Australian Writers. Desmond Byrne
illustrated the fact that a single decade will sometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire people in a new and rapidly-developing country.
Thus, with the struggle for subsistence now keen to a degree which could not have been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a few years ago; with Parliaments, hitherto safely democratic, threatened with Socialism by the increasing practice of electing artisans [p 50] and labourers to do the legislative work of their respective classes; the crash of fortunes which never had substantial existence; the pauperising to-day of the paper millionaire of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old men, after overreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of life afresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the faltering novice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secure and cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business of government—with these and some social aspects still less agree able to contemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may have the disposition and ability to carry on the work which Clarke had indicated, but scarcely begun, before he died.
Long Odds, Clarke’s first story, deals with English life, and bears no resemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name is chiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a mésalliance, and horseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complications of gambling and [p 51] intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less to do with sport than the title suggests. The plot is mainly concerned with the selfish, cruel, and infamous in human nature—a singularly dark theme for a young beginner in fiction to choose. Except at rare intervals when the business of characterisation is momentarily set aside, as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster Steeplechase and the Matcham Hunt, there is little suggestion of youthful spirit or freshness.
The outlines of plot and incident are attractively arranged, the expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There are traces of Dickens’ burlesque without his sympathy, and the high colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton’s wit. Disraeli’s satire, too, is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book, is allowed no opportunity to show the better, and rarely even the ordinary, capabilities of the new race of which he is ostensibly a type.
[p 52]
It is said to be a well-understood maxim of the novelist’s art that many a liberty taken with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if the writer keeps a constant eye upon his villain, and deals honestly by him. In Long Odds there are two villains, and at least two others villainously inclined. Between the four of them the easy-going hero has no chance.
It is natural that, in the construction of a novel which aims at dramatic point before anything else, the ‘simple Australian,’ as his author is at last constrained to regard him, should seem less useful than the polished and unprincipled man of the world. But in this instance the balance of interest is too unequal. Dramatic quality has been secured at the expense of tone and proportion. Of the two male characters whose exploits in rascality it becomes the real business of the story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more natural and entertaining.
There is an attention to detail in his portrait which suggests that the lineaments of the conventional society villain may have [p 53] been filled in with the help of a little personal knowledge, perhaps of some of those morally doubtful individuals already mentioned as having been among the acquaintances of Clarke’s early youth. Dacre is the chief cynic of the story, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of the small stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is both his associate and enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of dastard, and altogether disagreeable.
The author is not entirely forgetful of the interests of his nominal hero. If throughout three-fourths of the story Calverley is made the plaything of circumstances that favour only rogues, he is at last allowed a triumph in love and sport which, though unsatisfying from an artistic point of view, is calculated to soothe a not too fastidious taste for poetic justice.
Conscious of the conventional character of his principal theme, the author apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. The result of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidents [p 54] that might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; the conceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviously improbable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverley and Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness which the reader carries away from the study of so much of the bad side of human nature.
In connection with criticism of this kind, it ought, however, to be noted that other hands besides the author’s are known to have contributed to the novel. Shortly after it began to appear serially in the Colonial Monthly, Marcus Clarke fell from a horse while hunting, and sustained a fracture of the skull which interrupted his literary work for many weeks. How much of the writing had previously been done seems to be a subject of dispute. It is, however, quite clear that, in order to preserve continuity in the publication of the parts, Clarke’s friends did write some portion of the story, but whether in accordance with the author’s scenario, supposing one to have existed, has not been stated.
[p 55]
‘Only a few of the first chapters’ were the work of Clarke, says the editor of the Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume, writing in 1884; but in an article published in the Imperial Review (Melbourne) for 1886, the contributed matter is limited to a couple of chapters written by Mr. G. A. Walstab, and skilfully inserted in the middle of the novel. Walstab was one of Clarke’s best friends, and he is no doubt the ‘G. A. W.’ to whom the story is dedicated ‘in grateful remembrance of the months of July and August, 1868.’
From the absence of a prefatory explanation when Long Odds was published in book form in 1869, it may be assumed that Clarke was satisfied with the quality of the contributed work. At least, he was willing to take the full responsibility of its authorship. But even with this in view, it were well, perhaps, not to hold him too strictly accountable for the faults of the story. Not much must be expected from a first novel produced in the circumstances mentioned, and issued when the author was only twenty-three. In his haste to give it final shape [p 56] immediately after the serial publication, he was probably ill advised. One can only regret that it was not set aside for a year or so, and written afresh, or, at least, largely revised. Perhaps this would have been expecting too much from so unmethodical a worker as Clarke. The far finer dramatic taste and literary form of his masterpiece, issued five years later, showed how little indicative of his talent was the earlier work.
In view of the large extent to which the life of the Australian landed classes has been described in fiction during the last twenty years, it is curious to read the plea Clarke offered to his Antipodean critics for passing over the literary material close at hand and preferring the well-worn paths of the English novelist.
During the serial publication of Long Odds the colonial press raised some objection to the laying of the scene in England instead of in Australia. The author replied simply that Henry Kingsley’s Geoffry Hamlyn being the best Australian novel [p 57] that had been, or probably would be, written, ‘any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting life of the colonies could not fail to challenge unfavourable comparison with that admirable story.’
The excuse is just a little too adventitious to have convinced even those to whom it was originally addressed. None the less, it may at the moment have accurately represented the opinion of a beginner who at that time could scarcely have known the extent of his own powers.
Probably he had given the subject little thought. His colonial experience was certainly less varied than Kingsley’s had been. Above all, his tastes, and in some degree his temperament, differed markedly from those of his predecessor in the field. The judgment or instinct that kept him from coming into direct competition with Kingsley—assuming his own questionable belief that any effort of his would have been competition—at least erred on the side of safety. That the immediate alternative should have been an imitative example of a hackneyed [p 58] class of English novel, ineffective of purpose, book-inspired, and tainted with the deadness of cynicism, is something which admits of a more definite opinion.
‘I have often thought,’ says the writer, referring