"Did shock of birth-bliss slay thy mother?
How from all kindred torn?
Than G.o.d"s all-seeing eye, what other Said that a man was born?"
But the poet is even better in his stirring moods, as in the well-known (in Australia) "Australian Youth"s Song." Here is one of the "jewels four lines long":--
"We live in hope--we live in hope!
Forget the day that"s gone!
Or dim or bright, the future"s light Is all to guide us on."
A strong man would shed tears over the same poet"s "The Dying Convict"s Letter." For that reason I shan"t quote it any further than to say it begins:
"In mental agony he lifted up His voice to Him who hears the sufferer"s prayer...."
That"s just what you feel like doing. The spirit of humility expressed in the poem is in sharp contrast to the ferocity expressed by a brother bard, who, on leaving Australia"s sh.o.r.es, shook his clenched fist at the continent and recited some lines ending--
"The rich man"s Heaven, the poor man"s h.e.l.l, Land of ----, Fare thee well!"
There has been a lot of controversy in the Commonwealth as to the missing word, so I leave it blank, and pa.s.s on to the ode that won the New South Wales Government prize of fifty guineas, in open compet.i.tion, as being the best "Occasional" for the birth of the Commonwealth. Listen to the opening:
"Awake! Arise! The wings of dawn Are beating at the Gates of Day!"
And that was addressed to the Australian for the purpose of arousing him! What chance had it of doing so; the Australian merely turned over and said, "Why the blanky blank should I get up?" It"s just as well that all should know here and now that the only way to waken Australia is to heave a brick at it--same as I"m doing.
One of the best known poets of Australia, I understand, is the Rev. Mr.
Cuzens, who published a volume ent.i.tled "Footprints of Jesus." I make bold to reprint a verse of "The Temptation":
"A dreary wilderness, a desert wild Of Nature"s varied loveliness despoiled, Stretched out, I see, in barrenness and woe A fitting emblem of the world below; Deep gloom and dread The land o"erspread."
I cannot say of what denomination the rev. poet was; but I understand it was written before the days of the Salvation Army commenced to enrich the world"s library of hymns.
There was also a poet named Kendall, of whom Australia is very proud.
The Press critics call him an "impulsive songster," and I do remember taking a little thing of his away in memory after reading a collection of his verse. The little thing went:
"There is a river in the hills I long to think about, Perhaps the searching feet of man Have never found it out."
It suggested to me at the time "Mary had a little lamb"--slightly uneven in the feet. Kendall was accused of purloining from Tennyson, and he explained--"We cannot pa.s.s through the woods without taking away the smell of violets." But that wasn"t the charge; it was that he dug the violets up by the roots and transplanted them in his own pages. But Kendall has gone; he has also his reward. I saw a life-sized painting of him in the hall of a Sydney sporting hotel when I was staying there. For what more can a poet ask in Australia?
Brunton Stephens, though he wrote in Australia, received his impression and education in the old world. He did not adopt Australia till he was 31 years of age, and a man gathers few new impressions after thirty; he lives in and writes of those of youth. Thus, strictly speaking, Stephens was not an Australian poet. Yet he was the only man in the country who ever wrote with a philosophic outlook (and a knowledge of prosody). He was not an admirer of Australian poetry either: "It lacks a fundamental basis of brain" was his verdict. Poor Stephens, Stephens the stickler for the precise word, the admirer of literary craftsmanship--this is what he got at the hands of an Australian bard, who wrote a critical biography of him on the literary page of the National newspaper; mine are the italics and parenthetical remarks:
"He was the youngest of a family of six--two brothers and three sisters." (Stephens once taught mathematics.)
"Fielding, Smollett, Shakespeare, _and_ the English cla.s.sics were more to the boy"s taste than athletics...." (What nationality were F., S. and S.?)
"At 11 his father died...."(!)
"The position was secured for him through the influence of a fellow student named Simpson, whose father later on became the discoverer of chloroform as an anaesthetic--and a knight." (Intrepid Simpson"s father.)
"They (the Leylands) literally rolled in riches."
"Within a week he delivered a lecture on "The Antiquities of Egypt" in the Brisbane School of Arts." (! again).
"Men of Stephens" temperament too often have made mistakes in marrying--it is sufficient to say that Stephens married the predestined woman." (As a matter of fact Stephens was most happily married.)
I merely mention these things to show how they treat a poet in Australia.
For the rest, the Australian poets are pessimists, alleged funny writers, and parodists of Swinburne and Kipling. Paterson"s writings smell of horse sweat and stable sweepings. Lawson sings of Colonial beer--which, dear English reader, G.o.d spare you from ever tasting--Daley retails the philosophy of that blasphemous old reprobate, Omar, with this difference--a pewter of Colonial beer, not a jug of wine. And then there are Gordon, and Sladen, John Cash Neild, Mr. Furtell and Farrell.
The last mentioned wrote a poem "How he Died." I"ve never read it, and don"t want to, so can"t say how he died. But if it was an Australian poet who was dying I know how he ought to have been killed. In the pleasant metaphor of his own country, he should have got it where the chicken got the axe.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE C.Y.A.
This t.i.tle, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 bra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 cla.s.sed 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.