Chapter XVI: The C.y.a

This title, which attaches to all Australians during a period of superficial precocity, has great local significance. It means clever young Australian, and it originated in the newspapers, where the phrases are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. For instance, no Australian editor would let the name of Chatterton pass without adding "Wonderful boy."

C.Y.A. is, therefore, a newspaper degree. It is conferred most heartily--and with rather less discrimination than Ally Sloper's award of merit--by junior reporters. Mothers just yearn for it, and the local newspaper is obliging.

An Australian mother tells her daughters to be clever--and let who will be good. The result is much cultivated mediocrity--mechanical pianists, and thin voices taught to sing Tosti's "Goodbye" for the inevitable subscription concert to raise funds for further futile study. There is in every town in the Commonwealth, a coming Australian, but none of them ever seem to do any arriving. Someone is, all the same, for ever getting a benefit (of the doubt) in the shape of the aforesaid subscription concert. It is given out that she is going to the old world to study under Marchesi or someone sufficiently afar to make the passage money a consideration. It's a regular confidence trick, for no sooner does the shock of the beneficiary's awful singing blow over, than she is back about town again. Perhaps she has realised enough by the fraud to buy a piano and a brass plate and she sets up teaching others to follow in her devious ways.

Strict justice to the Australian songster compels me to say that a few of them do achieve to the position of chorus girls. I heard some chorus girls of the old school complain in a cafe one night that "what with these Conservatorium girls cutting the screws the profession is going to the dogs."

There have been some Australian women who have reached London and hit that city hard. Melba--Nellie Armstrong that was--managed it. She was not a C.Y.A., however. She has outlived one of the adjectives before she went "Home." When she was singing at shilling concerts her fellow Australians hadn't the gumption to hear anything wonderful in her notes. Melba recently swept through Australia in a semi-regal way, and was queen of a champion grovelling match.

Ada Crossley also found London. She came back and found Australia, which wouldn't look at her at a 1/- some years before when her notes were fuller and richer, ready to pay half a guinea a time of its creditors' money to see what her gowns were like.

Of the many other singers who left Australia's shores the most have been engulfed in the city of the Thames. Some bob up now and again, when their voices are to be heard at pops. But most of them would like to raise a return fare, and that is probably their last illusion.

And then, of course, the stage attracts the C.Y.A. Anything that looks easy and is likely to bring adulation always does. But I have made exhaustive inquiry and failed to discover one actor or actress who learnt the business in Australia that has turned out anything worth mentioning. I have traced several to London and there given them up--the men in pity and the women in disgust.

The founder of the drama in Australia was Barrington, a convict-actor. Some idea of his ability as an actor may be formed from the fact that he was ever convicted.

In the drama Oscar Asche is the only man I can find doing fairly well, but he did not learn his business in Australia. Indeed, it is part of Australia's ignominy to see English and American artists being imported to play any parts requiring the exercise of intelligence. Managers, when interviewed as to why they don't employ Australians have given it as a reason that the Australians cannot pronounce English properly, and that they have a distorted idea of love-making. The fact is that by the time the Australian gets a part he is so furtive with dodging creditors that he cannot get apprehension out of his face when any other character makes an entrance.

The artistic Australian also gets to London. Mortimer Menpes was a C.Y.A. He went from Adelaide--a town which also produced the late Mr. Guy Boothby, C.Y.A. Menpes, in writing his biography for "Who's Who," stated that he was "inartistically born in Australia." What does he mean? He was before the time of incubators.

Then Boothby--late Guy Boothby! I don't know how he could ever have looked a bookstall in the face after what he wrote--or his fellow Australians. Nat Gould or Fergus Hume either, for that matter. Between them these Australians used to average four books a month, fifteen short stories and two puff interviews by Mr. Boothby with himself, written up for the magazines. Mr. Boothby found plenty of good material in himself for interviews. Haddon Chambers, C.Y.A., also gives the magazine readers glimpses of himself, but of late years he seems to spend all his time in protesting that he _did_ write the "Tyranny of Tears."

Then in the realm of high art is Longstaff, C.Y.A., painter, Mackennal, C.Y.A., sculptor. The first is head and shoulders above the other Australian daubers, but he'd have to get on stilts and wear the highest stove pipe to be classed eminent in London; the second gets odd jobs which the cableman chronicles betimes.

Probably if you asked any Australian the best Australian book he would say "For the Term of His Natural Life," by Marcus Clark. Well, I just recently read in Duffy's "Life of Two Hemispheres," that Charles Gavan Duffy wrote it. He particularly says so.

Rolfe Boldrewood, C.Y.A., is also classed a literary man in Australia. He wrote numerous tales of colonial improbabilities.

There is a paper in London called the "British Australasian," and it follows the doings of the C.Y.A.'s in London as far as it can with self-respect. But when frequent changes of address make it too plain that the C.Y.A. is bilking his landlady, and the change of locality is from humble to worse--well, it discreetly draws the curtain. The "British Australasian" is a most genteel publication. It was one of the first to drop De Rougemont, C.Y.A.

Read This Also.

The Real Australian
BY MALCOLM C. DONALD

A Reply to
The Awful Australian

To which is added Agnes C. Storrie's
Fine Patriotic Poem "A Protest."

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Transcriber's note:
_Underscores_ have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts.
=Equals= have been used to indicate =bold= fonts.
Obvious typos have been corrected.
Inconsistent hyphenation has been left as written.

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