Part 6

Hence a result that can be seen and read of all men. The gospel of brevity is proclaimed everywhere. It has become recognised that the longer and more ambitious efforts of imagination or of erudition have not much chance of emerging into the daylight; and that even if they do emerge, they have a still more remote chance of paying expenses, much less of winning a profit for the ambitious author. The short article may, however, prove remunerative. An editor who would be aggrieved and insulted by the very suggestion of something three columns long will put down his spectacles and smile almost cheerfully at the unknown scribe who tenders him a column. The publisher who is firmly convinced that the bearer of a full-length manuscript novel is a person to be shunned like the plague, will listen with an open mind to proposals having to do with skits and humorous episodes, with short stories and novelettes.

From all this can be deduced the reason of the spasmodic quality, the flashiness of the writing that is done in Australia. The warm climate and the tired feeling may have something to do with the phenomenon; but the main causes are those previously mentioned. It is now apparent why the journalism of the country is one of its more admirable features. The newspaper man has no time to waste, and no space to give away. He must get his effects into narrow compass. He must, to employ the vernacular, come at once to the points and leave out the superfluous verbiage. He endeavours to do so, and often with much success. The publisher of books does not want him, but if he wishes to be original he can be so--to the extent of a column. If he wishes to be humorous he can be so--to the same limit. If his vein is descriptive he has the like opportunity--which runs also to the extent of one column. On the approaches to every printing machine in the country, the word “Brevity” is blazened in letters of dread significance. The Duke of Wellington’s admonition to his chaplain “Be brief” rings sharply through the pseudo-literary atmosphere of Australia.

It would savour of affectation to ignore the existence of the Sydney _Bulletin_, or to attempt to deny that it is an important semi-intellectual factor in the life of the continent. The circumstance is unfortunate, and that for obvious reasons. The _Bulletin_ combines in itself most of what is smart, and flashy, and cynical, and superficial, and verbally witty in the people among whom it circulates. Now, if a man happens to be very smart and very witty, and very cynical, we may admit that he is a clever and interesting person. We may hand him the laurel wreath of contemporary fame and journalistic renown with no other feeling than one of pure appreciation and good-will. But when his smartness and his flashiness and his cynicism are set up as models for every one else to _copy_; when they are watered down among a thousand imitators and served up every week with slight variations, or with no variations at all; when we find half the educated people of a country trying to be smart and flashy, because they imagine that by so doing they will be able to fit their ideas into the narrow columns of a certain publication--then we are bound to wonder whether we in Australia are really an intelligent, right-thinking nation, or a number of animated and extremely foolish marionettes.

It is the readers of the paper, rather than the paper itself, who are to blame. The sins of the copyists must rest on their own heads. And while we get tired of certain characteristics that are always repeating themselves, we are bound to admit the invaluable work that the Sydney paper has done in more than one direction. By encouraging certain writers--by gaining for them an audience and winning for them a reputation--it has conferred a favour on the whole of Australia. It is the kind of favour that can hardly be reckoned out on a monetary basis. Nine-tenths of that which is musical and distinctive and valuable in Australian verse of the last twenty years owes its publicity, if not its existence, to the _Bulletin_. To say this is to say a great deal. It stands to the lasting discredit of rich proprietary newspapers of this country that they have invariably leaned towards the reprint and the borrowed article. They have never made what could be called a decisive stand on behalf of the struggling, underpaid man of talent who has taken off his hat in their managerial sanctum, or has left his wares on their guarded doorstep. They have never championed this man; but the _Bulletin_ has always championed him. A paper that has done this can be forgiven much. It can be forgiven the army of cheap paragraphists, the tawdry tiresomeness of repeated phrase, the forced ingenuity of distorted facts, the constant disparagement of the kindred nation over-sea.

There is _some_ soul of goodness in things evil Would man observingly distil it out.

And the truth of this in the case of the _Bulletin_ we would be the last to impugn.

Although it must be repeated that there is no such thing as a national literature, there are at least three distinct schools--perhaps it would be more correct to say distinct _forms_ of writing--in Australia. The first of these is what might be called the humorous, descriptive style. This may be a poor thing, but it is our own. Some kinship may be claimed for it with the method of Mark Twain and his disciples--the method, that is to say, of calm and grotesque exaggeration. Nor is it wholly unconnected with the thunder-and-lightning, vividly blasphemous style of Rudyard Kipling in his earlier days. But it is in character and essence neither American nor English; it is distinctively Australian. We have evolved it, and should take the credit or discredit of it. To be a successful writer of the descriptively humorous kind it is merely necessary to attend to a few simple rules. It is necessary to get together as many adjectives as you can, and always to apply them in a context unlike that to which they have grown accustomed. Thus, if you are describing something tragic and awful--say, a murder--it is a good plan to make use of such adjectives as commonly do duty for an artistic criticism or a musical performance. Conversely, if you are dealing with a drama, or a piece of music, it is useful to have at hand the terms most frequently employed in connection with a murder. String together all the unlikely and dissimilar phrases you can invent or remember; make a liberal and generous use of “and’s” and “also’s”; be prodigal of semicolons and sparing of full-stops; above all cultivate an appearance of abruptness and of brevity. Men have been known to score a brilliant reputation, and, incidentally, to get long manuscripts accepted, merely by leaving out the pronoun at the beginning of a sentence, and thus giving an air of curtness and epigrammatic force to their composition. Stick at nothing, spare nothing, be afraid of nothing, and your fame as a descriptively humorous writer is assured.

There is another school, which may be called the flippant school. It must not be confused with the one just mentioned. The flippant school is mainly the preserve and playground of women. The lady journalists of Australia are as fond of a varnish of cynicism on their social writings as certain of their sisters are of a suggestion of rouge on their faces. The amusing part of it is that in neither case does the deception deceive any one. A few years ago there lived a woman named Ina Wildman, who wrote under the pseudonym of Sappho Smith. A gifted woman she was, with a wonderful eye for bizarre effects and a mind like a scintillating surface of light. She was a conspicuous journalistic success, and deserved to be. The Sydney _Bulletin_ discovered her, and deserves the credit of the discovery. But one penalty of success is persistent imitation. The truism has in her case been proved up to the hilt. It matters nothing to Sappho Smith--she is beyond the reach of that kind of vexation--but it is distressing to the patriotic Australian to find so many of his countrywomen rushing pell-mell into a literary groove that can only be safely trodden by those possessed of quite singular ability and quite exceptional discernment. Over all of the larger Melbourne and Sydney journals there is now the trail of the flippant woman writer. Not a line of the product rings true. Every word of it is imitation. Whether it is a wedding, or an engagement, or an infant baptism, or a crush at Government House, or a Lady Mayoress’s reception, or an afternoon tea-party, or a display of new millinery, or a theatre, or a football match, the Sappho Smiths of these times bring to bear the same set of phrases, the same slap-dash methods, the same cynical suggestion of a _roué_ of seventy in a garden of growing girls. This style of composition is specially remarkable when the topic is a wedding. If the Australian woman expressed her real thoughts about a wedding she would speak of it as the most tragic and fateful, the most joyous and the most serious event on earth. But when she gets a pen in her hand she finds it necessary to revel in the slang of two continents. For this the example of the _Bulletin_ and of its greatest woman contributor is mainly to blame.

Then, in the third place, we have the erotic school. This also has certain Australian characteristics. These manifest themselves not in the prose, but in the verse of the country. The local rhymester has been more than once exhorted to give the rein to his fancies--to let himself go. The advice is not uncongenial, even apart from the fact that he has probably been reading Swinburne, and is more or less under the influence of the master mind. A certain biblical institution was told that it was condemned, because it was luke-warm. The reproach can hardly be levied against the youthful poets who fill unvalued spaces of the print that is their medium for the time being. Amid all this intensity--bogus intensity, be it understood--there is very seldom the note of contentment, still less of genuine mirth. Australia is a bright, sunlit, open, and breezy country; but the minor poets that it produces in abundance have, for the most part, gloom dwelling in their inmost souls. The Australian child of the Muses is willing enough to clasp his Amaryllis to his palpitating breast, and to tell every one who likes to listen about the subtle and permeating sweetness of her eyes and lips and hair; but at the next moment, or in the very same breath, he is inviting us to contemplate a desolated life, a dead body, a tombstone, or a grave. In the verse of this people intense eroticism and profound melancholy are continually blended. The Northerner may, on the average, be less fluent and less imaginative, but he seems, when at his best, to develop a finer idealism, a better thought. He writes in the _Pall Mall Gazette_:--

Lean, love, a little nearer; shine, moon, a little clearer; You cannot make her dearer, or a thousandth part more fair, But only you can show me the kisses she would throw me, The guardian angels that shall go before me everywhere.

While his fellow rhymester in Australia alternates between telling us in a burst of fervour that

Hilda’s kisses seem in German Just as sweet as any way--

And most tragically exclaiming:--

God! the irony of bringing her with garments wet and clinging Close to my feet that lagged for her upon the sands alone--

The better English journal can teach the better Australian journal nothing in respect of _technique_; but there is sometimes an artistic restraint about the one which the other might copy without suffering any loss. It is well, however, to recognise the day of small things, looking to the day when greater things will come to pass. From Dan to Beersheba everything is not barren; in fact there are springs and oases in cheerful profusion. And it must be remembered that if Australia, with all its effervescence of youth and ambition, has not yet found its intellectual footing, it is merely exemplifying a familiar stage in the life of man, which has a counterpart and analogy in the larger life of a nation.

VI

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone; Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.

Since the finding of his body on the Brighton beach one morning, thirty-five years ago, the fame of Gordon has been steadily growing. He is the acknowledged Australian poet; but what do his countrymen really know about him? Considering all things, the literature that has to do with him is meagre and inadequate. There is the appreciation of Francis Adams--good, on the whole, but fragmentary, and too exclusively insistent on the merits of one poem. There is the life of Gordon, told briefly, with a few strictly orthodox comments, in the book of Messrs Turner and Sutherland. There is also the work of Mr Desmond Byrne--correct, but formal, and consequently little read. Of late years the daily or weekly journalist has taken a fancy to revive interest in the poet, and to bring under notice some fresh phase or incident in his life. But there is yet a great deal that could be said. For the present the average Englishman knows nothing of Gordon, and even the well-read Englishman knows only the name attached to some galloping rhymes. The Australian is familiar with the name of Lindsay Gordon, and is not lacking in appreciation, but as often as not he reserves his praises for what is least admirable and least characteristic.

To think of Gordon is to think of a succession of pictures on an always darkening screen. The opening vistas are rose-coloured; but each successive glance at the moving canvas leaves on the mental retina an image more gloomy than the one before it. The result of the life itself was a great tragedy; the result of the work was a signal triumph. The contrast between these two--between this splendid artistic success and this dire personal failure--have helped to create for Gordon a sympathy and affection out of proportion to the amount, though scarcely out of keeping with the quality of his writing. He resembles somewhat the fleeting figure in Shelley’s _Adonais_:--

A pard-like spirit beautiful and wild, A joy in desolation masked.

The spirit was beautiful, but the joy--what visitations there were of it--was always hedged round with desolation. And the tendency was always away from the light, instead of towards it; the clouds were always gathering as the day went on.

Yet the series of views thrown upon the moving screen begins brightly. On an island of the Azores, amid surroundings which rest the eye and charm the sense, a child is growing up to manhood. Listen to what his father, a retired army officer, says of Lindsay Gordon:--“A sweet little fellow he is! indeed, I think him almost too pretty. Very slight and upright, carrying his little curly head well back, and almost swaggering along. He talks with a sweet, full, laughing voice, and a face dimpled and bright as the morning. He is seen here, perhaps, to too great an advantage, in very light clothing, scampering amid the large and airy playrooms.” This is the opening picture of the series, and there is no suggestion of shadow about it. The promise is of a life healthful and happy, proof against all morbid fancies, singularly unfettered, mentally and physically free.

But the operator is busily at work; and he quickly changes the landscape from the Azores to England. The next glimpse of Gordon is that of a youth on the deck of a ship outward bound for Australia. The rose and gold tints are less noticeable now, but there is still no occasion for excess of sympathy. There is every reason why the young man of twenty should find a prosperous career in the new and rapidly developing continent. He stands on the deck of a ship with the salt spray of the channel blowing a keen reviving breath upon his forehead. The light of imagination is in his eyes. The flush of expectation is on his face. It is not a situation to merit sympathy, even though home and England are soon to vanish on the sky-line. Only--and the shadow will assert itself a little here--there is a morbid tendency, possibly associated in some fashion with the state of mind of his mother, who has developed a form of religious melancholia. And Gordon’s mother and father are first cousins. It is a circumstance of sinister omen.

Once the life in Australia has begun, the unseen hand that is manipulating the screen makes feverish haste to get forward. Two years of experience as a member of the South Australian mounted police are passed rapidly in review. There is a following period of seven years; but this also need not delay the onlookers. It shows the young man of destiny carrying on business as a professional horse-breaker, and incidentally writing verses. His means are limited; his social advantages non-existent; his opportunities of intellectual intercourse and improvement practically nil. During these first nine years in Australia the spectre of inherited melancholia, though never quite in the ascendant, is never entirely laid. Yet the life must have had its compensations. The recollection of many a lonely ride, of many a starry midnight, of many a breaking sunrise, of many a drifting fancy, wild and subtle as the music of the _Spectre Bride_, are conveyed in the spirit rather than in the words of verses that Gordon wrote at this period of his life.

Then, for a brief space, there are indications of a turn of the tide. Fortune ceases to frown. It seems desirous all at once of petting Gordon, of consoling him, of giving him fresh chances, of making up to him what nature and heredity had taken away. It flings into his lap a legacy of £7,000; it makes him a member of the Legislature of his colony; it wins him success and fame as a cross-country rider, as a master of that daring game which can always be relied upon to draw the wildest plaudits from the crowd. But even this mood, this smiling, flattering, relenting mood, does not avail. And as a matter of fact, it does not last. The legacy is lost in speculation; the Parliamentary career is abandoned; the steeplechase successes are punctuated with accident and failure. The sands begin to run downward faster than before.

There is just one picture, in the dissolving series, on which it is sometimes tempting to linger. Gordon is by this time thirty-seven years old. He is without robust health, without money, and without regular employment. It is quite true that he can write verses; he is not altogether confident about them, but he believes they are good verses. One or two people who ought to know have praised them. But these Melbourne publishers will pay nothing for them; no doubt, the author admits, because they would lose money if they did. What is a man to do whose health is shaky, and who has nothing but unpaid bills and unpublished verses in his pocket? He dare not dwell on the prospect; it must at all cost be forgotten, pressed back, kept out of sight.

There is one man who will help him to forget, and that man is Henry Clarence Kendall. The two meet in Collins Street, Melbourne, on the last morning but one of Gordon’s life. It is a meeting pleasant to think about, pleasant to dwell upon. For Kendall at least appreciates, and Kendall understands. That appreciation is warmly, generously, enthusiastically expressed, and it must convey a great deal to Lindsay Gordon, though he is to die by his own hand next day. For to the true poet the clamorous praise of the crowd means very little. If there is any elysium for him on earth, it is found in the recognition of the few whose knowledge and perceptions are not of the earth, earthy. Perhaps for an hour or two while he talked with Kendall in the Melbourne hotel, and drank with him the drink, both of the successful and the despairing, perhaps for a moment he had an _inkling_ of the truth that he had not lived altogether in vain.

It is never easy to estimate a man’s place in the domain of poetry. It is practically impossible in his lifetime, and it is difficult after he is dead. There is not merely the metrical, formal quality, not merely the imaginative power, not merely the originality of treatment that have to be considered. The whole question of individual taste and temperament, whether of the writer or the reader, is at work upon the scales. It may be impossible to prove on mathematical lines that Gordon was a great poet. Yet it can be asserted confidently that his verse is marked by three qualities which between them go a long way to make up greatness. These are its spontaneity, its musical quality, and its refinement. Everything else is included under one or other of these three heads.

To take the first of the three--spontaneity, Gordon was above all things a natural singer. This naturalness, this unforced quality, is undoubtedly his first and his finest merit. He hoped for nothing--at least for nothing tangible--from his verses. In one sense, he did not wish to write. He much preferred action. If some one had given him a troop of cavalry and shown him a battery of opposing artillery, he would, in the rush and forgetfulness of one wild, sweeping movement, have experienced more real life, more real pleasure, than he was ever destined to know. Such an experience might have laid once and for ever the ghosts that always haunted him; might have made him feel that he was born to act, as his soldier-fathers had acted, instead of being obliged to sit down in a strange land and listen to memories of action that sang fitfully through his brain. It is for this reason--for the reason that temperament, and heredity, and poetic impulse forced him to find relief in verse whether he wished to or not, whether he was proud of the performance or ashamed of it--that he occupies his unique place. The pen and ink processes are invisible in his best work; it is as though

A wistful, wandering zephyr presses The strings of some Æolian lyre.

To illustrate the spontaneous manner of Gordon would be to run through a complete list of his published poems. There is no need to go much further than the opening lines of _The Rhyme of Joyous Garde_. It is instructive to notice how in this, as in others of his poems, the picture seems to create itself:--

Through the lattice rushes the south wind, dense With fumes of the flowery frankincense And hawthorn blossoming thickly.