Strictly speaking, there is not, and cannot yet be, any such thing as an
Australian literature. Such writers as live in Australia are nearly all
English-born or bred, and draw their inspiration from English sources. A
new country offers few subjects for poetry and romance, and prophecy is
by no means so inspiring as the relation of the great deeds of the past.
But yet there has been at least one amongst us who may claim to have had
the real poetic afflatus, and whose subjects were invariably taken from
the events of the life around him. This was Thomas Gordon, the author of
'How we Beat the Favourite,' and several other short pieces of verse of
rare merit, and redolent of the Australian air. George Brunton Stephens
is another versifier, who at times showed signs of genius; and it is not
long since a Mr. Horace Kendall died, who ran off sheets of graceful
verses with considerable talent and no little poetic fancy.
In philosophy, history, and science, many of the Professors at Australian
Universities have written treatises worth reading; but Australia has had
so little influence either upon their subjects or their mode of treating
them, that their merit cannot be claimed for this country. Perhaps the
best-known writers of this class, resident in the colonies, are Professor
Hearn, author of 'The Aryan Household.' and Mr. Charles A. Pearson, the
historian of the Middle Ages.
Australia may boast of having furnished no uninteresting theme to Henry
Kingsley, and several minor English novelists. She has sent to England no
less rising a light than Mr. B. L. Farjeon; but the few novels that are
written and published here have never attracted notice across the ocean,
and rarely even in Australia itself, if we except Mr. Marcus Clarke's
'His Natural Life.' After Mr. Clarke come Mr. Garnet Walsh, Mr. Grosvenor
Bunster, and one or two prophets in their own neighbourhood, pleasant
writers of Christmas stories, clever dramatizers of novels and
pantomime-writers, but none of them with the least claim to a wider
audience.
The circumstances of a new colony naturally cause additions to the
word-stock of the mother country. New occupations and modes of living
need new words to describe them, or, as often as not, the settler not
being of an inventive disposition, old words are used in a new sense.
The 'bush'--itself an old word used in a new sense--has been most
prolific in new phrases. Everyone who lives in the country, whether on a
station or in a farm, but not in a township, is called a 'bushman,'
although properly speaking this designation only applies to a person who
lives in the 'bush' or unsettled country. 'Bushranger' is another word of
the same derivation, which it is needless to explain. Of course you know
what a 'squatter' is. It is strange that the same word which in America
is used to denote the lowest class of settlers--the man who settles upon
somebody else's land and pays no rent--is here a synonym for aristocrat.
The term 'farmer' is applied exclusively to the agriculturist, and a
squatter would be very much offended if you called him a sheep-farmer.
The squatting class in Australia correspond to the landed gentry of
England. The farmer is usually legally known as a 'selector,' because
under the Land Act he selects a piece of ground perhaps in the middle of
the squatter's leasehold and purchases it on credit for agriculture. A
'cockatoo' is a selector who works his piece of land out in two or three
years, and having done nothing to improve it, decamps to select in a new
district. A 'run' is the least improved kind of land used for sheep, but
the word is used almost alternatively with 'station,' which denotes an
improved run. The run may be a mere sheep-walk, but a station is bound to
have a house attached to it, and fenced 'paddocks' or fields. The
storekeeper is the lowest official on a station. Next above him is the
'boundary-rider,' whose duty it is to ride round the boundaries of fenced
runs, to see that the fence is kept in good order, and that the sheep do
not get through it. A 'stockman' is naturally the man who drives the
stock, and the 'stockwhip' a peculiar short-handled long whip with which
he drives them. A 'cabbage-tree' is an immense sun-protecting hat, rather
like the top of a cabbage-tree in shape. It is much affected by bushmen.
A 'billy' is the tin pot in which the bushman boils his tea; a
'pannikin,' the tin bowl out of which he drinks it. A 'waler' is a
bushman who is 'on the loaf.' He 'humps his drum,' or 'swag,' and starts
on the wallaby track;' i.e., shoulders the bundle containing his worldly
belongings, and goes out pleasuring. A 'shanty,' originally a low
public-house, now denotes any tumble-down hut.
Apart from bush terms, there are town appellations, such as 'larrikin,'
which means a 'rough.' The word is said to have originated with an Irish
policeman, who spoke of some boys who had been brought before the
Melbourne Police Court as 'larriking around,' instead of 'larking.' To
'have a nip' is to take a 'nobbler.' A white man born in Australia is a
'colonial,' vulgarly a 'gum-sucker;' if he was born in New South Wales,
he is also a 'cornstalk.' An aboriginal is always a 'black fellow.' A
native of Australia would mean a white man born in the colony. The
diggings have furnished the expressive phrase 'to make your pile.' A
'nugget'--_pace_ Archbishop Trench--was a Californian importation. When
speaking of a goldfield a colonist says 'on.' Thus you live 'on Bendigo,'
but 'in' or 'at' Sandhurst--the latter being the new name for the old
goldfield town. To 'shout' drinks has no connection with the neuter verb
of dictionary English. A 'shicer' is first a mining claim which turns
out to be useless, and then anything that does so. There is room for a
very interesting dictionary of Australianisms. But I have no time to
collect such a list. The few words which I have given will serve as an
indication of the bent of colonial genius in the manufacture of a new
dialect; and as they are given without any effort, just as they have come
to my mind in the course of one evening's thinking as I write, they may
fairly be taken as being amongst the commonest.
I have headed this letter 'Literature and Art,'so that I am morally bound
to say something about the latter, although there is next to nothing to
say. Australia has not yet produced any artist of note. Perhaps the best
is Mr. E. C. Dowling, and he is a Tasmanian. Resident in Victoria is a M.
Louis Buyelot, a landscape artist of considerable merit. Excepting him,
we have no artists here whose works rise beyond mere mediocrity. Mr.
Summers was a Victorian, but his fame is almost unknown in his own
country. Thanks to Sir Redmond Barry, Victoria possesses a very fair
National Gallery attached to the Melbourne Public Library. Some of the
paintings in it are excellent, notably Mr. Long's 'Esther;' the majority
very mediocre. For my own part I prefer the little gallery at Sydney,
which, though it has not nearly so many paintings, has also not nearly so
many bad ones, and owns several that are really good, mostly purchased
from the exhibitions. Adelaide has also recently bought a few pictures to
form the nucleus of a gallery.
By means of Schools of Design and Art, the colonial Governments have,
during the last few years, been doing all in their power to encourage the
growth of artistic taste, but the whole bent of colonial life is against
it. Art means thought and care, and the whole teaching of colonial life
is to 'manage' with anything that can be pressed into service in the
shortest time and at the smallest expense. It is only fair to mention as
a tribute to the laudable desire of the people to see good works of art,
that no parts of the International Exhibitions were so well attended as
the Art Galleries, and that although the pictures shown there were for
the most part quite third not to say fourth-rate. The press is very
energetic in fostering taste, but I don't think it is natural to the
people. They like pictures somewhat as the savage does, because they
appeal readily to the imagination, and tell a story which can be read
with very little trouble. It is significant of this, that there is hardly
a hut in the bush where you will not see woodcuts from the _Illustrated
and Graphic_ pasted up, and that the pictures most admired at the
exhibitions were those which were most dramatic--such as a horse in a
stable on fire, and a showman's van broken down in the snow through the
death of the donkey which drew it. Next to dramatic pictures, those in
which horses, cows, or sheep appeared were most admired, for here the
colonist felt himself a competent critic, and was delighted to discover
any error on the part of the artist. Scenery came next in the order of
appreciation, especially pieces with water in them, or verdure. Genre and
figure-painting were quite out of their line.
Of Music I have written in my letter on 'Amusements'. As a creative art
it cannot yet be said to have an existence, although Mr. Wallace composed
'Maritana' in Australia, and plenty of dance-music is manufactured every
day.