Diemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexican
mines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbed
shoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in the
crowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo.
In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of them
were toiling in Victoria alone.
Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist his
first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that
he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and
the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from
England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they
thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was
continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to
his wife.
An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new edition
of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary
career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent
in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which
succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less
precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman
in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he
was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then,
like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel the country
in search of work on the sheep and cattle stations.
A well-known pastoralist of the western district of Victoria, the late
Hon. Philip Russell, was accustomed to describe to his friends the
arrival at his station many years ago of a party of 'sundowners'
(_i.e._, tramps), among whom was Kingsley, looking 'very much down on
his luck.' Soon found to be no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest at
the station, where he remained for several months. The most agreeable
glimpse obtainable of his colonial life is given in _Old Melbourne
Memories_, a little collection of sketches published by Rolf Boldrewood
twelve years ago.
At the period which they recall, Boldrewood was a young man, and making
the experiment in squatting which, though disastrous in its ultimate
commercial results, was afterwards turned to a rich literary account by
him. A friend of his named Mitchell occupied a station in western
Victoria named Langa-willi, and there on one occasion Boldrewood met
Kingsley. The passage in which he gracefully records the event is worth
quoting in full.
'Why Langa-willi,' he says, 'will always be a point of interest in my
memory, apart from other reasons, for I spent many a pleasant day there,
was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest
of Mitchell's.
'It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffry Hamlyn_, that immortal work, the
best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the
well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can
imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down
comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host had ridden
forth with his overseer to make-believe to inspect the flocks, but in
reality to get an appetite for lunch.
'I like to think of them both spending the evening sociably in their own
way, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing away till he had covered
the regulation number of sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps when
the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell reading steadily, or writing
up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the
glasses at ten o'clock; then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke on the
verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, happy,
unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not strong, and
for his talented guest, who was not always so profitably employed. I
suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often
looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the
restful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi.'
At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being among
the happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley's
career after he returned to England may be summarised here in a few
words. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the first
four or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest as
he lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, and
became more conventional in his methods.
He essayed journalism for a time, first as editor of the Edinburgh
_Daily Review_, and later as a correspondent of the same journal at the
Franco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being without
the necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had
much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The
writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed
always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he
employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy.
Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his
life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of
which he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels.
It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word
of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its
riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the
disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers
during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any
of his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_
seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the most
striking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60.
The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centre
at which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, a
daily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters was
primitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulation
of wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperity
created by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memories
which it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, he
succeeded with singular completeness.
Save the technical knowledge of geology shown by Trevittick in _The
Hillyars and the Burtons_, and by the encyclopædic Dr. Mulhaus in his
lecture at the picnic in the grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there is
nothing to suggest that the author had any personal acquaintance with
mining in the colonies. The experience that was so fresh and abundant in
his mind is put aside in favour of a set of facts and pictures not even
incidentally connected with life on the gold-fields.
As if to emphasise the motive of his choice, if motive there was, he
selected the pre-auriferous period for the Australian parts of his
stories. His squatters become wealthy by a comparatively slow process,
extending over some sixteen years. The squatters of the gold period
would certainly seem better adapted to the purposes of fiction. There
is, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance in the sudden burst of
fortune which within the first few years after 1851 raised so many of
them from positions of struggling uncertainty to affluence, with incomes
varying from ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some few cases as
high as thirty thousand pounds, a year.
The first and last use Kingsley made of his gold-fields experience is
seen in the sketch of mining of the successful sort in the third volume
of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but this is so slight that it might
have been imagined by a writer who had never handled a shovel or a
washing-cradle in his life.
The Australian people have so often been the subject of flippant and
ill-natured criticisms, that they can readily appreciate any liberal
estimate of themselves in whatever form it may be placed before their
kindred in Great Britain. It is a fact, as natural as it is undeniable,
that they are very sensitive to praise or blame. What wounds them more
than adverse comment itself, is the circumstance of its often proceeding
from persons who have accepted without warning their too prompt and
trustful hospitality.
To anyone but the incorrigibly confident and good-natured Antipodean,
the lesson would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished visitor
should be petted less, and left more dependent upon his own devices in
the collection of materials for the inevitable book or magazine article.
Though the result might be the same, there would be no ingratitude, and
the critic would be less able to pose as an impartial inside observer of
Australian society.
Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight of
imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion
towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or
months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself
from the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point.
It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casual
writers, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whether
these kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surround
them. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do
not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a
complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well
to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall
say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable?
By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning the
colonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of the
pioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate
(since largely realised) of the future of the country, find more
enduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing in
ordinary circumstances.
The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ would
earn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itself
spirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which this
first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might be
unfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at least
told nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generous
one, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort.
It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting to
preserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrant
colonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Some
of the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, and
delicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; and
then there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broader
expanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, a
greater trust in human nature.
As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, this
difference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable in
the light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly exists.
Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley's
young Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of the
characteristics of their British parents. But, still, they show
themselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds of
representatives in the homes of the Australian gentry.
Of such was the young squatter who so attracted the attention of Mr.
Froude at the first station he visited in Victoria. 'He had till within
a month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work for
four years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained the
manners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as a
deer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot.' Of
course, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minute
observation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content to
fly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softest
sofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin,' he might have
seen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptly
called the working aristocracy of Australia.
The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, and
picturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian,
Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the
rest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardships
which have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil,
loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. The
aspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one.
There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he has
made squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic.' Had Kingsley
been himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might have
obtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect the
historical value of his work is less than it might have been. But the
compensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author's
choice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he was
telling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group of
emigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and its
difficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with the
exception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketches
rather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was the
first to describe in fiction the rural life of the country, to recognise
the beginning of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate the
pervading spirit of cheerful confidence to which so much of the rapid
early development of Australia was due.
It may well be regretted that one who had so keen an eye for all that
was best in the social life of the country, at one of its most
interesting periods, should not have written a volume or two of
reminiscences, but no colonial reader would wish _Geoffry Hamlyn_ or
_The Hillyars and the Burtons_ to have been made the vehicle of more
descriptive matter than they contain. Kingsley was more sparing in the
use of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the younger
writers are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may be
considered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper to
Hamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of
Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the story
of the lost child. The latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus' geological
lecture, has the merit of being one of the best pieces of prose the
author ever wrote, and gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford an
opportunity for a dramatic settlement of the order of their suit for the
hand of Alice Brentwood. In the main narrative the periods of 'dull
prosperity' are expressly avoided. After that first beautiful picture of
the pioneer settlement, 'the scene so venerable, so ancient, so seldom
seen in the old world--the patriarchs moving into the desert with all
their wealth to find a new pasture land'--the action of the story is
rapidly advanced to the later days of their success. The estate which
has been the home of Major Buckley's forefathers for generations no
longer providing a competence, he has resolutely left it for the land
where he is to find 'a new heaven and a new earth.' Unlike so many of
the pioneers, he has bade a final good-bye to England, but that it is
_not_ 'for ever' one can safely predict from the outset. He sees the old
country in long years after, when, with some of the wealth garnered on
the rolling prairies of Northern Australia, his son has proudly bought
back the family domain of Clere in all the completeness of its original
acres. Within a few brief chapters the colonists are discovered in the
security of assured wealth. Sitting under their station verandahs, they
can contemplate almost with calmness the death of their cattle by
hundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They have
arrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in the
cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.' Meanwhile, the old Devonshire
life is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create a
new Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homes
among the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourse
approaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--of
life as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softening
glow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of ideal
friendship, of youthful love, family affection, pride of nationality,
and charity towards all mankind.
Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and wont to declare that the
proportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the world
over. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all his
novels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it spring
their most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that
'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,' which Matthew Arnold
assigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and right
feeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silent
and kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. The
names alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall scene
after scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind to
return. There is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature,
refined, calmly courageous--a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs.
Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom
Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and
didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to
politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend
her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic,
passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; Captain
Brentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who is
sighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young lovers
so nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers came
down'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humoured
roar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who is
everybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except George
Hawker, of whose 'tom-cat' skull he has made that amusingly audacious
examination at the beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful to
find all the faces familiar in the old land reappearing in the new, even
though the coincidences which attend their coming seem too good to be
true.
But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness of the story in
contemplation of the swift succession of happy scenes created for him.
In these there is nothing dubious or artificial. They are sketches
straight from the life of the country, and it is their beauty that makes
_Geoffry Hamlyn_ a classic in Australian literature.
Among the characters, there are so many who inspire us with love rather
than mere interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes, of
conversations, rides, pleasure-excursions, and other intercourse, which
in another book might prove wearisome, becomes here the best enjoyment
of the reader. With what vivacity and gusto the author describes the
visits exchanged between the home stations, and the comforts and
happiness which they reveal! Half the book is made up of them, and yet
the majority remain sufficiently clear in the memory to be recalled
separately. Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away, buys a station
near at hand, he and Buckley having become inseparable, and now Baroona,
Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles apart. 'There was always a
hostage from one staying as a guest at the other.' The visits were
generally unannounced, and the visitors stayed as long as they felt
inclined to. The effects of this custom are once amusingly illustrated
at the home of Captain Brentwood. It is when the members of the little
colony hear of the arrival of his beautiful daughter from Sydney, where
she has been at school. 'That week one of those runs upon the Captain's
hospitality took place which are common enough in the Bush, and,
although causing a temporary inconvenience, are generally as much
enjoyed by the entertainers as the entertained. Everybody during this
next week came to see them, and nobody went back again. So by the end of
the week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all uninvited,
and apparently bent on making a long stay of it.' They help one another
when there is work to be done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously.
Kingsley has properly made eating and drinking a noticeable part of the
hearty full-bodied existence of his squatters and their friends.
There is no class of people who have a better capacity for enjoying the
material comforts of life than the country gentlemen of Australia. Major
Buckley is just the sort of person one might have expected to hold
decided views on the subject of dining as an art. To dine in the middle
of the day was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the gifts of
Providence. 'I eat my dinner not so much for the sake of the dinner
itself as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows--a feeling that
you have nothing to do, and that, if you had, you'd be shot if you'd do
it.'
On another occasion the author himself preaches a similarly agreeable
doctrine, concluding with the advice: 'My brother, let us breakfast in
Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives end.'
Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in midsummer forgotten. Anyone in
an armchair under a broad Australian verandah, who fetched anything for
himself, would, in the author's opinion, 'show himself a man of weak
mind.' Niggers were all that a Southern gentleman wanted to complete his
comfort when the sun was at baking-point. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's teachings
undergo a playful deprecation. Did she know the exertion required for
cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount of
perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of
Bass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking two
lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The
Southern gentleman undertakes to affirm that she didn't.