(1846-1881)
Although a native of England, Marcus Clarke is always classed as an
Australian novelist. The son of a barrister, he was born in Kensington
April 24th, 1846. In 1864 he went to seek his fortune in Australia. His
taste for adventure soon led him to "the bush," where he acquired many
experiences afterwards used by him for literary material. Drifting into
journalism, he joined the staff of the Melbourne Argus. After publishing
a series of essays called 'The Peripatetic Philosopher,' he purchased
the Australian Magazine, the name of which he changed to the Colonial
Monthly, and in 1868 published in it his first novel, entitled 'Long
Odds.' Owing to a long illness, this tale of sporting life was completed
by other hands. When he resumed his literary work he contributed to the
Melbourne Punch, and edited the Humbug, a humorous journal. He
dramatized Charles Reade's and Dion Boucicault's novel of 'Foul Play';
adapted Moliere's 'Bourgeois Gentilhomme'; wrote a drama entitled
'Plot,' successfully performed at the Princess Theatre in 1873; and
another play called 'A Daughter of Eve.' He was connected with the
Melbourne press until his death, August 2d, 1881.
Clarke's literary fame rests upon the novel 'His Natural Life,' a strong
story, describing the life of an innocent man under a life sentence for
felony. The story is repulsive, but gives a faithful picture of the
penal conditions of the time, and is built upon official records. It
appeared in the Australian Magazine, and before it was issued in book
form, Clarke, with the assistance of Sir Charles Gavin Duffy, revised it
almost beyond recognition. It was republished in London in 1875 and in
New York in 1878. He was also the author of 'Old Tales of a New
Country'; 'Holiday Peak,' another collection of short stories; 'Four
Stories High'; and an unfinished novel called 'Felix and Felicitas.'
Clarke was a devoted student of Balzac and Poe, and some of his sketches
of rough life in Australia have been compared to Bret Harte's pictures
of primitive California days. His power in depicting landscape is shown
by this glimpse of a midnight ride in the bush, taken from 'Holiday
Peak':--
"There is an indescribable ghastliness about the mountain bush at
midnight, which has affected most imaginative people. The grotesque and
distorted trees, huddled here and there together in the gloom like
whispering conspirators; the little open flats encircled by bowlders,
which seem the forgotten altars of some unholy worship; the white, bare,
and ghostly gum-trees, gleaming momentarily amid the deeper shades of
the forest; the lonely pools begirt with shivering reeds and haunted by
the melancholy bittern only; the rifted and draggled creek-bed, which
seems violently gouged out of the lacerated earth by some savage
convulsion of nature; the silent and solitary places where a few blasted
trees crouch together like withered witches, who, brooding on some deed
of blood, have suddenly been stricken horror-stiff. Riding through this
nightmare landscape, a whirr of wings and a harsh cry disturb you from
time to time, hideous and mocking laughter peals above and about you,
and huge gray ghosts with little red eyes hop away in gigantic but
noiseless bounds. You shake your bridle, the mare lengthens her stride,
the tree-trunks run into one another, the leaves make overhead a
continuous curtain, the earth reels out beneath you like a strip of gray
cloth spun by a furiously flying loom, the air strikes your face
sharply, the bush--always gray and colorless--parts before you and
closes behind you like a fog. You lose yourself in this prevailing
indecision of sound and color. You become drunk with the wine of the
night, and losing your individuality, sweep onward, a flying phantom in
a land of shadows."