Chapter V: Part 5

The people, as a rule, are not ambitious. They have not the restless unquiet temperament associated with the Anglo-Saxon race in other and less pleasant parts of the globe. For that reason they are often excellent companions. They know how to enjoy life, and they are willing to share their knowledge with the stranger. They have no cast-iron formulas, either of etiquette or of morals. They have not yet succeeded in reducing orthodoxy to a fine art. It matters comparatively little to them, before or after they have made your acquaintance, whether your education was finished at Oxford or in Lower George Street, whether your father was a pawnbroker or an admiral, whether your nearest relations keep a grocer’s shop, or are something connected with the Established Church. Are you an agreeable person? Have you a pleasant humour? Do you know how to make life entertaining? Can you help others to pass the time? If the answer to any of these questions is in the affirmative, the gates of many desirable places will be thrown open to you. You will be allowed to tread the primrose path to the music of lutes, to the sound of soft voices, to the rustle of silk and satin embroideries, to the rhythm of Government House waltzes, to the popping of Vice-regal champagne. The possession of wealth is an advantage, but it is not indispensable. The Sydney creditor is as accommodating as most creditors. Even this class is not absolutely proof against the influence of climate and surroundings.

Among the men who do the mental work of Sydney--the writers, the scholars, the financiers, the preachers, the politicians, the social reformers, and the rest--you find this lack of ambition and of sustained effort particularly noticeable. A degree of ability is common enough. But it is not husbanded and utilised with that fierce concentration of purpose which marks the North of England man when he packs his bag for London, or the Western American when he sets out for New York. The journalism of Sydney is intermittently clever, sometimes brilliant, never consistently good. It may be that a man has a vein of humour, a descriptive faculty, a sense of colour in words. It is little use telling this man that if he works and waits, and waits and works--if he denies himself the cheap laurels of newspaper favour, and the thin rewards of journalistic achievement--he may ultimately win a place in the inner circle of approved and recognised authorship. He knows that he can get a guinea for a couple of hours’ application. What is the advantage, then, of going elsewhere? A guinea is a guinea; and Sydney is an excellent place in which to spend it. Thus he reasons in act, if not in words. The consequence is that the intellectual tone of the city, as set by the writers and thinkers, is for the most part a blend of opportunism and of _laisser faire_. If you want to learn something, if you want an incentive to act, if you want to live the strenuous life, you must leave Sydney and go somewhere else.

The women of Sydney are in a class by themselves. They are as distinctive in their way as the city in which they live is distinctive in its way. There is little doubt that in a measure they obtain their character from the place, though it is also true that they assist to give the place its character. To think of them, after the lapse of years, is to conjure up pleasant memories. There is reason to believe that the Cytherea of the ancient Greeks was born in Sydney, or at least lived there in prehistoric days, long before settlement crowded the approaches to the harbour, long before Governor Philip sighted the Heads, long before the country knew anything of modern habitations, and while it still slumbered in the embraces of the Golden Age. The waters still smile when they remember the vision that once rose from them; and to this day they impart something of the warmth and colour of the foam-born Aphroditë to the women who dwell by their fringing shores. Not that the daughters of Sydney are classical, or Grecian, or faultless in form and feature. The symmetry of the marble statue is no part of their equipment. They are deficient, for the most part, in correct outlines. Such charm as is theirs is mainly the result of manner, of temperament, of suggestion, of look. They convey the impression that their sympathies would not soon be alienated, that their welcome would never be ungenerous, that they could, if they wished, make of existence a pleasant thing.

The character of the people has been a subject for uneasy speculation. It is darkly hinted that the city is a refuge ground for many strange sins. The majority of the residents do not trouble about these matters. But there are a few estimable people who do. The women belonging to the W.C.T.U., and the I.O.G.T., and the I.O.R., and the rest of the alphabet devoted to temperance and the higher life, work consistently hard. In their display of zeal they almost make up what they lack in numbers. They are troubled voices calling in a moral wilderness, but they do not despair. They have one friend and confidant--the Colonial Secretary for the time being. The tales of depravity that are poured into the ears of this patient individual each month would fill many volumes. His official life is a round of dreadful discoveries. He begins his Ministerial career a cheerful optimist, and ends it with every vestige of illusion gone. Virtuous and estimable women belonging to every reforming agency in the metropolis are constantly at his elbow, are constantly telling him of fresh detachments of young children found in opium dens, of fresh batches of drunkards picked up in the gutter, of new contingents of women discovered on the street. The Colonial Secretary is asked, entreated, and commanded to do something. Exactly what it is his auditors do not know, but _something_, he is told, must be done. The unhappy man listens, shudders, sympathises, and protests that he is passionately grateful to the earnest women who have thought fit to lighten his mental darkness. He agrees that something must be done, and knows in his heart of hearts that nothing can be done. Meantime the social life of Sydney goes on, and the place, with its agreeable men and graceful women, is a place to be desired and pleasant to the eyes.

It is always pleasant--pleasant to linger in, pleasant to look forward to, pleasant to look back upon. Not very intellectual, not very strenuous, not very inspiring, it has all the aids to enjoyment that have been discovered in the last twenty centuries, and all the ingenious devices that have ever been invented to make time pass. A city that has from its birth been cradled in soft airs; a city that spreads against the storm and stress of dissatisfied ambition, the protection of mild and lulling wings; a city intended by Nature to please the artist and bring the practical man relief and rest; a city that rescues humanity from the stern and unlovely asceticism of a gray and narrow school; a city that is indifferent to morals, and cares for religion only on the picturesque side; a city that holds always with the Persian poet and tells its people to enjoy themselves, for to-morrow they may be with yesterday’s seven thousand years.

To leave Sydney and to go to Melbourne is to enter a new world. Instead of resemblances there are contrasts. In place of Australianisms there are Anglicanisms, Americanisms, and foreign “isms” of various kinds. Climate may have something to do with the difference, and topographical conditions may have something more. The reception that Sydney gives you is that of a woman in a luxurious room, with soft lights falling on rich curtain hangings, with glitter of glass and silver ornament, with lavish display of elegance and outward charm. The woman rises seductively, looks at you languorously and invites you, not so much by word as by gesture, to make yourself at home. It is delightful; but yet there is something wanting. The reflection comes that you are not being specially favoured; that this is the manner of the hostess to all and sundry; that there may be something unhealthy in this mellifluous atmosphere; that the smile of welcome is less that of the friend than that of the courtesan. The reception you get from Melbourne is of quite another character. The woman this time is cold and calm, and superbly indifferent. If she seems to smile it is probably the reflection of your own hopefulness. She offers you nothing; she barely acknowledges you; she does not want you; it is certain that she is not anxious to know you. All her panoply of architectural ornament is arrayed against you. And yet the thought supervenes that this cold woman may be better worth knowing in the end than the other one; that her harder outlines may conceal a more genuine worth; that her good opinion may be better worth striving for than that of the other--the one with the redder lips, and the flaunting, unchanging smile.

But the wide streets and the flat unoccupied spaces of Melbourne are an outward semblance calculated to strike the newcomer with a shuddering sense of chill and desolation. More especially if they are encountered for the first time on a winter’s afternoon. For the winter that merely dallies and trifles in Sydney, and makes but a pretence of bringing with it cold weather, is genuine in the Southern city. There is no bleaker thoroughfare on earth than Collins Street or Burke Street on a blustering July day. From Spring Street to the railway station there is a clear, unbroken passage for the Arctic wind. The occasional tramcar and the infrequent pedestrian are cheerless objects around which the Sou’-Wester disports itself, seeking always, in return for some ancient grievance, a grim and unnecessary revenge. If the day happens to be a Saturday, or a public holiday, the outlook is rendered ten times more dismal by the deathly appearance of the streets, from which all but an unreal semblance of life and movement has departed. A wilderness of grim-looking window shutters, and a Sahara of pavement--that is all. The wind drives the dust in front of it, then follows on shriekingly. When it has finished playing with the dust it brings in the rain. And Melbourne, with its wide, shelterless streets swept from end to end by a rain-storm--Melbourne with its blank spaces and its vanished crowds--is the one place on earth where the new arrival would choose _not_ to be.

But this appearance and mannerism of the Queen city--it clings to the name, though the boom era which gave the name a meaning has departed--must be lived through, and lived down. Presently the sun will shine again. Presently the holiday will be over; and the people who have been abroad in the suburbs, or cultivating their garden patches, or hiding themselves in their own houses, will be once more visible, and the pavement will once more echo to the sound of feet. By a seeming miracle the streets have become almost full. Melbourne has become an intelligible place to live in. The shops, now that the window shutters are down, are seen to be beautifully fitted up. The buildings are for the most part new, and they are never grimy. One remembers that in the heart of Sydney there are pervading evidences of smoke and grime. One must give Melbourne its due. It has something to boast about. It has been magnificently laid out. Its measurements are on a generous scale. It is fine and large and bracing. One forgets the chill sensation left by those deserted streets and those grim-looking window shutters. The Block has become a centre of bustle and animation. Again the thought presents itself that this place may have a heart of its own, that it may have a personality, even a warmth, concealed behind those set features and those formal lines.

Further acquaintance with Melbourne increases the respect felt for it. One gets to like it for the same reason that the Londoner gets to like London. It is not a question of beauty, or simplicity, or gentleness of form and feature. One gets to like it because of its greatness, and because of its strength; perhaps also, in the case of the older residents, because of the thought of the splendid life and animation that were part of it fifteen or twenty years ago, and that may be part of it again. The Melbourne man, after a certain lapse of time, acquires a personal feeling for his self-contained, self-respecting city. He learns to recognise its various moods--for even Melbourne has moods--and to enter into them all. He would not care for it if it were flashy and volatile like other places. He can admire it for its reserve and its silences. He knows that, go where he will, he will not find a cleaner, wider, more spacious city to dwell in. And he is fully aware that for him Melbourne reveals much of what she keeps hidden from the stranger; that she will show to him as to one of her lovers a warmth and friendliness that are the more satisfying because not universally shared.

Commercially, Melbourne is not what it used to be. It has lost the sparkle, the animation of other days. Yet, whatever else it has lost, it has retained its consciousness of former prosperity. It is as proud as ever; in fact more proud than in the days when people were pouring into it by thousands, and when fortunes were being made every five minutes in its principal streets. Diminished prosperity has caused it to hold its head higher. And at stated times, like some proud but impecunious beauty, it insists on recalling itself to the mind of the world. On Cup Days and _fête_ days it scores a triumph: it arrays itself in the festal garment of the early ’nineties, and queens it to the admiration of the stranger within its gates. On these occasions Melbourne is incomparable. It has no need to be envious, because it is the admired of all admirers. When the cheering is over, and the crowds have departed, and the lights are being put out, Melbourne retires moodily into itself, goes about its daily business with an abstracted air, and consoles itself intermittently by talking of the long deferred prosperity which it insists must come.

For if the place fails in this or in that respect, it never fails to keep its expectations high. It has been doing this for the past dozen years or more. It has long outgrown its happy-go-lucky, red-shirted, soft-collared, mining, pioneering days. It has no wish to recall these outward symbols of an earlier and a vanished generation. With the memory of many losses and many disappointments, there is still the determination to put the best face on everything. Though the crowds no longer hum and vibrate round its chief thoroughfares, it retains its streets and its houses, its spacious theatres and commodious public buildings; its magnificent Houses of Parliament, its squares and gardens, its network of railways and tram lines, its villa residences at St Kilda and its mansions at Toorak. The outward shell of things is still there. Every now and then there is a sign of movement, an agitation as of returning life. The people are convinced that something is going to happen. The period of depression, they say, cannot last for ever. In imagination they can see the Golden Days ever returning.

Meantime, the business of keeping up appearances goes on. Melbourne has become accustomed, through sheer force of insistence on its individual merits, to regard itself as everything that a modern city ought to be, and as most things that other cities are not. It prides itself on a great deal--on its music, its art, its culture, its architecture, its good looks, and its intelligence. In the matter of dress it aspires to set the fashion for Australia. Men and women join in this amiable rivalry. The girl of the Victorian capital is more severe in demeanour, more classic in pose, and more punctilious in attire than her Sydney sister. She takes herself more seriously. She has few _negligé_ airs and graces; she does not cultivate the irresponsible freedom of the gown of Nora Creina; she arrays herself for the Block with a firm resolve to compel critical admiration. And in this she generally succeeds. The men of Melbourne live in starched shirts and expensive broadcloth. They cling tenaciously to that fading relic of an earlier civilisation--the bell-topper hat. Social life in the city would be impossible without one. The Universities keep up their quota of students, whether the parents can afford to pay or not. The theatres can attract audiences even for a performance of Wagner, or a revival of Shakespeare. The city fathers set an example of dignity to the rest of Australia. The politicians rarely call each other bad names, and never indulge in free fights on the floor of Parliament.

Behind all this outward seeming there is, it need hardly be said, a great amount of make-believe. Melbourne is only the temporary capital of the Commonwealth, but it is the permanent centre of--to use an ecclesiastically sounding word--attitudinarianism. Its mental life is more the expression of a desire to be thought superior to others than the outcome of any set of inborn predilections. Its intellectuality has the motto _videri quam esse_. There is not one of its learned pundits or its _litterateurs_ or its native born poets who has won much outside reputation. Its scrupulous regard for dress is the screen for much actual poverty. Its vaunted cosmopolitanism has no real existence. Its social circle is, only too often, the playground of snobs. Its professed public virtue deceives no one. In Sydney the spectacle of vice undraped, and of Lais plying her profession in the public streets, is more insistent and more familiar. But in Melbourne there is as much for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to grieve over, though there may be less that meets the casual eye.

When the last word has been said on the subject--when it has been admitted that Melbourne pretends a great deal and poses a great deal, and hides a great deal--it is yet a fact that the city retains among its people much of sterling worth, and many of the elements of greatness. From the army of those who are not what they claim to be, or not what they would have you think them to be, may be picked out a leaven of those who are entitled to respect, and perhaps to something more. Alert, quick-witted, well-read, well-mannered, tolerant, and scrupulously fair--that is the type which may be encountered if the search is keen enough. Hereafter, this type may set the standard. At present, all that can be said of it is that it is there.

The fact must always stand to the credit of Melbourne that it is capable of generous enthusiasms. When it lets itself go, it does so without reserve. Carlyle has remarked that a man who can laugh unrestrainedly, even if he only laughs once, is not wholly bad. A city that can cheer unitedly and unreservedly, whether for a singer, an orator, an actor, or a returned contingent, has at least some prospect of emerging from the wilderness of shams in which it happens to be located. Melbourne rises to greatness the moment it forgets itself.

X

THE NOVELIST AND HIS SELECTION

Some are born great, some achieve
greatness, and some have greatness
thrust upon them.--MALVOLIO in _Twelfth Night_.

He is a remarkable figure. It has remained for Australia to produce him, and he is peculiar to Australia. He stands now in the full blaze of the limelight. It has been centred on him for the past couple of years or more, but the operator has not thought it necessary to move the screen, and the audience, for its part, is quite satisfied. Business is keeping up splendidly. There are some who say that a prophet, and especially a literary prophet, must be without honour in his own country. True as the statement is in the main, there are occasional exceptions. One of these is furnished by the young man in the shirt sleeves and the riding breeches, the young man with the resolutely modest expression on his features, the young man who has been photographed and paragraphed throughout the continent. He is a man of much talent. English _Punch_ and Sydney _Bulletin_ both say so. Sir John Madden declares that a copy of one of his books should be in the hands of every boy and girl in the Commonwealth. That should be enough. Let us, therefore, sing Viva! Let us sing it unitedly, for the winter of our literary darkness is passing, nay, _has_ passed away.

Every one is aware by this time that Mr “Rudd” writes about the back-blocks of Australia. He has discovered them. In fact, he has almost invented them. What a region it is! To the casual observer it may lack something in variety of scenery, in charm of association, in human interest. But then the casual observer is not one who need be taken seriously. Still less is he one whose opinion on literary matters is of much value. In this interior region of the great Southern continent there are shingle huts, and wire fences, and occasional gum-trees, and the dry beds of creeks, and the thin crops struggling above the surface of the ground, and, for the rest, a flat monotony of desolation. For human interest there is an occasional sun-browned, dirt-begrimed settler, an occasional ragged and vacant-faced youth, an occasional dull-eyed, but stout-hearted woman. These people are part of the life of the nation, and it is instructive to read about them. In “Steele Rudd’s” pages they have their exits and their entrances, their humorous, tragical, quaint, fantastic, sordid, and pathetic phases. The novelist has done them every justice. So much justice has he done them, that they have come, in a manner of speaking, to obscure the horizon. Three books have been written about them, and the reading public is not yet satisfied. It is still--or was a few months ago--clamouring for more; it will take as much more as the author cares to give.

It is admitted that “Steele Rudd” has done a great thing; but it may still be asked whether it is possible to praise a local writer sanely and temperately, without going into ecstasies about him, without making both himself and ourselves look ridiculous. Is there only one man in Australia whose books are worth purchasing? Has the city life, the business life, the artistic life, the ambitious life, the intense social and political life of civilised Australia nothing to say for itself? Must we reserve _all_ our superlatives, _all_ our limelight, and _all_ our hard cash for this writer who keeps telling us, with persistent and applauded iteration, about the shingle hut and the awful wire fence, and the frightfully monotonous prospect of ragged selector and sunburnt plain? What of our million and a half city residents? What of the light and the love and the laughter of Collins Street and Circular Quay? Is it not a fact that these have been crowded out, unfairly crowded out, of the canvas? It is no wonder that outsiders call us parochial. It is no wonder that they say we are lacking in perspective. It is no wonder that, when we go to London, they judge us by our odd pieces of _genre_-painting, and tell us that there is no market for that sort of thing in the metropolis--that we had better have stayed at home.

It is astonishing how few people, even of those who have lived in Australia all their lives, have succeeded in discovering Australia. It gives one almost a shock to reflect upon the amount of misconception that has been spread throughout two hemispheres by Mr A. B. Paterson, Mr Henry Lawson, Mr “Rudd,” and one or two others. Incredible as it seems, it is yet a fact that there are several varieties of soil and climate to be met with in this benighted part of the world. A man may take himself out of sight of the seacoast, he may even settle on the land, and yet have no experiences of drought, of duststorms, of dry creek beds, or of thermometers at 120° in the shade. He may even find that the weird melancholy of his place of abode has to be manufactured out of his own imagination. In one part of the continent, and that a part getting well up towards the Equator, there are the Darling Downs, which are neither monotonously melancholy nor afflicted with recurrent drought. And at the opposite end of the continent, in the south of Western Australia, there are magnificent forests of karri and jarrah, a soil capable of luxuriant growth, a hundred thousand square miles of rain-fed land waiting for the plough. In the western district of Victoria is to be found the Southern home of English grasses, of European cereals, and of leafy trees. Another land of streams and of fertile country stretches south from Port Jackson to Twofold Bay. Within a couple of hours’ train ride of Sydney there is the western mountainous district, than which there is no finer tourist ground in this or in any other continent. When will some one write for us the romance of the jarrah and the karri forest? When shall we hear, as a change from the foreign sentiment of the Tyrolean Alps, the love story of Katoomba and of the Blue Mountains? Is there ever going to be an Australian Hardy to make lifelike fiction out of the Victorian western district? Are these scenes, these places, these happy hunting-grounds of the nature and humanity lover, to be, like the brave men who died before Agamemnon, always unknown because of the want of an inspired bard?

It is true that there is a dry and dusty and drably monotonous side to Australia. This is the side that is most constantly written about. Geographically it is of the greatest importance, because it takes up so much space. So far as its population is concerned, it amounts to little more than a bagatelle. The people who inhabit it are about as numerous as the ghosts of lost explorers in the Arctic Circle. Everything is against it as a residence for white men--its blare of relentless and scorching summers, its bleak and rainless winters, its dry creek-beds, its brick-like plains, its ungenerous soil, its tremendous distances, its fearful monotony, its unspeakable isolation. Yet it is an extraordinary circumstance that white men go there. They go to live at Burke, and at the back of Burke. Other land is waiting for them, other and more genial parts of the continent are clamouring for settlement. Yet, for some unknown and inexplicable cause, because of some hope that is greater than experience, because of some pioneering instinct that is superior to reason, because of some courage that is stronger than death, men are to be found ready to plunge into this hard wilderness, believing they can tame it and break it in.

The books of the most successful Australian novelist are concerned with the doings of these agricultural pioneers. He has exploited them for all they are worth; a critic might be inclined to say for more than they are worth, if he had not in mind the extraordinary result of the recent flotations. There has been quite a sensation on the local literary exchange. Mr “Rudd’s” debentures, after three successive issues, are as firm as ever. He has monopolised the market. Who else can command a price for this kind of paper--the paper that gives a mortgage over Australian literary securities? The promoter of Dad and Company, Limited, has had on his side the most experienced “bulls” to be met with in Melbourne and Sydney. The “bears” have so far had no voice in the matter. One particularly useful “bull” is he who operates with a pencil. The illustrations of “Our Selection,” and of “Our New Selection,” and of “Sandy’s Selection,” are very striking and effective. If there is something that the terse language of the novelist has failed to convey, or if the imagination of the reader is not quite vivid enough to conjure up the whole picture, there is the artist’s sketch or portrait to help out the illusion. Another individual, whose value in sending up literary stock can hardly be overestimated, is the journalistic fugleman. He has been unanimous from end to end of Australia, and his share in the “Steele Rudd” boom must not be allowed to go unrecognised.

It is a game that many play at, this game of novel-writing; and when some one appears with dramatic suddenness, and carries off the one prize worth having, it is necessary, it is inevitable, that we should endeavour to find out how the feat has been accomplished. We know that he has succeeded, but how, and by virtue of what gift, or mannerism, has he succeeded? Is it by sheer virtue of literary merit, style, finish, or that kind of attribute? These are what one would naturally look for in any contest where pen and ink are the chief weapons. But the search in this instance would upset preconceived ideas. “Steele Rudd’s” literary garment is pure homespun. There is no embroidery, no tapestry, no rich colouring of any sort. Even the favourite Australian expletives are much watered down. One character says “damn you” to another character, and says it often, but otherwise the vocabulary of profanity is not drawn upon. The Australian novelist might have been tempted to take a leaf out of the book of Rudyard Kipling, but he has not done so. For this we can thank him. He gives no fresh terms, puts no strain on the meaning of adjectives, and takes no liberties with the English language. He deals very largely with monosyllables. Often he leaves out introductory and connecting words, thus giving his paragraphs a jerky, staccato effect. It is a style that Henry James would marvel at, but one that the man in the street thoroughly understands. The intelligibility constitutes its great merit. Yet, even this latter quality, though it may be rare, is hardly rare enough to carry the possessor to affluence and fame.

In what, then, does the supreme virtue of “Steele Rudd’s” novels consist? Is it in the character-drawing? Here again the answer must be in the negative. A thousand readers will rise to their feet as one man, or as one woman, and point to the figure of Dad, the original selector, as a supreme triumph of characterisation. But what has Dad done to render himself original, or in any special way distinctive? As he appears in these pages he is ragged, sun-browned, simple-minded, good-hearted, optimistic, and persevering. It is a character one likes, a temperament one admires. It is a figure that the Australian public has taken to itself, and one that only a sacrilegious person would speak of in disrespectful terms. We pass by Dad with all deference, only venturing to remark that while we admire his courage and perseverance, we find his optimism somewhat reminiscent of Micawber, and his simple-mindedness faintly suggestive of my Uncle Toby. And we say without any deference, that the subsidiary figures, the Dan’s, and Joe’s, and Kate’s, and Sal’s of the “Selection” series, exhibit very little character-drawing worthy of the name.

There must be some other reason for the author’s triumph. If the cause is not to be found in a superlative literary quality, or in the subtle analysis of character exhibited by Meredith and others, it may be discoverable in the absolute fidelity to nature of certain scenes and incidents. Have we unearthed in “Steele Rudd” the Australian painter of real life--a man who can emulate in the Southern Hemisphere the example set by Gorky in Russia, or Zola in France, or Gissing in England? Scarcely this, either. From the pen pictures of these back-blocks novels the element of realism is, for the most part, dexterously eliminated. There may be--there are, pages out of real life. But if the author, or any one else, told the whole truth, or half the truth about the stunted growths and dull intelligences that result from too long and too intimate an acquaintanceship with the Australian desert, the book would not be considered pleasant reading. The people who buy it now would put it on one side with a slight shudder, and a Chief Justice would not refer to it as the kind of volume that should be in every household, and studied by every boy and girl. Mr “Rudd’s” so-called lifelike pictures are much idealised. The palace of Claude Melnotte by the Lake of Como was not more preferable to the gardener’s hut, than is the cheerful, breezy existence of Dad and Mother and their _entourage_ to the soulless, hopeless life-struggle of a certain kind of Australian family. To be a genuine realist, you must not only give the hard facts, but reflect the atmosphere of your characters and places. The atmosphere of “Steele Rudd” is nothing if not buoyant; the writer is always confident, and always smiling, even when he is telling about ruined crops, and suffering adults, and hungry children. If he is not a true romanticist, neither is he an absolute realist. He is as far from being a Zola as he is from being a Beaconsfield.

Yet a triumph is a triumph; there must be some reason for it; it cannot be built, or, at least, it cannot be sustained on air. If we put aside the literary quality which is not stipulated for, and the character-drawing which scarcely exists, and the realism which is mainly imaginary, we are driven back on the humour--that impregnable Torres Vedras behind which every devotee of the “Selection” novel sooner or later entrenches himself. It must be the humour. The word is one that has a very wide meaning. A man might more profitably endeavour to number the stars than to bring the elusive quality of humour within the four quarters of a satisfactory definition. For practical purposes it may be observed that a humorous thing is that which strikes you as humorous--though how, and when, and why it should strike you, are matters that rest entirely with yourself. The most learned pundits have laid it down as an axiom that there is great humour in the spectacle of the fool in _Lear_ reminding his mad and weather-beaten master of the sorry spectacle he is making of himself. “Steele Rudd,” beyond all question, is a humorist, and not the less one because his comic episodes take place in an atmosphere that is compounded much more of tragedy than of mirth. The incidents themselves--say, for example, those of the parson and the scone, of the racecourse and the worn-out brumby, of Dan and the snake-bite, of Dad and the hoe--are scarcely calculated to make a sympathetic reader laugh. But running through the episodes as a whole, and colouring the work as a whole, there is a certain suggestion of humour which it is difficult to locate or analyse; a certain lightness of touch which can hardly be explained in words; a certain buoyancy of treatment that makes reading easy; a certain creative quality that is rarest of all, and hardest of all to define.

The humour and the local colour would appear, therefore, to have carried the day. An author has arisen in this country who can make his readers smile, and who can convey to them an impression of certain places and of certain people peculiar to Australia. It does not matter so much why they smile, so long as the smile is visible. In regard to the local colour, it is necessary to remark that this is not quite the same thing as realism, though the two are often associated. Local colour is the mask behind which realism may or may not exist. With the aid of these two qualities, or gifts, or attributes, the young man who writes under the pseudonym of “Steele Rudd” has travelled a long way. Perhaps no one is more surprised at the distance he has compassed than himself. There is evidence in his latest work that he is beginning to collect himself; that he is recovering from the shock of his literary advancement, and is beginning to attempt stronger and less fantastic things. He may do better even than he has done yet. Every one will hope that it may be so; for the writer with a gift like his is not common in this or in any other country.

But there is another phase of his literary enterprise that must be considered. It has to be borne in mind that the “Selection” novel does not exhaust the methods of communication between Mr “Rudd” and his public. The people who acclaimed the author in book form, are--or were until a few months ago--getting him in magazine edition. The monthly print which has sprung into existence on the strength of its editor’s reputation is not only baptized with his pen name, but contains regular instalments of his wit and fancy. Once again the familiar figures rise before us. Once again we are invited to gaze on Dad with the whiskers, and Joe with the patched trousers, and Mother with the arms akimbo and the round face. Once again we breathe the atmosphere, once again we hear the language. Once again we are reminded of the simple economic truth that, so long as there is a demand for any commercial or literary product, a supply will be forthcoming.

It is distinctly a matter for congratulation that there should be original effort, and individual style among the writers of Australia. The continent should be well able to maintain two or three magazines of its own. One has only to think of the talent that is running to waste. In a majority of the Sydney and Melbourne daily papers, brains are allowed to show themselves, and are occasionally encouraged. If any one takes the trouble to read, critically and carefully, six successive issues of one of these big “dailies,” he will find much that is calculated to surprise him. If he is not surprised, it is only because he has been long accustomed to the menu. A great deal of skill in the use of sentences, some vivid delineations of men and places, much artistic discernment, undoubted eye for effect, literary or dramatic criticism of a bright and illuminative character--all these, and more, can be found now and then in the columns of the metropolitan press. Talent is going to waste for the reason that the authors are usually unrecognised, the work is underpaid, the public take all for granted, and the writers, when their brilliancy begins to wane, are expected to remove themselves and their fading fortunes to another arena. There _should be_ Australian magazines strong enough and popular enough to win for the man--the really able man--who grinds out his soul on a morning or evening paper at least an Australian recognition. There should be, but there are not. The reason, if sought for, is to be found in the deep-rooted, the seemingly ineradicable habit of obtaining magazines, along with the latest book, the latest melodrama, the most up-to-date hat, and the newest thing in waistcoats, from London or Paris, and from nowhere else.

“Steele Rudd’s” magazine can claim the great merit, the unusual distinction, of standing on its own feet. Whatever else it does, or does not do, it gets its materials from within the continent. When it deals in new ideas--a somewhat rare occurrence for a monthly magazine--the ideas can be set down as its own. It finds no trouble in filling up space. The old friends are there, but they dance to slightly different tunes. Here and there a costume has been altered, here and there is a fresh streak of colour, here and there is a new dab of paint. There is nothing _décolleté_ about any of the literary figures, or about those supplied by writers in this magazine. All are decent and proper on the moral side. The one stipulation is that they must be Australian. How they grin and twist and tumble, these subsidiary performers whom the “Selection” novel has called into existence! Here is the contributor who is to speak a piece about art and the Bohemian quarter--save the mark!--of Sydney and Melbourne. Here is our amusing friend of the red page. Here is our local story writer, with his rather tragical humour, and his rather humorous tragedy. Here is our minor poet, tuning his lyre and tearing his hair. And here is the editor himself, smiling genially, conscious of his triumph, but modest, inflexibly modest, the while. They are all writers for “Steele Rudd’s” magazine. The trail of “Steele Rudd” is over them all.

What is to be thought of this latest development? Is there scope for it in Australia? Will it be permanent? Or is the author giving us a little more than we originally bargained for? Does he recollect the parallel case of Tithonus:--

I asked thee: Give me immortality;
And thou didst grant mine asking with a smile,
Like a rich man who cares not how he gives.

The analogy is obvious. We, the suppliant public, are Tithonus; Mr “Rudd,” the person supplicated, is Aurora. We asked him to give us more of his “Selection” literature, and he, the rich man mentally, granted our request--granted it with a smile. But, again like Tithonus, we scarcely realised what we were asking for, or how much we were likely to get. For Mr “Rudd” _himself_ we have always a welcome, and always some pieces of silver. But for a whole school of “Rudds”--a recurring atmosphere of “Rudds”--a monthly and ever present edition of Joe and Sandy and the rest--we were not entirely prepared. The significant circumstance is that writers in Mr “Rudd’s” magazine are beginning to imitate Mr “Rudd.” When a young lady contributor is found beginning a sketch of a place out back with monosyllabic question and monosyllabic answer--when “Mick” and “Sam” and “the girls” are once more brought forward--it is to be apprehended that the influence of the master is at work, and that others are attempting a task which can be _safely_ entrusted only to one.

The story of the “Selection novel” as popularised in this country teaches a useful, if rather obvious, moral. In any world, literate or illiterate, there is nothing succeeds like success. There is no fixed law or principle about these matters. There is no critic whose opinion is worth anything when weighed against the opinion of any other critic. “What am I, the dreamer, but a dream?” writes Victor Daley, _à propos_ of the riddle of existence. How can we, the lookers on at the game, know what the verdict of the public will be, or whether thumbs will be turned up or down? One man has a fondness for the poetry of Shelley, and another prefers the prose of Mr Lorimer; one man has a passion for _Lohengrin_, another would rather have three hours of _The Country Girl_. And if the majority prefer it, if it gives them more genuine pleasure, _The Country Girl_ is the better work of the two, whatever some opinionated critic may say to the contrary. It is useless to argue about opinions. There is only one recognised criterion, and that is success. There is only one way of measuring success, and that is by the monetary standard. When cast into the scales, the third, and in some respects the weakest of “Steele Rudd’s” books, weighs out at £500. And this for an Australian literary man is the most conspicuous success yet achieved.

XI

THREE WRITERS OF VERSE

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music, too.

Yes, we have our own music: and it is not all thin in quality, nor is it all played upon a single string. A rare value, a special distinction attach to the achievements in verse of Victor Daley, who is one of the latest to join the great company of poets in the shades. He did his work for a people who were somewhat indifferent and who, when they appreciated, showed their appreciation in no very practical way. And now, when he is

Far too far for words or wings to follow,
Far too far off for thought or any prayer,

these fitfully poetical, but wholly good-hearted people of the continent in which he lived are inclined to regret him. It is a regret that does them credit, though it can be tempered with some reflections of a more satisfying kind. For Daley was honoured probably as much as--perhaps more than--most poets are by their contemporaries. It is possible to believe that in the long twilight which preceded his earthly eclipse, he believed that he had given lasting shape and form to some of the more beautiful, more intangible things of life, and found sufficient consolation in the belief. There is not a great deal to be said about the life history of Victor Daley. Some one of those who rhymed with him, drank with him, joked with him, or sat up all night quoting verses with him may yet write his biography. But it will not be a startling or an eventful document. He was of Irish parentage and came to Australia--unless a statement made by one of his most intimate friends is erroneous--when nearly out of his teens. He drifted into journalism, as many men of restless temperament and uncommercial principles do. He wrote a great deal both in prose and verse for Melbourne papers, for Sydney papers, and for up-country papers in New South Wales. He married early, and children grew up round him. When he died in Sydney towards the end of December 1905, he was but forty-seven years of age. The lingering illness that preceded his death left him in straightened circumstances; so straightened, in fact, that his friends thought less, at the finish, of his chances of immortality than of the prospects of keeping a roof over his and his children’s heads.

His most important publication was the volume _At Dawn and Dusk_, which appeared about eight years before his death. It consisted for the most part of occasional pieces, reprinted from various papers. It brought the author a certain amount of intelligent and appreciative criticism, and a slight--but only a slight--monetary reward. Thereafter he went on his way; the fitful and uncertain way of one whom circumstances had forced into journalism, but whom temperament had made a poet. The book mentioned is his permanent record.

There are certain moods that are not easily expressed in the forms of common speech; that are not easily expressed at all. There are occasions when the average man wishes--it may be only for an instant or two, but he wishes--that he had some better medium of thought transference than the ordinary prose of ordinary use. For those few moments he could desire that the gods had made him poetical, even if for the remainder of his life he would prefer that they made him anything else. Then, it may be, there comes beating across his brain the recollection of a similar mood interpreted adequately and finely by another. He is grateful for the chance of appropriating and taking to himself that which he did not individually create.

One of these less prosaic, less frequent moods is that of sentimental regret. Every one knows it, every one has been through it. When looked back upon, it is an experience to be valued. It is always a relief from the harder outlines of the present. It need have no bitterness and scarcely a tinge of remorse. This mood, or the indulgence in it, is the tribute the man of sensitive mind pays to his better nature, to the woman he might have loved, to the ideal he might have attained. It is a mood that the million recognise, but that only the one in a million--that is to say, the genuine poet--should be allowed to express. Another mood, and a more impersonal one, is that which implies discontent with the present surroundings, and longing for more distant fields, for ampler opportunities, for less prosaic realities. The discontent may be merely petulant or it may have in it something of the nature of the Divine. All depends on the temperament of the individual. Yet another mood, and a still more pronounced and easily recognised one, is that of erotic or of semi-sensual desire. In its cruder and more direct form it is the mood that finds voice in the Shakespearian poem of _Venus and Adonis_; in its etherealised essence it is the mood of Shelley in the poem addressed to Emilia Viviani.

The first of these moods--the half-regretful, half-sentimental and wholly idealistic one--is finely interpreted by Daley in the verses entitled _Years Ago_. He voices a passion that is no longer a passion, but rather a figure of remembrance, from which the poetic temperament can draw Memnon music. The woman of these verses is not described, but suggested. There is no need to describe her. The reader must build her up out of his own experiences. She must always be looked at from a distance, and must always live in the mind of the man for whom the intenser passion of desire has become the soft glow of remembrance. Daley shows her silhouetted against the sky-line at the moment when his ship, the inevitable ship of Destiny, goes sailing:

Across the seas in the years agone;
And seaward set were the eyes unquailing,
And landward looking the faces wan.

The poem is a very fine one. It is musical, rhythmical, dreamily sensuous, and never crudely realistic. The workmanship is even, and the high level reached in the first verse is maintained to the end. The words and the treatment create their own sentiment, and always suggest more than they say.

There is another mood in which Daley has been equally successful--the mood of picturesque romance. This is the frame of mind in which he sails “into the sunset’s glow.” Here, also, he strikes a note that awakens a universal echo. Every man has wanted, at some time or another, to sail into the sunset, understanding by that word the whole untrodden, unattainable, indefinable, but brilliantly lighted and always glowing region that lies beyond the boundaries of the place in which he follows out the round of his allotted tasks. It is only on the wings of imagination that one ever arrives within sight of this region. And the wings themselves must be of a certain texture, or they will melt more quickly than did those of Icarus. There are only one or two people who can supply materials calculated to take the voyager there. Victor Daley is one of these. He has himself explained the necessary equipment:--

Our ship shall be of sandal built,
Like ships in old-world tales,
Carven with cunning art, and gilt,
And winged with scented sails

Of silver silk, whereon the red
Great gladioli burn;
A rainbow flag at her masthead,
A rose flag at her stern....

And perching on the point above,
Wherefrom the pennon blows,
The figure of a flying dove,
And in her beak a rose.

It is an auspicious, even a brilliant commencement. Dull and ungrateful must be the mind or temperament that refuses to acknowledge either the skill of the builder, or the perfection of the craft.

A third phase of Daley’s is one common to all poets, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Its impression is conveyed in what, for want of a more exact term, is called love poetry. It is not composed either of sentimental regrets or of sunset fantasies. It deals with the present and associates itself with one object--a living one. A certain class of writer conveys in this form of poetry a direct appeal to the senses. Daley rarely does so. He is always imaginative rather than realistic. He can play on more than one emotional string; but it is never so much the woman herself as the memory and the thought of her that he appears to caress. In the verses entitled _At the Opera_, which recall Browning’s _A Pretty Woman_, he puts his poetic creed into a sentence. Others may pluck the rose and watch it fall and die; “but I--

Love it so well, I leave it free.”

And even in _Blanchelys_, warmly tinted as it is, he suggests in the opening four lines an atmosphere that is far more idealistic than it is intense or burning:--

With little hands all filled with bloom,
The rose tree wakes from her long trance,
And from my heart, as from a tomb,
Steals forth the ghost of dead romance.

It stands to the author’s credit that his touch never vulgarises. He never drags his objective to a lower level; when his theme is woman he raises her to his own level, or to the one that he has created for her.