Australian Tales. Marcus Clarke
advising him to secure the unknown genius for his journal, and so, in the course of a few weeks after meeting Dr. Lewins, Marcus Clarke appeared in Melbourne, and in February, 1867, became a member of the literary staff of the Argus. After an initiation into the mysteries of a newspaper office the young journalist was allotted the task of theatrical reporter, which routine drudgery he performed satisfactorily till one night he took upon himself to criticise an entertainment, which, unfortunately, through the indisposition of the chief performer, did not come off. This carelessness on the part of the imaginative critic led to his withdrawal from the Argus reporting staff, but his relations with that paper and the Australasian were, however, continued as a contributor. It was during this period that Marcus Clarke contributed to the Australasian the two masterly reviews on Doré and Balzac, published in these pages, besides writing weekly for the same journal those sparkling and humorous papers, "The Peripatetic Philosopher," which brought his name prominently before the public and placed him at once in the front rank of Australian journalists--and here it may be mentioned that the letter "Q.," under which he wrote the weekly contributions, was the stock brand of the station on which he had attempted to learn "colonial experience." Apart, however, from his contributions to the Australasian, he supplied special articles to the Argus, and acted as the theatrical critic of that paper for some time, during which he wrote some admirable critiques on the late Walter Montgomery's performances--critiques which gained for him the admiration and regard of that talented actor, though unhappily they fell out afterwards for some foolish reason or another. But the active brain of the sparkling littérateur was not satisfied with journalistic work merely. With the pecuniary assistance of a friend and admirer, the late Mr. Drummond, police-magistrate--whose death shortly afterwards by poison received from one of the snakes kept by the snake-exhibitor Shires, whom he held to be an impostor as regarded his antidote, caused so much excitement--he purchased from Mr. Williams the Australian Magazine, the journal in which had appeared his earliest literary attempts. The name of this he altered to the Colonial Monthly; and with praiseworthy enthusiasm set about encouraging Australian literary talent by gathering around him as contributors all the best local literary ability available. But, despite his laudable efforts to create an Australian literature, racy of the soil, he was doomed to disappointment and loss. The primary cause of this unfortunate result may be ascribed to the sneers which any attempt made by an Australian received at the hands of a few selfsufficient, narrow--minded individuals, who, sad to say, had the ear of the then reading public, because they unfortunately happened to be in a position to dictate on literary matters. It was in the Colonial Monthly that Clarke's first novel, Long Odds, appeared in serial form. Of this, however, he only wrote a few of the first chapters, as shortly after its commencement he met with a serious accident through his horse throwing him and fracturing his skull--an accident from the effects of which he never totally recovered. Some months prior to this mishap--about May, 1868--Clarke, in conjunction with some dozen literary friends, started a modest club for men known in the fields of Literature, Art, and Science --THE YORICK. This has developed in the course of the past fifteen years into one in which the three elements predominating originally are lost in the multifarious folds of "Professionalism." The Yorick Club was the outcome of the literary and Bohemian--analogous terms in those days--spirits who used then to assemble nightly at the Café of the Theatre Royal to discuss coffee and intellectual subjects. These gatherings grew so large in the course of time that it was found necessary, in order to keep the communion up, to secure accommodation where the flow of genius, if nothing else, might have full play without interruption and intrusion from those deemed outside the particular and shining pale. Accordingly a room was rented and furnished in Bohemian fashion, with some cane chairs, a deal table, a cocoa-nut matting and spittoons. In this the first meeting was held in order to baptise the club. The meeting in question debated, with the assistance of sundry pewters and pipes--not empty, gentle reader--the subject warmly from the first proposition made by Clarke, that the club should be called "Golgotha," or the place of skulls, to the last, "alas, poor Yorick!" This brief name was accepted as appropriate, and the somewhat excited company adjourned to a Saturday night's supper at a jovial Eating-House, too well known to fame. The first office-bearers of the club were:--Secretary, Marcus Clarke; Treasurer, B. F. Kane; Librarian, J. E. Neild; Committee, J. Blackburn, G. C. Levey, A. Semple, A. Telo, J. Towers. The first published list of members gives a total of sixty-four, but Time has made many changes in that list, and Death has been busy too. Of the sixty-four original members there have passed away the following well-known intellectuals:--BC Aspinall, Marcus Clarke, Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, T. Drummond, J. C. Patterson, Jardine Smith, A. Telo, Father Bleardale, etc. It was at the "Yorick" that Marcus Clarke first met one of whose abilities he entertained a very high opinion, and towards whose eccentric and mournful genius he was drawn by a feeling of sympathetic affection, namely, Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet, and the once king of gentleman Jocks. Nothing could have shown more assuredly the deep feeling and regard felt by Marcus Clarke for Lindsay Gordon than pathetic preface he wrote for the posthumous edition of the poet's works (an extract from which preface is given in this volume under the title of "The Australian Bush") when the poet himself put an end to his life, to the horror of the community, which did not learn till after the heartbroken poet's death that it was only the want of the wherewith to live upon which drove one of the brightest geniuses Australia has seen into a suicide's grave. To those who knew Gordon and Clarke intimately, the keen sympathy of genius existing between them was easily understood, for there was, despite many outward differences of manner, a wonderful similarity in their natures. Both were morbidly sensitive; both broodingly pathetic; both sarcastically humorous; both socially reckless; both literary Bohemians of the purest water--sons of genius and children of impulse. That the deep feeling for the dead poet and friend lasted till death with Marcus Clarke was evidenced by his frequently repeating when in dejected spirits those pathetically regretful lines of the "Sick Stockrider"--
I have had my share of pastime and I've done my share of toil. And life is short--the longest life a span; I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. For goods undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain 'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know-- I should live the same life over if I had to live again; And the chances are I go where most men go.
And to see him seated at the piano humming these lines to his own accompaniment, while the tears kept rolling down his cheeks, was proof enough that the tender chords of a beloved memory were being struck, and that the living son of genius mourned for his dead brother as only genius can mourn. Turning to a more lively memento of Lindsay Gordon, characteristic of him when the spirit of fun possessed him, the following note, written to Clarke and kept by him sacredly, will interest his many admirers:--
Yorick Club.
Dear Clarke,--Scott's Hotel, not later than 9.30 sharp. Moore will be there. Riddock and Lyon, Baker and the Powers, beside us; so if 'the Old One' were to cast a net--eh?--
Yours, A. LINDSAY GORDON.
It was shortly after Gordon's untimely and sad death that Clarke became acquainted with another erratic though differently constituted son of genius--Henry Kendall, the foremost of Australian-born poets. Kendall met with warm sympathy from the friend of Gordon, and, moreover, with a helping hand in the hard life-struggle--which the poet feelingly referred to in the following memorial verses written on the death of his friend and benefactor:--
The night wind sobs on cliffs austere,
Where gleams by fits the wintry star;
And in the wild dumb woods I hear
A moaning harbour bar.
The branch and leaf are very still;
But now the great grave dark has grown,
The torrent in the harsh sea-hill
Sends forth a deeper tone.
Here sitting by a dying flame
I cannot choose but think in grief
Of Harpur, whose unhappy name
Is as an autumn leaf.
And domed by purer breadths of blue,
Afar from folds of forest dark,
I see the eyes that once I knew--
The eyes of Marcus Clarke.