which it was said by Earl Grey in 1857 that their existence had been a
disgrace to the nation, came to an end only when the system itself was
abolished. But novelist and statesman alike struck at the abuses without
feeling it necessary to mention any of the good results of the system.
Its inherent merits were strictly few, indeed; yet they ought to be
sought in history by anyone who would get a fair idea of the prison
policy of the period. It is, of course, inevitable that the criticism
conveyed in a strong imaginative work should fail to give a full view of
results so complex as those produced by the largely haphazard method of
the Australian penal settlements.
The practice of assigning prisoners to private employment, for example,
produced notable effects upon society, of which Marcus Clarke's story
gives but the faintest indication. If Rufus Dawes had been an ordinary
first offender, he might have regained liberty soon after his arrival in
Van Diemen's Land. But, as we have seen, it was the purpose of the
author to make him exhibit all the rigours of convict discipline. His
case must therefore be regarded as more exceptional than typical. As a
rule, only men inveterate in crime were detained in constant punishment.
Transportation for life meant servitude only for eight years if the
convict conducted himself well, a condition which, of course, depended
largely on the sort of master who secured his services. Major de Winton,
an officer who served for some years on Norfolk Island, has mentioned
that a prisoner by good conduct received a ticket-of-leave after he had
been twice sentenced to death, thrice to transportation for life, and to
cumulative periods of punishment amounting to over a hundred years!
An interesting view of Marcus Clarke as a literary workman is obtained
from the story of the conception and laborious writing of _For the Term
of his Natural Life_. It affords the first, and unhappily the last,
evidence of how far he recognised the claims of realism in fiction; and
from the account of his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery of
keeping to the strict line of history, we see the man as his friends
knew him contrasted with the conscientious artist known to the general
reader of his famous novel.
The best of Clarke's minor writings display the results of much general
culture, but give no proof of special preparation. They are short,
concentrated, forcible--the natural expression of a brilliant,
impetuous, and spasmodic worker. He overcame his natural repugnance to
lengthened toil and minute thoroughness when he saw them to be essential
conditions of his task. But the effort was a severe one.
In 1871, when about twenty-five years of age, he was ordered to recruit
his health by a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over three years
writing extensively for the press, and joining in the gaieties of
Melbourne life at a rate which a constitution much stronger than his
could not have withstood. The idea of writing a story of prison life had
suggested itself previously during his reading of Australian history.
Finding himself now without sufficient money for the proposed holiday,
he decided to put into active progress this literary project which had
hitherto been only vaguely outlined.
Printed records of the convict days there were in abundance at
Melbourne, and from these alone such a writer could have made a
sufficiently striking story. But he concluded that he could make his
picture at once truer and more vivid when the surroundings of the old
settlements had become a full reality to his mind. Messrs. Clarson,
Massina and Co. readily contracted with the young novelist for the first
publication of the story in their monthly, the _Australian Journal_, and
made him an advance of money. Off he went with characteristic
confidence, and some weeks later returned ready primed and eager for the
new work. His enthusiasm soon cooled. The story commenced to appear
after the first few chapters were written, and the unbroken industry
necessary to maintain a regular supply of the parts was more than Clarke
could give.
Writing against time, he is said to have felt like a convict himself.
The irregular dribbling out of the story so injured the reputation of
the journal that for a time its circulation was reduced to one-half the
ordinary issue.
Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a sympathetic memoir of Clarke,
has given an entertaining account of what followed: 'The author would
be frequently interviewed by the publishers, and would as frequently
promise the copy. When moral suasion was apparently powerless to effect
the required object, payments in advance were made with somewhat better
results; but as this could not go on _ad libitum_, copy would fall into
arrears again. At last it was found that the only way to get the author
to finish his tale was to induce him into a room in the
publishing-house, where, under the benign influences of a pipe, etc.,
and a lock on the door, the necessary work would be done by the facile
pen; and in such manner was _His Natural Life_ produced.'
In a note of apology to their readers in January, 1871, the publishers
print a somewhat comical letter which they had received from the
delinquent author. Forwarding a single chapter of the story, he tells
them that they must make shift with it as best they can, and he will let
them have a larger supply during the following month. The letter
concludes nonchalantly as follows: 'This is awkward, I admit, and I
suppose some good-natured friend or other will say that I have
over-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself in honour of the so-called
festive season, but I can't help it.'
The story as first published was much longer than the form in which it
appears in the English edition. At the request of the present writer,
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who was one of Clarke's literary friends,
supplies the following account of how the novel came to be so
extensively curtailed:
'As one of the trustees to the public library (Melbourne), I saw Clarke
constantly, and had always a friendly, and sometimes a confidential,
conversation with him. He visited me now and then at Sorrento, and on
one of these occasions he spoke of a story he had running through a
Melbourne periodical about which he was perplexed. He asked me to read
it, and tell him unreservedly what I thought of it. I read the story
carefully, making notes on the margin, and wrote him frankly the
impression it had made on me.
'After twenty years I can recall the substance of the letter, which is
probably still in existence. A powerful story, I said, but painful as it
is powerful. The incidents, instead of being depressing, would be tragic
if they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But there was no one in the
story whom he could have intended us to love or honour. The hero
underwent a lifelong torture without any credible, or even intelligible,
motive, and on the whole was a _mauvais sujet_ himself. To win the
reader's sympathy, all this must be altered. I strongly advised that the
latter part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak was described
under a leader whom he named Peter Brawler, should be omitted; and I
objected to the publication of a song in French _argot_ with a spirited
translation, as the latter would naturally be attributed to the author
of the novel, whereas I had read it in an early _Blackwood_ before he
was born.
'Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and said he would adopt all my
suggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection of
his mother's good name the motive of the hero's silence, and he omitted
both the things I had objected to.'
Ending, as it began, with a tragedy, the artistic unity of the novel is
thus preserved, and the dominant aim of the author emphasised. Many of
those who read it in the serial parts strongly disapproved of the
excisions, but there can be little doubt that the story is the stronger
for their having been made.
It was as the work of a vivid historian, rather than of a social
reformer, that Marcus Clarke's masterpiece won its popularity, and, for
its dramatic and substantially accurate view of the worst (always the
worst) aspect of convict life, it will continue to be read while anyone
remains to take an interest in the unhappiest period of Australian
history. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken the
intelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practical
method of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity and
inhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers was
fond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how far
English gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion and
invested with more power than single individuals should ever possess,
may become despots, and even blackguards.
It is a grim record. Let those who are inclined to doubt it turn to the
originals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of
1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, with
all his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himself
even to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-fact
historians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their great
privileges to describe. For example, there were times during the first
thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the
officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with
the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions they
held.
Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but made
no use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait of
Dawes' passionate and licentious cousin.
In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessary
throughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specifically
put upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the good
effects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to the
colonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so often
wrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system.
His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during his
term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system
loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the
other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to
their undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate.
The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series of
punishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest,
consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to the
highest, consisting of long and tedious torture.' It was with the latter
part of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose to
represent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk
Island as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir
George Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by the
experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House
of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and
'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting
those who undergo punishment.'
The idea which is the ganglion of Clarke's plot was always seen clearly,
but never obsessed his mind as did a cognate theme that of the impetuous
reformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishment
known as the 'silent system,' the English novelist obtrudes his moral
with a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendid
eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian
novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained
by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and
by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lesson
to the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously calm and
impersonal presentation.
In the rapid progress of the plot the reader is kept keenly interested.
If he have an eye for the moral he will detect it at once; if not, there
is no importunate author to force it upon him. In either case he will
find the story an absorbing one. 'It has all the solemn ghastliness of
truth,' said Lord Rosebery, writing to the novelist's widow in 1884. He
confessed that the book had a fascination for him. Not once or twice,
but many times, had he read it, and during his visit to Australia he
spent some time in viewing the scene of the old settlements and
examining the reports upon which the novel is so largely based.
That there are some exaggerations in the treatment of facts need hardly
be stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, and
outbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modify
the description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fully
depicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, _His
Natural Life_ is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that most
young writers would have been tempted to commit. Clarke was too good an
artist to think of pleading the sanction of facts for any misuse of the
privileges of good fiction. To maintain a strong impression on the
reader, his touch is occasionally strong and fearless, like that of
Kipling. But this object attained, he uses his materials with an almost
unnecessary reticence. The episode of the cannibalism of Gabbett and his
fellow-convicts is exceptional. Yet it purposely falls short of the
terrible original, which is happily hidden away from general view
between the covers of an old Parliamentary report.
It has been said of Clarke, by one of his friends, that in his estimate
of motives he was invariably cynical. Though the assertion goes too far,
it seems to suggest the best explanation of his notable preference for
delineating the dark side of human nature. He appeared ever to see vice
more clearly, or at any rate to find it more interesting for the
purposes of fiction, than the good or the neutral in character. But his
cynicism--if it really formed a settled feature of his character--was
not of the kind that implies any indifference to injustice or
dishonesty. In this particular, both his fiction and essays have no
uncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke that his bad characters
are in most cases wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a life of
debauchery under the influence of a pure woman's affection, but the
effect is afterwards destroyed by evidences that the attachment on the
man's side is sensual and based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prison
tyrant and base denier of Dawes' heroism remains unexcused.
Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only important representatives of
the ordinary virtues in _Long Odds_, are little more than dim shadows
contrasted with the clearly-marked personalities of half a dozen others
in the story who are rogues, or the associates and instruments of
rogues. 'The human anguish of every page' of _His Natural Life_ which
Lord Rosebery found so compelling to his attention, need not have been
so continuous and unqualified.
The author seems purposely to have ignored the opportunity afforded by
the story for the introduction of a character who, while asserting the
claims of Rufus Dawes and the broader interests of humanity, need not
have defeated the main motive of the plot. It was a decided error not to
gratify in this way the combative instinct of the reader. The Rev. James
North--'gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest'--might have been an
active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the clergyman in _It's Never Too
Late to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmed
and self-accusing drunkard.
The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity and
dramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalities
among its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is
distinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, a
hopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which become
almost monotonous in their unvaried severity.
But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the
clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of
an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or
that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured
convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of
criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else?
How naturally from such a person comes that savagely humorous
dissertation upon the treatment of prisoners! 'There is a sort of
satisfaction to me, by George! in keeping the scoundrels in order. I
like to see the fellows' eyes glint at you as you walk past 'em. Gad!
they'd tear me to pieces if they dared, some of 'em.'
Frere is a triumph of consistent literary portraiture. He is generally
understood to have been a study from life. But as the official whose
name has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerably
more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus Dawes, it must
be assumed that Clarke aimed only at the representation of a type.
Brutes like Frere and his vindictive associates, Burgess and Troke,
there undoubtedly were on the settlements, but the average official has
probably a better representative in Major Vickers, the Commandant.
Vickers is not an unkind man, but does not trust himself to do anything
unprovided for in the 'regulations,' for which he has an abject respect.
'It is not for me to find fault with the system,' he says; 'but I have
sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the
chain-gang and the cat.' But he never gives intelligence, much less
kindness, a fair trial.
Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture of a good woman to be found
in any of the author's stories. Taken in childhood by her parents to the
penal settlements, and separated there for years from youthful society,
familiarised with the constant aspects of crime and suffering, and
habitually in the society of her elders, she early develops into a
quaint, matter-of-fact little creature, such as might well disconcert a
peacock like the Reverend Meekin.
To Frere, whose knowledge of other women has been mainly immoral, her
innocence and wilfulness, and her instinctive dislike of him, serve as a
strong attraction. Though he becomes her husband by means of a cruel
fraud, he never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement so
tragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as a
relief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers,
despite the gloomy environment of her youth, is throughout an intensely
womanly woman, the delicate conception of whose character surely places
her creator far above the rank of the cynics in literature.
Not the least of the elements which combine to make _His Natural Life_
one of the most remarkable novels of the century is the occasional
skilful varying of its painful realism with a colouring of romance, as
in the relations between Dawes and Sylvia: his absorbing devotion when
she is so strangely made dependent upon him at the deserted settlement;
his long-continued confidence that she will effect his vindication and
deliverance; and, finally, the dominant motive of securing her safety
against North with which he escapes from the gaol at Norfolk Island, and
joins her in the doomed schooner on its last voyage to Van Diemen's
Land.
What Oliver Wendell Holmes called 'the Robinson Crusoe touches' in the
story--including the experiences of the marooned party at Macquarie
Harbour, and those of Rex in his escape through the Devil's
Blowhole--also help to leave with the reader of the novel an
ineffaceable memory.
HENRY KINGSLEY.
What are the special qualities that constitute the permanent charm of
Henry Kingsley's early novels? Some English critics, judging him by
principles of literary art, have said that his best work is in many
places of slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic power, and
imitative in expression. A series of episodes, they observe, supply the
place of a plot in _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_; the central
motive of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ is an impossible story of a
young woman's self-sacrifice; and the Thackerayan mannerisms in
_Ravenshoe_ are an offensive blemish upon an otherwise fine novel.
As a set-off to these defects, which are of less real consequence than
may appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freely
credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style
far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers
in his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position above
that of his more celebrated brother.
The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with
Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a
hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as
it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of
them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in
one particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatever
may be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned a
story without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certain
of a permanent place in the literature of the young country where he
encountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life.
The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having been
recorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interest
might be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point of
view, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckley
and Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of the
three best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons for
their enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds of
the favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, to
leave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _Geoffry
Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but in
most respects they are the highest, because the least artificial,
expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their more
noticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to the
question which opens this essay.
Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of
education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields
of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with
ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford
without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried off
to the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensational
period of their development, and attracting people from all parts of the
world. It was the time when the ordinary business of the colonies could
scarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexed
employers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urged
Governor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit
mining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible to
persons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.' In the
country districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the
towns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it half
done; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews had
deserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content to
stand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being found
up-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt to
stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings,' was the
reply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners.