well
filled, they are literally crammed on Saturday nights. The people are
very particular, and they will have their plays well dressed, and well
staged, and played, but all the critical faculty begins and ends with the
audience, for the papers—both daily and weekly—seem to be absolutely
lacking in any powers of discernment or courage, being far less exacting,
indeed, than the veriest larrikin among the gods.
It is curious to note the different classes of people that are attracted
by different plays in Melbourne; the people with the money—evidently here
as elsewhere—not being the people with the intellect or taste. Plays
like the “Merry Widow” or the “Dollar Princess” fill the stalls and
dress-circle to overflowing; but for more serious comedy, or for
Shakespeare’s plays, the bulk of the audience is to be found patient and
watchful in the cheaper parts of the theatre, and it is extraordinary
what patience these people will show when it is a question of procuring a
good place to see any special play or actor.
When the adored—and rightly adored—Nellie Stewart returned, some two or
three years ago, from a prolonged absence abroad, her admirers began to
take their places on the theatre steps for her first evening’s
performance at about midday—and consumed sandwiches for their lunch. All
through the afternoon they waited, persistently cheerful and
good-tempered as an Australian crowd usually is. About five o’clock Miss
Stewart could stand it no longer, and ordered the doors to be opened,
when the wearied but indefatigable “first nighters” flocked thankfully
into the pit and gallery. But this was not all. Realizing the hours
that must still pass before the people could get a proper meal, she
ordered tea, bread-and-butter, and cakes from the nearest caterer’s, and
fed the waiting multitude liberally. Is it any wonder that so
warm-hearted a woman should be adored as she is, as much for her nature
as her art. There was a collection of coppers among her guests, I
remember, and someone slipped out and bought a huge floral trophy for
their hostess, which I am sure meant more to her than all the many
elaborate bouquets she had ever received. It is things like this that
mark the essential “humanness” of people in Australia and help one to
realize the warm heart beneath the curt off-hand manner.
The actress in Australia, if she touches the popular fancy, is simply
overwhelmed with flowers, and I never saw such wonderful bouquets, such
intricate and glowing baskets, and harps, and crowns, all bedecked with
immense streamers of wide satin ribbon, as are heaped round the feet of a
popular star in Melbourne; and not only flowers, elaborate boxes of
“lollies,” also, and jewels, the summit of originality being lately
reached when a flower-bedecked crate of tiny yellow chicks was handed up
over the footlights; though this was closely rivalled by a popular actor
being presented, some time ago, with a medley of gorgeous socks.
The Melbourne maiden frankly loves a successful actor, particularly if he
be handsome in addition; and is no more ashamed of this taste than of one
for Paris frocks or sweetmeats, trailing him about after her with as much
naïve pride as she would a real lace flounce or any other new
importation. I do not think the Melbourne men run after actresses much;
they are too busy, as a rule, and girls of their own class are
sufficiently bright and smart; but an actor is asked out to tea, and
fêted and entertained to an unlimited extent, which, I suspect, accounts
for the smug self-satisfaction of most of his kind after a few months in
the country, the partiality they arouse being quite frankly shown, as are
all other sentiments and proclivities.
The Australian audiences are for the most part clean-minded, and there is
little encouragement given to the problem play out here. Frank vulgarity
the people can understand and laugh at, as they did for so long at poor
George Laurie’s delightful absurdities, but for the stuffy atmosphere of
“double entendre” they have no time; while they are frankly disgusted at
many of the plays that appeal to the English, and I do not believe for a
moment that productions such as I have seen in London, adapted—and badly
adapted, too—from the French, would have the faintest success in
Melbourne. There is only one music-hall, “The Opera House,” as it is
misleadingly called, or more familiarly, “Rickard’s.” Most nights there
are a couple or so of good turns on here, usually by some imported star
or trick artist, who comes rather late in the evening; but the whole
affair is very dull in comparison with any European show of the sort, and
overhung with a rather gloomy air of middle-class propriety. Melbourne
boasts of but few gilded youths, not sufficient to make any show of;
while, though the “demi-mondaines” certainly do patronize “Rickard’s,”
they are studiously quiet, both in dress and demeanour. I suppose there
is vice enough in Melbourne, as there is in any other town, but it
certainly does not “glitter,” and for the most part the seats of this one
variety show are filled by bourgeois families, of intensest gravity and
decorum, which is curious, for, on the whole, the Australians seem to
take their pleasure—and in Melbourne even more so than in Sydney—with a
sort of jollity that is essentially youthful. This spirit of youth I
attribute to the open-air conditions of most forms of amusement—cricket
and football, racing, boating, and picnicking—while, with a climate warm
enough to enjoy themselves in such a way, and with a summer-heat that is
neither relaxing, nor sufficiently overpowering to forbid physical
exertion—I believe that all these people, as long as they continue to
take their pleasures in such a wholesome fashion, will still keep
themselves free from the worst sort of dissipation.
Next to racing I should certainly place football first in the popular
affections, particularly among the lower classes. During the season the
whole talk on the trams, or in the trains, is on that one subject, “Well,
who won?” or “How did it go?”—being the inevitable question asked of the
grip-man, by everyone who boards a tram coming from the direction of any
of the suburbs where there has been a match. At first you are puzzled by
the gratuitous bits of information the conductor deals out to you with
your ticket, or your neighbour, out of sheer philanthropy, beguiles you
with, the information often being rendered all the more puzzling by the
fact that many of the localities from which the teams hail bear famous
names.
“Did you hear Balaclava’s won?” or “Windsor’s clean wiped out” or
“Mentone”—in which the final “e” is not sounded—“has been knocked to
bits!” Gradually, however, one gets to adapt one’s mind to the new
conditions among which one lives, and realize that if the people are
discussing “Burns” on the trams, it is not the poet nor the politician;
it is the prize-fighter; while any unknown name which strikes your
ear—and which, from the way it is uttered, you might make sure belonged
to some all-powerful politician, at least, is probably that of the latest
hero who has kicked a goal or won a race.
The Melbourne men work hard enough when they are at it, but once free of
their offices, they are like boys out from school. They do not talk
shop, they do not even think of it; and at one o’clock on Saturdays I
believe it is only by some stupendous effort of will that—as they flock
out from chambers, offices, and counting-houses, off to a cricket or
football match, race-meeting, or golf—they desist from throwing their
hats in the air and shouting from sheer delight.
It is strange that, in the face of all the indomitable pluck and
light-hearted gaiety these people show, that their literature should be
permeated with that uncouth melancholy which gives other nations so false
an idea both of the country and the people.
“Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in sorrow
What they teach in song.”
Shelley says; and perhaps this is most truly the case in Australia. That
it is not prosperity, wide sheep-runs, good seasons, horse-racing, and
theatre-going that has produced the literature of the country, but
loneliness of heart and soul; the terrifying size of the country; and
poverty and misunderstanding.
Literature began early in Australia. Among the first writers Barron
Field—whose name, particularly in conjunction with his book, “The
First-Fruits of Australian Literature,” touched Charles Lamb’s whimsical
humour to such a delightful issue; C. H. Harpur, who struck a typical
Australian—if not a particularly musical note, despite the fact of being
hailed as the Australian Wordsworth; John Dunmore Lang; John Farrell; and
Matthew Flinders—whose every word should be read for the sake of the
character, personality, and achievements of the man who wrote it, and the
direct, tense style of his sturdy prose.
Arthur Lindsay Gordon is still the most widely read and quoted poet in
the country, yet, though he had a great feeling for and knowledge of
Australian life, he was, in his appearance, in his ways, and his outlook,
to the very end, most essentially an Englishman; though, perhaps, on the
whole, he saw and realized more of the character of the people and the
aspects of the country than one who had always been familiar with it,
just as any artist is more successful in drawing a face which he does not
know too well.
Still, it was as one who has deliberately observed a country and adapted
himself to its life and needs that Gordon wrote. There were no pre-natal
and unrealized impressions at work before the birth of his Southern muse;
it was all conscious and intentional.
On the other hand, Henry Kendall was innately Australian—the first, and
as yet the greatest, of her true poets. He was saturated with the spirit
of the place long before he ever wrote a word, before his childish
fingers could hold the pen; perhaps, even, before he ever saw the light
of day. He read English poets with avidity, and yet he judged them by
his own involuntary standards—the standard of one for whom Nature wears a
completely different face from that which she shows to those whose
childhood has been spent among English meadows and woods. And because he
was so true to himself and his country, and because his art was so simple
and so sincere—and he wrote from his very heart and soul—if for no other
reasons, Kendall’s writings can never fail to be dear to the best of his
countrymen; deserving, indeed, to be far more dear than they have yet
become. The verses on the death of his little baby-girl, Araluen, might
have been trivial, even mawkish, if it were not that their heartbroken
words ring with such truth in our ears that we cannot fail to know that
the poet is not writing about what he saw or heard, but what he felt,
wrung to the soul, as he already was at the time that those lines were
written, by poverty, by shame, and sorrow.
Nowadays the Australian poet has but little excuse for melancholy, though
he still seems to be “saddest when he sings,” unless he happens to be
affecting a Kipling-like jargon. That is why his sentiments do not ring
so true as they might do—as true as in the days when his life in the New
Country was so bitterly hard and barren, and when such horrors as that
murder of the colonists by blacks—which led Kendall to write “On the
Paroo”—could stir a poet’s soul to a finer frenzy than any merely
personal suffering.
“The wild men came upon them like a fire
Of desert thunder; and the fierce, firm lips
That touched a mother’s lips a year before,
And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,
Were hewn like sacrifice before the stars,
And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,
And falling leaves and solitary wigs. . . .
. . . .
“Turn thyself and sing;
Sing, son of sorrow. Is there any gain
For breaking of the loins, for melting eyes,
And knees as weak as water?—Any balm
For pleading women, and the love that knows
Of nothing left to love?”
Compare this, which is very typical of Kendall, with the following, as
completely typical of Gordon:
“Here’s a health to every sportsman, be he statesman or lord;
If his heart be true, I care not what his pockets may afford:
And may he ever pleasantly his gallant sport pursue
If he takes his liquor fairly, and his fences fairly, too.”
And yet a hundred copies of Gordon’s poems will be sold to every half a
dozen—or less—of Henry Kendall’s.
Later on, among other worthy followers of Kendall, Boake—another truly
Australian poet, of whom great things might have been expected save for
his early death—left at least one masterpiece in “Down where the Dead Men
lie”; while Victor Daly and Harry Lawson have both done memorable work,
no one having more completely got at the heart of things, at the spirit
of the Bush, and the soul of the bushman—ay, and of the swaggy, too—than
has the latter.
Lawson is not in the least dazzled by the melodramatic aspects of the
country, the beautiful wild young man type that Gordon depicts, the dark
and daring braggadocio. Indeed, he speaks with the bitterest scorn of
those who use their art to immortalize.
“The gambling and the drink that are their country’s greatest curse.”
But in the pathos and the humour of the commonplace his genius burns
clear, with rare glimpses of a spiritual insight far above that gospel of
mere revolt with which so many of his fellows are imbued.
Another Australian favourite is A. B. Paterson, whose “Man from Snowy
River” has met with such immense success—a success that is not for a
moment to be wondered at, for if his poetry is not of the highest type,
Paterson paints the Australian Bush with such truth and vigour and such
true affection, that, to those who dwell in the cities, it is like a
veritable breath of the wild open country and the wild free life.
“For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know:
And the Bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet
him;
For the murmur of its breezes, and the river on its bars;
And he sees the vision splendid, of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.”
Australian writers up to the present time seem to have been at their best
in verse, and after that in short stories, Lawson’s collection, published
under the title of “While the Billy Boils,” being hard to beat,
particularly the stories of “The Bush Undertaker” and “The Drover’s
Wife.” But it yet remains for a great Australian book to be written, and
for the undoubted latent talent that certainly exists to establish itself
by some more solid effort. Perhaps one of the most vivid works that has
ever appeared, regarded as a true product of this country, was “My
Brilliant Career,” by Myles Franklin, which, in spite of its crudities
and egotism, gave rise to a hope of great things from the same pen,
particularly as it was written when the authoress was only seventeen
years of age; but nothing more of any note has appeared, and one fears
that it was only a case of another meteoric flare. Among other more or
less well-known writers Marcus Clarke was English; Mrs. Humphrey Ward
left Australia when she was a small child; Mrs. Campbell Praed, Mary
Gaunt, Guy Boothby, were all born in Australia; but it is for the most
part in England and of England that they write. Of course, there have
been, and are now, many lesser lights in addition to those of whom I have
written. Among them Roderic Quinn, Brunton Stevens, and Rolf Boldrewood,
who has in his own particular, obvious fashion—or, at least, in his one
famous book—reached as high a level as any. Yet it is in the future that
we must still seek for a sustained work of fiction, worthy both of the
people and the country, a book at once as true and simple as “Marie
Claire,” or Yoshio Markino’s “A Japanese Artist in London,” of which
every line of writing tells as delicately and yet vividly as does each
touch of his magic brush. America seems to have taken to fashioning her
literature with a crimping-iron and “sheer-lawn,” while Australia hacks
hers out with a billyhook from back-block and Bush. Still, there is
something between the two, as perhaps Mrs. Æneas Gunn, among all the
writers in this new world, has been the only one as yet to discover.
In art as in literature there seems to be an idea that crudity is
strength, even at times a real brutality, as in much of Norman Lindsay’s
clever work. Though it is little wonder if the Australian artists feel,
as well as paint, with a sort of ferocity, seeing that art is about the
last thing which appeals to those who are in the position to buy
pictures; and, if they do buy, they want size, they want show, something
“pretty,” and highly coloured, and smoothly finished; while it remains to
the eternal credit of the artistic fraternity that they certainly do not
pander to this demand, even if they go too far in the opposite direction.
The trustees of the public galleries seem to try to elevate the masses by
leaving their own artists severely alone, and spending enormous sums on
pictures that are undoubtedly “caviare to the general,” Melbourne being
far worse than Sydney in this respect, one of its most recent
acquisitions being an ineffective and rather colourless Watteau, for
which the trustees paid £3,125. Meanwhile the prices offered to local
artists are often little short of ludicrous, the £100 paid to George
Lambert for his picture, “The Shop,” which was lately hung in the
Victorian Artists’ Exhibition, being regarded as something quite
abnormal; while Mrs. Ellis Rowe’s wonderful collection of paintings of
native flowers went begging for years before they were ultimately
purchased by Sydney.
It is odd that a country so frankly egotistical, so frankly immersed in
all that is new and fresh, should allow its money to be spent on pictures
which must represent—to 90 per cent. of those who see them—nothing more
than a mere name. It is, indeed, as odd a contradiction as is the
alacrity with which titles are seized by the representatives of this
people, who so greatly pride themselves upon their democracy.
Only a few years ago a really very large sum was spent upon a Corot for
the Melbourne Gallery, “The Bent Tree.” Crowds flocked to see it,
because it was the thing to do; but from the remarks I heard several
times as I stood near it, they were only asking each other in sheer
bewilderment, “What came ye out for to see?” very little admiration being
expressed, save for the frame. Still, it is now only a matter of time, I
really believe, until someone will find leisure to rebel against spending
so much on a style of picture that is supposed to mould the tastes of the
people—quite erroneously, for we are but little influenced by what we do
not understand—and paintings which show an art as beautiful and more
vital, and more comprehensible, to the people will be insisted on; for
each year shows the Australians rebelling, with a greater persistency,
against the adaptation of themselves to past ideals, the pouring of new
wine into old bottles.
Australia has not yet produced any great composer; and yet it has gone
far, and will go still farther, in the musical world, fresh young talent
passing over to London or Paris almost every year to complete its
training; while the number of beautiful voices that a further opening up
of the country, and further facilities for recognition and teaching, will
bring to light, can scarcely be over-estimated. The Australian’s
ordinary uneducated speaking voice is curiously harsh and raucous. But,
in spite of this, the percentage of singing voices is wonderfully high,
owing, perhaps, to the light, dry atmosphere and the absence of fogs;
while I believe that the best way of improving the natural intonation
will be found to be by teaching singing more carefully and consistently
in elementary schools, and thus bringing out all that is best in the
children’s voices.
Mr. Marshall Hall, who was formerly Professor of Music at Ormonde College
and the head of the Conservatorium, is the ruling spirit of the musical
world in Melbourne, in spite of having completely shocked the
Nonconformist conscience of the town by his somewhat erotic writings and
the liberty he took in managing his private affairs for himself—the
difficulty always being that nobody is supposed to have any private
affairs out here. Still, in the end, people’s love for the beautiful
music that Mr. Hall made for them triumphed; and at his fortnightly
concerts, held during the winter months, the Town Hall is usually
crammed, for it is not only what he does himself that is so wonderful,
but what he manœuvres his supernumeraries into doing. Here for a
shilling—the highest-priced seats are only three shillings—one can slip
off the cares of the world for three hours on a Saturday afternoon, and,
freed from all the petty obligations of life, listen to some of the best
music in the world. All honour to those who have found the best and held
to it, and even imbued the rich people in Melbourne with the idea that
there is something higher in life than racing and football-matches; or,
at least, that it is “the correct thing” for them to “patronize” such
concerts and help on the expenses by taking the dearest seats. The money
is the same; while for the encouragement of the performers there are
always the rows and rows of ardent, enthralled listeners in the shilling
seats.