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 BRAZIER 
 
 IVlARCUS CLARKE
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
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 Marcus Clarke: 
 
 His Work and Genius. 
 
 A. W, BRAZIER.
 
 Marcus Clarke.
 
 COPYRIGHT 1902.
 
 Marcus Clarke: 
 
 flls liOotk ana CSenlus. 
 
 BY 
 A. W. BRAZIER, M.A., 
 
 (Sub-Librarian of the Public Library of Victoria, and, Presidoit of thi 
 Australian Literature Society). 
 
 " Ille potens sui 
 
 Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem 
 Dixisse ' Vixi !' " 
 
 ' Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei 
 
 Vitabit Libitinam." 
 
 —HORACE. 
 
 ECHO PUBLISHING CO., LIMITED, 
 
 Melbourne. 
 1902.
 
 PK 
 
 C75S73 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 When this monograph on his illustrious predecessor 
 in our noble Public Library was read by the author be- 
 fore the Australian Literature Society, its value as a 
 brilliant exposition of the work and genius of Marcus 
 Clarke was fully appreciated, and its publication urged, 
 in order that both those who had had the pleasure of 
 hearing it and those who had not might possess it in 
 a permanent form. It may be objected by people who 
 are always so sure of what they are not sure, that " we 
 know all about Marcus Clarke." But if, having any wish 
 to learn anything at all about one who remains facile prin- 
 ceps in the Australian section of English literature, such 
 people, who even know all about Shakespeare by glanc- 
 ing at the volumes that contain his works, will be at the 
 pains to peruse these pages, they will be undeceived. 
 Moreover, those of them who have underrated the artist 
 or misjudged the man will become better disposed to 
 appreciate at their true value the work and genius of 
 Clarke. 
 
 " 'Tis he who gives my breast a thousand pains, 
 Can make me feel each passion that he feigns ; 
 Enrage, compose, with more than mortal art. 
 With pity and with terror tear my heart, 
 And bear me o'er the earth or through the air. 
 To Thebes or Athens, when he will and where." 
 
 It is in the fitness of things that Mr. Brazier, 
 who is both Clarke's successor in office and Presi- 
 dent of the Australian Literature Society, in suc- 
 cession to the far-famed " Rolfe Boldrewood," 
 should be the writer of this monograph, as it was also 
 in the fitness of things that he should have read it before 
 a Society whose chief objects are the study of Australian 
 literature and the encouragement of Australian authors 
 whose work has artistic vakie or the promise of artistic 
 value — with which the commercial value, sad to say, is too
 
 oft at variance. And it is as well for the advancement 
 and usefulness of this Society, which has already a large 
 and daily increasing membership, including most of the 
 leading writers in Australia, as for the reasons above 
 stated, that this appreciation of the work and genius of 
 Clarke is now presented to a wider audience. 
 
 HENRY C. J. LINGHAM. 
 
 Melbourne, 
 
 February, 1902.
 
 MARCUS CLARKE: 
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 
 
 So much more is known of the Hfe of Marcus Clarke, 
 who has been dead now these twenty years, than of hi3 
 work, that I do not intend to deal with my subject bio- 
 graphically. Or rather, so many anecdotes abound, 
 more or less true, often silly, sometimes malicious, that 
 it is time some serious and adequate estimate were made 
 of the man as a writer, and of his genius, from a source 
 that is an open page to all, namely, his work. I will only 
 here state that a life of Clarke by Mr. Cyril Hopkins, an 
 old schoolmate of his, is to be published shortly. It will 
 no doubt be looked forward to with interest. Neither 
 do I intend to enter into idle speculations as to what 
 might have been if Marcus Clarke's mother had not 
 died when he was so young ; if his father had not died 
 at all, or had at least died wealthy; if he had not come 
 to Melbourne ; if he had not been a failure as a bank 
 clerk ; if he had not gone to Bullocktown ; if he had gone 
 to London at the invitation of the " Daily Teiegraph ;" if 
 he had been a model as a Government official ; because 
 " if ifs and ans were kettles and pans, what would tinkers 
 do?" 
 
 I, for my part, am quite prepared to take him as he 
 was, and would not risk his having been otherwise. But
 
 O MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 I venture to affirm that to label Marcus Clarke " Bo- 
 hemian" (whatever that may be), and then shelve him 
 in a dark and dusty corner of our intellectual warehouse, 
 is by no means an adequate or even a possible treatment 
 for such a man. With a heart as big as a basket, and, 
 one mav well admit, with quite no taint of the instincts 
 of the miser, he was a new Peter Bell. 
 
 A sovereign rolling on its rim, 
 
 A yellow sovereign was to him, 
 
 And it was nothing more. 
 
 Money was nothing to him but so much metal milled 
 to scratch the itching palms of those who plavv-^d upon his 
 good nature, upon a heart strangely simple in the affairs 
 of the world ; too generous even to be suspicious. I met 
 a man once who told me that Marcus had once borrowed 
 half a sovereign of him and had never paid it back. 
 Fancy ! It was to buy a bottle of champagne. How 
 dreadful ! We may safely presume, however, that Mar- 
 cus's creditor had his half of the bottle. And fancy a glass 
 of champagne with Marcus ! Which would have sparkled 
 more — the wine or the man? My first impulse was to 
 put my hand in my pocket and repay the debt ; but I 
 did not do so for two reasons : (i) the debt was evidently 
 regarded as " a hair of Caesar begged for memory, to 
 be bequeathed as a rich legacy." And so I had not the 
 heart to take it away. My second reason was that there 
 was not half a sovereign in my pocket. 
 
 But let us Melburnians look to ourselves. Marcus 
 Clarke has left us great wealth, as yet untold ; wealth 
 that beggars the word value in terms of gold. It is 
 coin stamped with the image and superscription of geniu.s. 
 Is there no currency for such coinage in this land of his 
 adoption ? Nay, is it true that " a few South Austra- 
 lians " over in Adelaide erected in 1898 a monument 
 over a long-neglected grave in a Melbourne cemetery? 
 Is it true that from Brisbane to Hobart — aye, from Cape 
 York to Port Arthur — a certain name is a name to con- 
 jure with in the hearts of Australians — save only where 
 lies that intellecutal desert, illiterate Melbourne? Is it 
 true that Sydney is now the capital of letters and the
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 9 
 
 centre of literary activity in *his Commonwealth of 
 Australia? Is it true that a certain weekly journal pub- 
 lished there — a publication whose vigfour the literati fail 
 to deny, but whose tone they are prone to deplore — 
 holds, and has earned, a representative position in Aus- 
 tralian literature? " Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers 
 of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May 
 we not wash in them and be clean?" Where is our " land 
 flowii-g with milk and honey"? Are the well-springs of 
 Jordan all dried up? And so the literary leprosy cleaves 
 to us still. 
 
 Was it so in Marcus Clarke's day? For, behold, the 
 glory has departed out of our heavens. Let but the light 
 of a sun go out, and his satellites, robbed of their re- 
 flected glory, roll restless and unseen in their ambitious 
 graves. All is dark and desolate now. Nay, let him at 
 least occupy the seat of honour to-night. Let us see 
 from his work, at one brief glance, what manner of man 
 he was who poured forth his wealth at our feet; giving 
 " like a rich man who cares not what he gives." And 
 then let us cry with ancient Pistol : " Base is the slave 
 who pays." 
 
 Let us open his " Peripatetic Philosopher " papers. 
 Now then, page i, chapter i., line i : "A certain sect of 
 ancient philosophers were wont to carry on their argu- 
 ments, not in heated rooms or noisy pub.'ic meetings, 
 not in the shade of pilastered porches or in cloistered 
 seculsion, but in the open air. As they walked they philo- 
 sophised. . . . They commented on all things. 
 
 ' Quid toto fiat in orbe ; 
 Quid Seres, quid Thraces agunt.' 
 
 A dirty little sunburnt Athenian gamm playing in the 
 gutter; the chariot with its three foaming liorses and 
 white-cloaked driver as the fat, full-fed city magnate 
 swept down to the baths ; the latest town gossip ; the 
 last escapade of Alcibiades, or the last bit of news con- 
 cerning Nicias and the army; the disputes of the 
 oily vagabond water-carriers ; the shrill clamours of 
 the women at the fountains — all had some interest for
 
 lO MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 these philosophers. Not for them the hot schools, where 
 fierce disputants split straws by the waggon-load, figura- 
 tively, and had more than split crowns, practically, all 
 the broiling summer's day — until the sun went down be- 
 hind the black olive groves on the hill, and the mighty 
 statue of Pallas stood out one sable mass against the 
 violet of the evening sky." That is not a bad start, 
 surely. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that the local habitation 
 and the number of our philosopher was : No. 2 Gaspipe, 
 Cole's Wharf. He says : " He is a poor philosopher, 
 whose shoes are down at heel and worn out in the soles ; 
 whose elbows are visible through his ragged jerkin ('tis 
 true, O Marcus !) ; who munches his black bread with 
 thankfulness, and in his inmost heart has an utter con- 
 tempt for everybody, himself included." 
 
 How our philosopher anatomises the new chum — 
 " Guy de Vere, for instance, who has been liberally edu- 
 cated, has fagged at Eton and been plucked at Oxford. 
 He is tolerably wealthy, and travels about for amusement, 
 which he never obtains. Not being endowed with 
 brains to any alarming extent, he is given to boasting, 
 and will talk about ' poor Hastings,' and ' that rum fellah 
 Hartington,' while he invariably speaks of the female 
 members of the aristocracy by abbreviations of their 
 Christian names, and bewilders the plebeian mind by 
 constant references to ' Lady Bab, you know,' and ' little 
 Emily,' and hints that, in his opinion, ' Flo' didn't do 
 badly, when you come to think of it.' And so on. He 
 walked down Collins-street once, it appears, and ' re- 
 marked that Melbourne was not the place for an idle man, 
 and that he should never again come further south than 
 the Mediterranean.' " " But Guy de Vere is an exception. 
 The average new chum disappears mysteriously, none 
 can tell whither. Dickens desires to know what becomes 
 of all the postboys and donkeys. I want to know what 
 becomes of all the new chums." Then there is the ana- 
 tomisation of " Mr. Montague Tigg ;" there is the share- 
 broker, " the names of whose friends read like a chapter 
 from the Book of Numbers." Sharcbroking, it appears, 
 is " not immaculate." There is the "parochial committee-
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. II 
 
 man," who is, " of course, intensely respectable and in- 
 tensely narrow-minded ;" who is " the father of a 
 family," and is " practical, sir, strictly practical ;" who 
 is " eternally rising to order, and begging" to say ' a 
 few words on the subject of hard-boiled eggs ;' " who, 
 being a member of some charitable institution, is "always 
 proposing economical tricks by which twopenny worth 
 of cream and one basin of gruel can be saved per diem — 
 amounting at the end of the year, Mr. Chairman, to a 
 very considerable sum." Then there is that exquisite 
 " reminiscence " — quite French in substance and in man- 
 ner — of a bet in which " I took five to one in Provinces 
 with Esterhazy concerning a statement of Louis Napo- 
 leon, that if he married, he would " marry a Bourbon and 
 consolidate the empire ;" and it is explained how Ester- 
 hazy " ow^s me the money to this day." There is that 
 picture by an Australian artist that " reminds someone 
 forcibly of Turner or Creswick." There is the Melbourne 
 cabman " smarter " than his London prototype, " because 
 he drinks brandy instead of gin ;" who is " like the hippo- 
 potamus of the showman — a singular unique animal," 
 who is " independent, bold, sturdy, and pot-valiant to 
 excess ; who is not altogether averse to bullying quiet 
 people ; and never has change late at night." There 
 is the "sham criminality" of the ingenuus puer, aetat 20, 
 who has committed, by his own hinted showing, all the 
 seven deadly sins seven times over ;" who " will sneer 
 at all that is pure and good, not because he has found 
 out that goodness and purity are simply relative terms, 
 but because he thinks that vice is manly, and purity a 
 quality confined to school-girls and Horniman's teas." 
 . . "One meets donkeys of this. sort all over the 
 world, but they swarm in Australia." . . . "Oh, 
 dear! will nobody say anything really worth listening to 
 in praise of poor, honest, ugly, neglected Virtue?" There 
 is the " little wonder " of the circus, who " one day, 
 while standing above the cruel faces she knows so well, 
 above the tobacco smoke and clamour, and rustle of silks, 
 and popping of corks, and shrill unnatural laughter, a 
 sudden sickness seizes her, and the ropes tremble, and 
 cross-beams swing before her, and women shriek, and the
 
 12 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 end has come to the poor ' little wonder.' . . . . " I 
 venture to think," he says, " that this is not an improve- 
 ment on the old times," on " those old Roman days." 
 There is Democracy — not Democracy " in a red cap 
 leaning- on a blood-stained axe ;" that is terrible enough ; 
 but " Democracy in ill-made dress clothes, spouting 
 watery adulation at a corporation dinner;" there are 
 " some people," it appears, " who combine the wildest 
 republicanism of sentiment with the profoundest humility 
 of deportment. They talk like Camille Desmoulins, and 
 act like Jeames in a new suit of plush. . . . They 
 talk about liberty of soul, equality of honest men, but 
 would disdain to nod to their tailor if they met him in 
 the street. . . . The fact of this apparent contradic- 
 tion is easily accounted for. They want equality to their 
 own level. . . . ' Gentleman ' (it appears) once 
 meant an honest, courteous, brave, and liberal man — a 
 man who had an arm to strike at oppression and vice, and 
 a heart to pity the repentant and weak. Now it means- 
 money, for one thing ; clothes for another ; social position 
 for another ; an ability to read, write, dance, and run into 
 debt for a fourth ; a certain style of speaking, looking, 
 walking and eating for a fifth ; but it means principally — 
 money." ..." Heaven save us ! I am no ' red re- 
 publican,' but the cant of ' good blood ' is utterly abomin- 
 able to me. As Crebillon said, ' I hope there is distinc- 
 tion of rank below, for the gentlemen will get the best 
 seats — next the fire.' . . . The sham aristocracy of 
 a country like this is pitifully absurd. Every man has 
 it in himself to make himself respected, honoured, and 
 ennobled. If he does not do it, let him take it for 
 granted that Nature did not intend him for an aristocrat, 
 and be contented." That is fair enough ; there is no 
 snobbery about it. The sympathies of our philosopher 
 go up even to the " Sixpenny Gallery " — amongst the 
 gods. His readers are " for the most part of the por- 
 celain of humanity — a little cracked here and there," 
 perhaps ; but he still " confesses a sympathy for common 
 clay." He " likes to see human nature with its coat ofif, 
 and to descend an octave in the social scale." . . . 
 " Did you ever study the face of a begrimed and shirt-
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. I3 
 
 sleeved son of toil as he leans over the railing in the 
 front of the gallery, and resting his chin upon one half- 
 naked and muscular arm gloats upon the stage, and 
 pushes his rusty cap back over his touzled head in in- 
 expressible rapture? He is well worthy the looking at. 
 So also is the fat matron, who unpins her shawl to gasp 
 the easier at the pathetic passages. So is the small boy 
 who cracks nuts," and the rest. " I made a study of an 
 old woman there the other night who would have been 
 worth iio,ooo to Eugene Sue. She was the only living 
 representative of La Chouette I ever saw. A glorious 
 old woman I Her hideousness was so superlative in its 
 magnificence that it was almost beautiful." But the 
 gallery folk do not " come in late, or bang the doors, or 
 talk loudly and laugh," as they do in the boxes. " Give 
 me the gallery," says our philosopher. There is the 
 " quiet club " called " Golgotha " — a literary club, the 
 place of skulls, of which " I may briefly mention th^t the 
 story about the newspaper lad being scraped to death 
 with oyster-shells at a late supper and buried in the 
 back kitchen is not absolutely true in all its details. 
 More I cannot reveal." Then there is the classification 
 of " Bows," of which " one method is purely colonial. 
 . . . It consists in grinning superciliously and then 
 jerking the head back over the off ear, as if to avoid a 
 tap on the chin. The instant the bowee recognises you, 
 you resume your wooden expression, and look as if you 
 had never seen him before. . . Indeed, when accom- 
 panied with a nonchalant swing of a threepenny cane, 
 etc." There is that on " Cant." " I am not good my- 
 self. I own it. Neither are you, reader. Neither is 
 Mawworm there, who leers at his neighbour's wife over 
 the top of his psalm-book. We are all human, and are 
 apt to err. For goodness' sake, let us be charitable. It 
 is so easy to be good if you don't want to be wicked." 
 I have no time to tell how our philosopher once " danced 
 until daylight at the Duchess of O — 's ball," and what 
 happened to his royal master ; nor how he wandered one 
 evening into an Arcadia of love in the Fitzroy Gardens, 
 and " felt out of place ;" of " those young gentlemen 
 who write those pretty letters to strange pretty faces " —
 
 14 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 " those letters with a P.S. : ' Meet me at Bourke and 
 Wills' monument at half-past eight.' And the pretty 
 faces come, too ! Ah me ! there is a great deal of human 
 nature in men and women." And of the railway refresh- 
 ment rooms, and " the mosquito-bitten boy there who 
 stared ostentatiously at a hole in my elbow and whistled 
 ' The Bloated Young Aristocrat ' with contemptuous 
 emphasis." And " Where are the boys of our boyhood, 
 O my Pompeius ? Where are those rosy-cheeked urchins 
 who played at prisoners' base and at marbles, who 
 * fagged out ' so tearfully and ' broke bounds ' so 
 eagerly ? Where are those happy fellows . . ? Gone, 
 like the years. Labuntur mini, Postume, Postume! The 
 years glide away and are lost to me — lost to me. Those 
 boys are grey-headed old fogies now." Then there is 
 " young Melibceus, yonder, who is five and twenty, red- 
 headed, freckly, stupid, and conceited," who " has 50,000 
 sheep, drives a drag," and ultimately marries haughty 
 Miss Belinda Battleaxe, whose fortune is nearly as big as 
 her feet." But I must pass the rest with regret — even 
 " the question, asked aloud, as to what has agitated your 
 gentle breasts this week, my dear public ; and the young 
 man with the fixed eye and greasy hair, who officiates 
 as waiter, and who stops before me in a stolid manner 
 and says: "Barmaids." "Why barmaids?" say I. To 
 which he makes no answer, but digging his fixed eye 
 into me, as it were — like one leg of a pair of compasses — 
 rolls the other one round me, and, with a contemptuous 
 snufiie, departs." And we must now dismiss our philoso- 
 pher to his private residence, " No. 2 Gaspipe, Cole's 
 Wharf." 
 
 One has only to read these papers of the " Peripatetic 
 Philosopher " to be forcibly and finally convinced that 
 Marcus Clarke was a man of tender, large, and far-reach- 
 ing sympathies. Nothing human is too mean to com- 
 mand his attention and interest ; nothing too high to 
 escape his censure. Nothing so brilliant of its kind has 
 ever before or since appeared in colonial journalism. It 
 is really not ephemeral literature at all, but literary art 
 of a very high order. How our philosopher sparkles
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. I5 
 
 with wit, too ! How true he rings — every time. How 
 strong he is ; how hard he hits. He will not surrender 
 even to divide the spoil with such conquerors as Sham, 
 Cant, and Humbug. One seems to discover a sort of 
 missionary spirit in this our Marcus ; not religious, but 
 social. He would have disclaimed it, no doubt, utterly. 
 But he is surely a new, an Australian, St. Mark, the 
 Scrivener, the Writer, the Clarke ; not a man of action, 
 but one who " held the mirror up to Nature,'* and " Na- 
 ture " did not altogether like it. Who was this upstart 
 who dared to make himself heard? And so he made 
 many bitter enemies. Well and good ; we would have 
 it so. " Friends " are often less a certificate of merit. 
 We can well understand how one so naturally gentle, 
 single-hearted, so refined and sympathetic as he was, 
 would revolt to the depths of his whole being against 
 whited sepulchres set up in high places, sepulchres full 
 of dead bones from which the spirit has, with all hope, 
 departed. Surely he was " dowered with the hate of 
 hate, the scorn of scorn," as well as " the love of love." 
 
 But we must get along to " Holiday Peak." We must 
 " ride hard all night in an Australian tempest." (There 
 is some brilliant descriptive writing — artistic, ideal — at 
 the beginning of this piece.) And then " you shake 
 your bridle, the mare lengthens her stride, the tree trunks 
 run into one another, the leaves make overhead a con- 
 tinuous curtain, the earth reels out beneath you like a 
 strip of grey cloth spun by a furiously flying boom, the 
 air strikes your face sharply ; the bush, always grey and 
 colourless, parts before you, and closes behind you like 
 a fog. You lose yourself in this prevailing indecision of 
 sound and colour. You become drunk with the wine of 
 the night, and, losing your individuality, sweep onward 
 on a flying phantom in a land of shadow." And so on. 
 " With what delight I hailed the glorious outburst of a 
 sunny morning!" I was " expected," it appears. " Ex- 
 pected ? Then what place is this ?" " It's got a lot o' 
 names," said Wallaby Dick. " Some calls it one thing, 
 and some another. I call it Holiday Peak, because I 
 comes here for my holidays ; but it's known to many
 
 l6 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 folks as Mount Might-ha-been." Many travellers stay- 
 here, it appears. There is even Ah Yung, the Chinaman, 
 who is " no cook. Me Chinee gentleman. Me might- 
 a-been cook if me run away on board ship, and go fool 
 my money away in lottery." There is Jack Reckless, 
 who " might have been in gaol for forgery, but instead 
 told his dear old father all about his debts, and so was 
 all right." And " Little Lucy," his wife. " You re- 
 member little Lucy." There is Gerard, "whose picture, 
 the ' Death of Alcibiades,' is the talk of the year?". " I 
 shall soon be as famous as you?" "As I? You jest." 
 "Ah, lucky fellow!" said Gerard, "how different things 
 might have been if you hadn't taken your uncle's ad- 
 vice !" (Sarcasm, Marcus ?) " You dine with Carabas 
 to-night, remember," said Gerard. " Balthazar Claes 
 and Byles Gridley will be there." There is Mostyn. 
 There are Dickens and Thackeray, who "never looked 
 better ;" " they are great friends now, you know." There 
 is Constantia, who did not marry Count Caskowisky, 
 after all. " Count Caskowisky be confounded," said 
 Gerard. " No, she married me. We have three chil- 
 dren. Sans adieu!" ..." I fell back in my easy 
 chair. I must be dreaming. But no ! there is my Swiss 
 valet, laying out my dress clothes." (It is all real 
 enough.) The Countess of Monte Christo has ordered 
 her lord to give up travelling, and, of course, he obeys. 
 He has, in fact, sold his island to an Australian wine- 
 grower, who has turned the cavern into cellars. There 
 is " poor Danglars ;" and Lord and Lady Byron, Balzac 
 being between them. There are Lord Steyne and Becky 
 Sharpe — beg pardon, Mrs. Crawley — and the rest ; the 
 Rev. Henry Foker and Archdeacon Castigan, Steerforth, 
 and Sir Montague Tigg. There is Warrington, who 
 
 married Laura, it appears. T thought that ' There 
 
 is " George Gentle and Mr. Casaubon at billiards, Major- 
 General Hinton, and Colonel Lorrequer betting on the 
 game." There is Admiral Cuttle, K.C.B,, and Prince 
 Djalma, who " could not resist Fosco." " Save Quilp, 
 I seldom found a more fascinating man," said Guy Liv- 
 ingstone. " He is too fond of violent exercise for my 
 taste, though. I detest your muscular heroes." " Who
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. I7 
 
 does not?" said Kingsley from a little table where he sat 
 with Dr. Newman and Swinburne. "Algernon, we're 
 four by honours." "And the odd trick!" interjected 
 Antonelli. " I decline to take advantage of an adver- 
 sary." (" Surely," I thought, punching myself violently, 
 " I must be dreaming!") And so on. " Here, then, was 
 Atlantis, here the Fortunate Isles, the Valley of Avilion, 
 the true El Dorado — the wondrous Land of Might-have- 
 been. . . . Charlemagne and Arthur had come 
 again, . . . and the mighty laughter of the heroes 
 shook the hall. . . . Yes, it was true. . . . All 
 around me were beauty, truth, honour ; and serene 
 in the midst of great and noble souls, I felt my spirit 
 strengthened and sustained. At length, above a door of 
 ivory, half hidden by a purple curtain, T saw, perched 
 upon the bust of Pallas, the mocking figure of a raven. 
 The door yielded, and I entered. I was in a long apart- 
 ment, going on a balcony open to the night ; as I entered, 
 a lady, clad in white, came towards me. I knew her at 
 once. It was the Lady Lenore. Lenore ! The lost 
 Lenore. She who forever waits and forever eludes our 
 passionate arms. Dante called her Beatrice, Petrarch 
 
 Laura, Burns knew her as Mary, Byron as ; but why 
 
 multiply names? 'Lenore.'" 
 
 She gave me two cool hands and kissed me. "At last, 
 then I At last, Lenore ! Our ' strange unsatisfied long- 
 ing ' is over ; and at last — oh, other half of my soul ! — I 
 have and hold thee." 
 
 She did not speak. I drew her to the window. ' I 
 know thou art real. Come, my love ; see, ihe boat lies 
 below. Let us leave this place.' In the far East, where 
 the waves tumbled white upon the shore, trembled the 
 dawn. The moon was fading, the city, the river, and the 
 enchanted gardens lay lapped in a mysterious light. 
 
 Alas ! "Come " "But even as I pleaded she seemed 
 
 to withdraw from me. One glance, sad and tender, pity- 
 ing and hopeful, thrilled me ; a farewell kiss, pure as fire, 
 light as a falling roseleaf, hushed my lips, and — I was 
 alone. Alone upon the triform hill, whose mysterious 
 altars reddened in the risen dawn. My holiday was 
 over."
 
 l8 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 See what this our Caesar has left us. Here is some of 
 the wealth I spoke of. Come, oh ye worshippers of 
 Mammon, slobber over his memory now. Come, oh 
 " Master of Arts of Trinity College, Cambridge, and 
 Bencher of the Inner Temple, who hadst a world-wide 
 reputation in literature, thou who wast glum once be- 
 cause thou wast indebted for thy dinner to this little cad, 
 who has just gone out " — of life. 
 
 See: 
 
 " He has left you all his walks, 
 
 His private arbours and new-planted orchards, 
 
 On this side Tiber." 
 
 The Tiber of death. Yes, he is quite dead now. Read 
 " Holiday Peak." How the printed page seems to glow. 
 The writer writes not in words, but in images. His pass- 
 ages are marvels of vividness and conciseness — flashes of 
 vision hardly less real because they are imaginative ; 
 rhythms of musical thought. What is this secret of 
 genius — a secret so subtle that genius itself cannot 
 answer ? 
 
 " Here was a Caesar! Whence comes such another?" 
 
 The citizens, forsooth, will have " the will, the will." He 
 died bankrupt, oh citizens, save for some few pages, 
 some few books, within the covers of which he is sealed 
 more securely than all the Pharaohs in the pyramids of 
 Egypt. He himself is all his wealth. 
 
 And " Pretty Dick," the seven-years' old son of Rich- 
 ard Fielding, the shepherd. " Pretty Dick was a slen- 
 der little man, with eyes like pools of still water when the 
 sun is violet at sunset, and a skin as white as milk — that 
 is, under his little blue and white shirt; for where the 
 sun had touched it, it was golden brown, and his hands 
 were the colour of the ripe chestnuts his father used to 
 gather in England years ago." He understood, it ap- 
 pears, " all about milking, did Pretty Dick ;" he could 
 chop wood ; he could ride, not a buckjumper, but old 
 Molly, the wall-eyed mare. " Everyone loved Pretty 
 Dick ; even old Sam, who had been a ' lag,' and was a 
 very wicked man, hushed the foul jest and savage oath
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. I9 
 
 when the curly head of Pretty Dick came within hearing; 
 and the men always felt as if they had their Sunday clothes 
 on in his presence." . . . 
 
 ' Mother,' said Pretty Dick, ' I am going down to the 
 creek.' ' Take care you don't get lost !' said she, half 
 in jest, half in earnest. 'Lost! No fear!' said Pretty 
 Dick. (He did though. How graphically it is all de- 
 scribed.) It is related how he went into " the bush ;" how 
 he became tired and went to sleep ; how he awoke, and, 
 seeing that it was getting late, " he must go home, or 
 mother would be frightened." But somehow " the trees 
 did not seem familiar ;" he seemed to hear his mother say 
 quite plainly, ' Take care you don't get lost. Pretty 
 Dick.' He " swallowed down a lump in his throat, 
 and went on again." He saw Mr. Gaunt, the overseer, on 
 horseback, and coo-eed — in vain. At length " he could 
 only stagger along from tree to tree in the gloomy woods, 
 and cry ' Mother ! mother !' " But there was no mother 
 to help him. ..." Nothing living was near him, 
 save a hideous black crow, who perched himself on the 
 branch of a withered tree and mocked him : ' Pretty 
 Dick! Pretty Dick! Walk! Walk! Walk!' At last 
 the sweet night fell, and the stars looked down into the 
 gullies and ravines, where Pretty Dick, all bruised, bleed- 
 ing, and despairing, was staggering from rock to rock, 
 sick at heart, drenched with dew, hatless, shoeless, tear- 
 stained, crying, ' Mother ! mother ! I am lost ! Oh, 
 mother ! mother !' 
 
 " The calm, pitiless stars looked down upon him." 
 . . . " Poor Pretty Dick ! No more mother's kisses, 
 no more father's caresses, no more songs, no more plea- 
 sures, no more flowers, no more sunshine, no more love. 
 . . . There, among the awful mystery and majesty of 
 nature, alone, a terrified little human soul, with the eternal 
 grandeur of the forests, the mountains, and the myriad 
 voices of the night. Pretty Dick knelt down, and, lifting 
 his little, tear-stained face to the great, grave, impassable 
 sky, sobbed, ' Oh, take me home ! Take me home ! Oh ! 
 please, God, take me home !' " 
 
 And so the days and the nights passed ; but " no one 
 came near Pretty Dick. He had almost forgotten, indeed,
 
 20 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 that there was such a boy as Pretty Dick. He seemed to 
 have Hved years in the bush alone. He did not know 
 where he was, or who he was. It seemed quite natural 
 to him that he should be there alone. . . . He had 
 lost all his terror of the Night. . . . The hut was 
 down in the gully yonder ; he could hear his mother sing- 
 ing; so Pretty Dick got up, and, crooning a little song, 
 went down into the Shadow. * * * They looked for 
 him for five days. On the sixth, his father and another 
 came upon something, lying, half hidden, in the long 
 grass at the bottom of a gully in the ranges. A little army 
 of crows flew heavily away. The father sprang to earth 
 with a white face. Pretty Dick was lying on his face, 
 with his head on his arm. God had taken him home." 
 
 Read " Pretty Dick " through. Does not Marcus Clarke 
 answer the supreme test of an artist — ^to clothe common 
 things of everyday life in beauty and interest — the beauty 
 of natural description, the beauty of innocence, of 
 family love, the beauty of a little child's mind? Surely 
 when he wrote that, he became as a little child, and 
 with Pretty Dick entered his new home. I asked a mother 
 to read " Pretty Dick " to her bright, wonder-eyed boy, 
 and to tell me the result. There were tears in his eyes at 
 the end, it appears ; and he thought for a long while, and 
 said, " How do they know the crow said ' Pretty Dick! 
 Walk! walk! walk!' if there was no one but Pretty Dick 
 there ?" Ah, my boy, if we only knew that, you should 
 have many stories like " Pretty Dick ;" many beautiful 
 stories, such as only a beautiful mind can tell ; such stories 
 as a mother might read on a summer's evening to her 
 children gathered about her knees — 
 
 Cum tibi sol tepidus phires admoverit aures, 
 
 when to thee, sweet story, the cool of the sunset has 
 drawn greater numbers of hearers. 
 
 Then there are " Poor Joe," " Gentleman George's 
 Bride," " Bullocktown," and the rest ; not forgetting 
 " Horace in the Bush." And let us look a moment at his 
 best known work, " For the Term of His Natural Life." 
 An innocent man, Richard Devine, later " Rufus Dawes,"
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 21 
 
 is transported — voluntarily to save his motlier's name, as 
 he thought — to a convict settlement to be formed beyond 
 the seas — Port Macquarie, Van Diemen's Land. We 
 have no time to follow the powerful characterisations of 
 Sarah Purfoy, John Rex, Maurice Frere, Mrs. Vickers, 
 and the Captain. But from the time the convict ship 
 Malabar left good blundering old England, till the 
 Lady Franklin was caught in a cyclone and foundered 
 off Norfolk Island, the narrative is full of vivid, natural 
 description, often on a grand scale — such as the descrip- 
 tion of the " Blow Hole " and the Cyclone — and of mas- 
 terly portrayal of human character, developing in a 
 strange and horrible environment. We must pass by the 
 vivid descriptions of the Malabar's hospital, the Barra- 
 coon, the fate of the burning ship Hydaspes, the Typhus 
 Fever, the Mutiny, and the rest. We must leave the 
 Malabar lying on the water " like a glow-worm on a 
 floating leaf," in a calm — and Mrs. Vickers, who dislikes 
 " these dreadful calms." " John, have you my smelling 
 salts?" 
 
 Many of the things in the book are gruesome and hor- 
 rible enough, even diabolical ; such as the incidents con- 
 nected with Gabbett, the manifold murderer, the loath- 
 some man-eater; such as the lashing to death of Captain 
 Burgess's butler for the serious offence of stopping his 
 ears when the Captain used bad language ; the pathetic 
 incident of " Cranky Brown," age twelve years, who " did 
 it this morning " — that is, committed suicide " by jump- 
 ing off a high rock, and drowning himself in full view of 
 the constables ;" he was tired of his poor little life ; and of 
 the two babes, Tommy and Billy, who followed his ex- 
 ample — they " did it " also by drowning, " condemning 
 their young souls to everlasting fire," as the Rev. Mr. 
 Meekin said piously; and the dreadful lottery of the longest 
 straw. 
 
 If many of these incidents are gruesome and cause a 
 revulsion of horror, it must be remembered how powerful 
 is the imaginative work which has placed human beings 
 in such an environment with results so inevitable as traced 
 with a sequence and vividness that only genius could 
 command.
 
 22 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 But let us run our eye over the current of the Hfe of 
 the central figure, Rufus Dawes. Read how the Osprey 
 was seized ; how Frere and Mrs. Vickers and Silvia were 
 left at Macquarie Harbour ; how Dawes was left to die at 
 " Hell's Gates," and how he escaped ; how Dawes became 
 " Mr." Dawes, and how he nursed Mrs. Vickers and 
 starved for the sake of little Silvia ; how he built a coracle ; 
 how he learnt that he was the veritable heir to Sir Richard 
 Devine's fortune ; how he dreamed day-dreams ; how he 
 became aware that " in the desert he was ' Mr.' Dawes, 
 the saviour," and that " in civilised life he would become 
 once more Rufus Dawes, the ruffian, the prisoner, the ab- 
 sconder ;" how he suffered mental agony more exquisite 
 than all the physical pain he had so long endured ; how 
 he saw the writing on the sand, " Good Mr. Dawes ;" of 
 his great sacrifice — how he resolved to restore the sick 
 lady, Mrs. Vickers, and Silvia to their home, and himself 
 to the tortures of a living death at Port Arthur ; how he 
 suffered and starved ; how he watched over little Silvia in 
 the coracle ; how she became delirious, and her memory 
 a blank concerning " Good Mr. Dawes," and all his good- 
 ness ; how Frere, taking advantage of this, clothed hini- 
 .self in the cloak of Dawes' heroism and sent Dawes in 
 his convict grey to the impenetrable silence and the 
 secrecy of the grave at Port Arthur. 
 
 Read how " the notorious Dawes " was brought tc 
 Hobart to identify the mutineers of the Osprey; how 
 Dawes broke out in court : " I was sentenced to death for 
 bolting, sir, and they retrieved me because I helped them 
 in the boat. Helped them ! Why, I made it. She will 
 tell you so. I nursed her ; I carried her in my arms. I 
 starved myself for her. She was fond of me, sir. She was, 
 indeed. She called me ' Good Mr. Dawes.' " '[ At this 
 a coarse laugh broke out " in court, but was instantly 
 checked. (It was all useless.) Dawes " began to have a 
 new religion. He worshipped the dead. For the living- 
 he had but hatred and evil words ; for the dead he had love 
 and tender thoughts." Read how " if she knew I was 
 alive, she would come to me. I am sure she would. 
 Perhaps they told her that I was dead." How he escaped ; 
 how he revealed himself to Silvia, who did not recognise
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 23 
 
 him, but cried to Maurice for help. " She, too — the child 
 he had nursed and fed, the child for whom he had given 
 up his hard-earned chance of freedom and fortune, the 
 child of whom he had dreamed, the child whose image 
 he had worshipped — she, too, was against him. Then 
 there was no justice, no heaven, no God." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. ]\Ieckin converses with the Rev. Mr. 
 North. " Captain Frere says the scenery is delightful." 
 " So it is ; but the prisoners are not." " Poor abandoned 
 wretches ! I suppose not, ' How sweet the moonlight 
 sleeps upon that bank.' Eh !" "Abandoned indeed by 
 God and man — almost." " Mr. North, Providence never 
 abandons the most unworthy of His servants. Never have 
 I seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their 
 bread. . . . Really, the commandant's house is charm- 
 ingly situated." 
 
 Contrast these two characters — Meekin and North. 
 " He who would touch the hearts of men must 
 have had his own heart seared," says Clarke. " The 
 missionaries of mankind have ever been great sinners be- 
 fore they earned the divine right to heal and bless. . . . 
 The crown of divinity is a crown of thorns." Read of the 
 worthy Pharisee Meekin, " who was sent to Dawes to 
 teach him how mankind is to be redeemed with Love, 
 but who preached only that harsh Law whose barbarous 
 power died with the gentle Nazarene on Calvary ;" how 
 poor Dawes cried to him in despair, " What do you know 
 of such as I ?" North learnt to love " charming little 
 Silvia, with her quaint wnt and weird beauty ; ' he (Frere) 
 is not good enough for you,' North wrote in his diary." 
 
 John Rex in the meantime turned up in London and 
 personated the long-lost heir of Sir Richard Devine, and 
 " couldn't use wuss langwidge if he was a dook, dam 'im !" 
 said Smithers, the butler. 
 
 " Silvia liked her husband least when he loved 
 her most. In this repulsion lay her power over 
 him. Maurice Frere, though his wife obeyed him, 
 knew he was inferior to her, and was afraid of the statue 
 he had created." What agonies and self-reproach poor 
 North suffered ! Dawes became thoroughly broken at 
 last, and consented to try his luck " in the lucky bag," as
 
 24 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 blind Alooney called it. Dawes" luck was out again ; he 
 drew the shortest straw, and had to live. North had to go 
 at last. Silvia revolted, and was to return to her father 
 in the Lady Franklin ; North was going by the same ship. 
 Dawes discovered the rebellious, the blind love of North 
 and Silvia ; he would not let North go. " But I love her ! 
 Love her, do you hear? What do you know of love?" 
 " Love? Oh, it is you who do not know it. Love is sac- 
 rifice of self. . . . Listen, I will tell you the history 
 of such a love as yours." Dawes told him " the secret of 
 his own life, the reason why he was there." The rest is 
 short. The sentry drunk, the door open, Dawes escaped in 
 North's cloak and hat to the ship Lady Franklin. IDawes 
 " saved Silvia." There was a cyclone. " The sight was 
 one of wild grandeur. The huge, black cloud which hung 
 in the horizon had changed its shape. Instead of a curtain 
 it was an arch. Beneath this vast and magnificent portal 
 shone a dull phosphoric light. Across this livid space 
 pale flashes of sheet lightning passed noiselessly. Be- 
 hind it was a dull and threatening murmur, made up of 
 the grumbling of thunder, the falling of rain, and the roar 
 of contending wind and water. . . . Lightning seemed 
 to burst upwards from the sullen bosom of the sea. At 
 intervals, the darkly-rolling waves flashed fire, and 
 streaks of flame shot upwards. The wind increased in 
 violence, and the arch of light was fringed with rain. A 
 dull, red glow hung around, like the reflection of a con- 
 flagration. Suddenly a tremendous peal of thunder, ac- 
 companied by a terrific downfall of rain, rattled along the 
 sky. The arch of light disappeared, as though some in- 
 visible hand had shut the slide of a giant lantern. A 
 great wall of water rushed roaring over the level plain 
 of the sea, and with an indescribable medley of sounds, 
 in which tones of horror, triumph, and torture were 
 
 blended, the cyclone swooped upon them From 
 
 the deck of the vessel the scene was appalling. The 
 clouds had closed in. The arch of light had disappeared, 
 and all was a dull, windy blackness. Gigantic seas 
 seemed to mount in the horizon and sweep towards and 
 upon them. It was as though the ship lay in the vortex 
 of a whirlpool, so high on either side of her were piled
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 25 
 
 the rough pyraniidical masses of sea. Mighty gusts 
 arose — claps of wind which seemed like strokes of thun- 
 der. A sail loosened from its tackling was torn away and 
 blown out to sea, disappearing like a shred of white 
 paper to leeward." . . . Silvia " shrieked aloud for 
 help, but her voice was inaudible even to herself. . . . 
 The door opened, and from out the cabin came a figure 
 clad in black. She looked up ; ... a pair of dark 
 eyes beaming ineffable love and pity were bent upon 
 her, and a pair of dripping arms held her above the brine 
 as she had once been held in the misty mysterious days 
 that were gone. . . . Regaining her memory thus, 
 . . . she understood how her husband had deceived 
 her, and with what base injustice and falsehood he had 
 bought her young love. . . . The shock of recovered 
 memory subsided in the grateful utterance of other days 
 — ' Good Mr. Dawes !' The eyes of the man and woman 
 met in one long, wild gaze. Silvia stretched out her white 
 hands and smiled, and Richard Devine understood in his 
 turn the story of tiie young girl's joyless life, and knew 
 how she had been sacrificed. In the great crisis of our life, 
 when brought face to face with annihilation, we are sus- 
 pended, gasping over the great emptiness of death, we be- 
 come conscious that the self which we think we knew so 
 well has strange and unthought of capacities. To de- 
 scribe a tempest of the elements is not easy, but to de- 
 scribe a tempest of the soul is impossible. Amid the fury 
 of such a tempest, a thousand memories, each bearing in 
 its breast the corpse of some dead deed whose influence 
 haunts us yet, are driven like feathers before the blast, as 
 unsubstantial and as unregarded. The mists which shroud 
 our self-knowledge become transparent, and we are smit- 
 ten with sudden lightning-like comprehension of our own 
 misused power over our fate. . . . These two human 
 beings felt that they had done with life ; together thus, 
 alone in the very midst and presence of death, the distinc- 
 tions of the world they were about to leave disappeared. 
 Their vision grew clear. They felt as beings whose bodies 
 had already perished. As they clasped hands, their freed 
 souls, recognising each the loveliness of the other, rushed 
 tremblingly together." And "at day dawn on the morn-
 
 26 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 ing after the storm, the rays of the rising sun fell upon 
 
 a portion of the mainmast head of the Lady 
 
 Fpanklin, and entangled in the rigging were two corpses 
 
 — 2i man and a woman. . . . The tempest was over." 
 
 I must keep close to my purpose — to try and ascertain 
 from his works what manner of man Marcus Clarke was. 
 I have purposely passed by brilliant descriptive passages, 
 and kept as closely as time will permit to the pathos that 
 was his ; how the most diabolical physical tortures and 
 the most exquisite mental sufferings could not kill the 
 love, the faith, the sweetness of the hero, Dawes — wrong- 
 fully but lawfully convicted by his country. We have 
 here the same Marcus Clarke that we had in the papers 
 of the " Peripatetic Philosopher." He saw that the same 
 organised and constituted society which, as a nation, pro- 
 duced the convict system at Port Arthur, produced also, 
 in civil administration, such inhuman butchers as Frere 
 and Burgess and Troke, and, in church administration, 
 such heartless and brainless noodles, such Christless 
 " Christians " as that ass Meekin, so fond of " his friend 
 the Bishop." 
 
 He saw that as society goes omvard on the lines of 
 democracy, government by the best {aristos — best) ; that 
 is, aristocracy (not the "cant of good blood"), but govern- 
 ment by the best in politics, in art, letters, religion, and 
 society generally, tends to give place to cast-iron systems 
 in which the average ^man, the mediocrity, with nothing 
 but his mediocrity to recommend him, the " parochial 
 committeeman, intensely respectable and intensely nar- 
 row-minded," flourishes. Vested interests, are they not 
 everything? Are they not moulded in cast-iron? Who 
 dares to stand on his own feet and cry out with his own 
 voice, he must be silenced. Why not? Such conduct 
 is not deducible from cast-iron. Mob-rule, and rule 
 the mob, and spoils to the victors ! Count heads ; 
 mathematics is your only truth. He saw ahead the com- 
 ing slavery of the individual to the State, to society, in 
 the person, everywhere, of the narrow-minded parochial 
 committeeman — a slavery more degrading to humanity 
 than chain-gang slavery, because it is mental and spiritual
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 1'] 
 
 slavery. I ask, is not Marcus Clarke's attitude vindicated 
 to-day ? Even the Church has to submit ; the Church has 
 become a mere social function. The Church does not 
 believe so much in its Master as in what it 
 conceives to be its own interest — its vested interest. 
 The Church docs not stand between society and its vic- 
 tims. Not the weak sot, North, who, at least, believed in 
 his Master, and so was not too proud to ask forgiveness 
 even of a convict, but the pious Meekin " preached that 
 harsh Law whose barbarous power died with the gentle 
 Nazarene on Calvary." These are great and serious in- 
 dictments. The Church exists for purposes of govern- 
 ment only, he asserts. 
 
 Look at Clarke's controversy with Dr. Moorhouse, 
 a great and good Bishop — broad-minded and liberal. 
 Clarke certainly got the best of the argument, both 
 in substance and in dialectics. Of course people 
 were very shocked at his audacity — even fine old 
 Sir Redmond, who estimated that a man should have 
 some thousands a year of independent income before he 
 could do such a thing in a community like ours. Perhaps 
 Sir Redmond was only ironical after all. However, it 
 must be remembered that Clarke wrote an article to the 
 " Victorian Review " on " Civilisation Without Delu- 
 sion," and it was the Bishop who attacked him first. 
 Surely Clarke could reply. 
 
 Clarke looked upon " religion " as a political necessity 
 merely at present and in the past ; but looked forward to 
 a time when " the elevation of the race will be the sole 
 religion of mankind." There is evidence of Comte and 
 Positivism here. Of course, the Bishop could not under- 
 stand a religion where there is " no God, and no worship, 
 and no hope of a future ;" which, of course, again, Clarke 
 ne\er affirmed. To disagree with the Church has always 
 been to be an atheist, an infidel, a heretic, and so on. 
 What large engines the Church does wield, to be sure ! 
 Clarke, in his reply, denied that he was an atheist. The 
 Bishop, a great orator, with his eye on the gallery all the 
 time, then proceeds to an ingenious rehash of the Argu- 
 ment from Design, which has long been recognised as 
 quite insufficient to demonstrate the existence of God, the
 
 28 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 Creator. There are several other arguments he might 
 have used, which are equally insufficient. His lordship 
 then traverses, in Ethics, the positions of Utilitarianism 
 and of Nativism ; but he cannot prove his categorical im- 
 perative, his onglit, outside of human reason. Questions 
 of first and final causes, of origins and purposes, are al- 
 ways, and must necessarily remain, obscure. We can in- 
 fer at best ; we cannot demonstrate, much less prove. The 
 Bishop, I think, underrated his man. However, his lord- 
 ship is satisfied with his statement, and proceeds through 
 long periods and flourishes of rhetoric to beg the whole 
 question by speaking of " the great Author of Nature," 
 the "All-wise and Almighty Intelligence," the " Divine 
 Will," and so on. The Bishop would surely have done 
 better to have rested his case on faith and belief rather 
 than on reason and knowledge ; Clarke points out that he 
 has net used the name of his Master, Christ, once in the 
 whole of his statement. The Bishop, in his peroration, 
 waxes eloquent, indeed, on behalf of the " fundamental 
 social institution of property" — vested interests again ; as 
 if property could not take care of itself if the Church 
 were to take care of the souls of men. 
 
 One almost wonders sometimes (I speak with rever- 
 ence) if the Almighty Himself is supposed by the doctri- 
 naires of the Church to lean for support on their argu- 
 ments. The ordinary layman commonly imagines that 
 the Almighty is quite able tO' take care of Himself, and 
 will do so — Church or no Church. Some bright child of 
 God might again to-day dispute with the doctors in the 
 Temple, and " ask them questions " much to their 
 " ii'^i-onishment." 
 
 With the exception of a few phrases that might have 
 l»ecn toned down a little, Clarke's rejoinder was respect- 
 ful enough. He clenches his case thus : " But your lord- 
 ship will reply that many of the sayings of Jesus were 
 ' allegorical,' that it is impossible in these days to give 
 our clothes to robbers, and to turn our cheek to the 
 smiter. Very good ; then Christianity, as Christ taught 
 it, is, as I say, dead." The Church would do well to profit 
 by his warning ; there is much need of it. " Where," he 
 asks, " is religion in every-day life?" " Read," he cries,
 
 HtS WORK AND GENIUS. 29 
 
 " read the literature of the day — sip the Hfe-blood of the 
 running age, and answer." To my mind, there is nothing 
 more pathetic, in the narrow ways of these latter days, 
 than the state of that man who can believe the divinity of 
 Christ more readily than some of the mysteries the Church 
 teaches as necessary to salvation. To prevent misunder- 
 standing, and as I am much too timid to be a freelance 
 myself, I hasten to " hereby declare " that I am a Church- 
 man — fairly orthodox. But that I conceive to be no 
 reason why one should not appreciate sound judgment 
 and fair play. 
 
 Why should Marcus Clarke have taken up this stand 
 in religion too? He was a clever man. It is so much 
 easier to follow and pretend to lead, to count heads and 
 be on the winning side, to " jump when the cat jumps." 
 He was evidently not a cunning man. He enjoyed the 
 fruits of the earth as much as any man. He was a brilliant 
 conversationalist. He might have acquired a reputation 
 even for tact (save the mark !) if he had only let the 
 world go hang. What an odious word " tact " has be- 
 come. See how the Pharisee " rises on stepping stones 
 of the dead selves " of others " to higher things," as he 
 " thanks God he is not as other men are." Surely Marcus 
 was a fool. 
 
 The fact is, he was a deeply religious man. Your irre- 
 ligious man is he who, being too lazy, or too cowardly, to 
 face the great questions that mankind has to face, each 
 man on his own individual responsibility, takes refuge 
 in a dogma because it is conventional, orthodox, con- 
 venient ; or who, like Gallio, " cares for none of these 
 things." 
 
 I would like to ask the young authors of this Society 
 if they are prepared to pass through the fire for the sake 
 of what they believe to be true in their very hearts — as 
 Marcus Clarke did. And so he will take a high place in 
 literature ; nothing can stop it. And yet there is this con- 
 solation — ^that when he was doing his best work, he was 
 happiest. What is that unmistakable stamp of true literary 
 art? Does not the eternal harmony that flows with the
 
 30 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 spheres flow also through the hearts of the poets of art — 
 Hterary and other? Are not these but tones of the one 
 universal harmony? We may smile at the odiousness of 
 comparisons ; but we must judge all pure literature finally 
 by the same tests, the same canon, the same rules if we 
 can find such, as we judge the immortals, or as the immor- 
 tals judge us by. We cannot shut principles out, as with 
 a wall — not even out of Australia. "Australia for the 
 Australians," indeed! What next? 
 
 When he flew in the face of things and made " many 
 bitter enemies," he did not do so for fun. He could only 
 speak what was in him ; and nothing is so cowardly as a 
 lie. If he spoke, there would be no compromise. Young 
 authors, try it. You will die soon ; but you will live here- 
 after. The gods try authors in the fire before they \elect 
 them amongst the chosen. 
 
 Marcus Clarke is easily first in Australian literature. 
 " Others abide our question; he is free." He possessed 
 an intellect that one cannot help feeling was altogether 
 wasted in this little back-yard of the British Empire. This 
 man must (it is as much an affliction as a gift) search out, 
 the truth for himself. He brought his wealth of human 
 sympathy to bear upon all things human. We can see 
 in his best work how fine his intellect was ; how he worked 
 in images rather than mere words, in words that were, 
 indices of images passing into expressed thought. 
 
 Of such stufif are the greatest minds made ; heart, head ; 
 courage, sympathy; vision, expression. Let us turn to 
 good old Carlyle here. Clarke read Carlyle a lot; there 
 is ample evidence of it. You will remember how, after 
 " having fallen lately among new chums." our philosopher 
 had to take " cold baths of Carlyle, Balzac, and Voltaire 
 in order to restore his nervous system." But Carlyle 
 says : " One grand, invaluable secret there is, however, 
 which includes all the rest, and, what is comfortable, lies 
 clearly in every man's power : to have an open and loving 
 heart, and what follows from the possession of such. 
 Truly it has been said, emphatically in these days ought
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 3I 
 
 it to be repeated : — A loving heart is the beginning of all 
 knowledge. This it is that opens the whole mind, quick- 
 ens every faculty of the intellect to do its work, that of 
 knowing; and, therefrom, by sure consequence, of vividly 
 uttering-forth. Other secret of being ' graphic ' there is 
 none vorth having; but this is an all-sufficient one. See, 
 for example, what a small Boswell can do! . . . It 
 has been said : ' The heart sees farther than the head ;' 
 but, indeed, without the seeing heart, there is no true 
 seeing for the head so much as possible; all is mere 
 oversight, hallucination and vain superficial phantas- 
 magoria, which can permanently profit no one." 
 
 There is much evidence that Clarke was influenced 
 by French literature, Balzac especially. He has Balzac's 
 vast human sympathy, his minuteness of observation, his 
 consuming interest. Daudet too ; that light touch, grace- 
 ful expression, elusive charm. Clarke should have been 
 a dramatist of great power ; perhaps he was. He has 
 written plays, but I for one have not seen them. They 
 are in London now, I believe. A man who could live in 
 the mind and heart of a little child as Clarke did when he 
 wrote " Pretty Dick ;" and could live the life of a god- 
 forsaken convict, as he to all intents and purposes did 
 when he traced the life and character of Rufus Dawes, 
 with all the brutal and hideous environment ; such a man 
 had the one essential element of a great dramatist. Look 
 at that gallery of types, drawn with such ease by a master 
 hand, in his " Peripatetic Philosopher " papers. These 
 were his ephemeral literature, forsooth. Oh, sad, sad 
 "Bohemian!" 
 
 He was a student of Horace too — of Horace's clear-cut 
 verses, his taste in expression, his conciseness, his sweet 
 reasonableness. And Carlyle he read, we know. He 
 must have read not only deeply, but widely. He wrote 
 poetry, too ; one wonders that he did not write more of it. 
 He translated not only from the French, but from the 
 German and the Greek ; and Horace, we know, was a 
 familiar spirit. It is not to be presumed that he had much 
 knowledge either of Greek or German ; but a man such 
 as Clarke was, would absorb the spirit of the poets of the
 
 32 MARCUS CLARKE 
 
 classics more fully, and therefore render a better trans- 
 lation, than mere scholars in those languages. 
 
 He had much of the pathos, the passion, the force of 
 Heine ; and was not without some of the chief character- 
 istics of Shelley : his rebellious spirit, the purity and vivid- 
 ness of his imaginative gift. But I have no time now to 
 go into suggestions of this kind. 
 
 I intended to draw up a bibliography of the works of 
 Marcus Clarke ; I have not had time ; I shall have time, 
 and will do so. He wrote two complete novels ; over 
 thirty tales and sketches ; a volume of " Old Tales of a 
 Young Country" (fine examples, some of them, of what 
 might be called the historical style) ; about a dozen dra- 
 matic works, and adaptations from the French ; review 
 articles upon such diverse subjects as Balzac, Dore, Comte 
 and Beaconsfield. Besides ordinary journalistic work, he 
 wrote many brilliant articles for the press, one of which 
 is credited with having wrecked a government. And all 
 this and more was packed into some fourteen years. He 
 could not have had much time on his hands, this idle 
 " Bohemian." 
 
 Oh, the bright broad land of Bohemia, a land upon 
 which the sun never sets ! All the brightest and 
 best spirits have dwelt there — even Shakespeare and 
 all his company are of them — those who have dared to 
 forswear the soulless conventionalities of their day, and 
 even to cry out upon them as with the voice of the pro- 
 phets of the Most High. Never have they denied what is 
 true, beautiful, good ; but rather this have they searched 
 out without ceasing through all the channels of their 
 being. The smiles they wear so lightly are for the world ; 
 their sorrows are all their own. 
 
 In certain passages in " His Natural Life " and in the 
 problems that are suggested by some of his " psycho- 
 logical " pieces, there is evidence of the depth of Clarke's 
 nature and of its inward questionings. He seems to come 
 now and again upon that thin partition that divides the 
 material from the spiritual, the relative from the absolute, 
 phenomena from — well, some " thing in itself." He
 
 HIS WORK AND GENIUS. 33 
 
 knocked at the door — the very inmost door called Mystery 
 — that separates the question from the answer. He must, 
 indeed, have a rational answer — an answer of reason in 
 terms of reason. Rationalism, however, cannot explain 
 Religion ; that is impossible. Neither do we ask Faith, 
 the " evidence of things not seen," to explain phenomena. 
 Speaking of " John Rex," the arch-scoundrel of " His 
 Natural Life," and his awful experiences in " The Blow- 
 hole," Clarke, in the narrative, proceeds : " The convict's 
 guilty conscience, long suppressed and derided, asserted 
 itself in this hour when it was alone with Nature and 
 Night. . , . The bitter intellectual power which had 
 so long supported him succumbed beneath imagination — 
 the unconscious religion of the soul." Imagination — the 
 unconscious religion of the soul ! A strange phrase 
 surely, but there is much in it ; more than a superficial 
 glance reveals. 
 
 Clarke, like most men, believed, indeed — something; 
 he had knowledge of — something; but these two some- 
 things questioned, they answered not, each other. And 
 we must keep on knocking; some day the door will be 
 opened. 
 
 " No, no ! the energy of life may be 
 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun ! 
 
 And he who fiagg'd not in the earthly strife, 
 From strength to strength advancing — only he, 
 
 His soul well-knit, and all his battles won. 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life." 
 
 Oh, the bright, broad land of Bohemia, where it is never 
 Night ! Fare on, thou child of Nature, through sunshine 
 and through shower. Cherished by thy smiles and 
 watered by thy tears, how luxuriant in its beauty is thy 
 world, where the seeds of human kindness fall upon the 
 good ground of the heart, and not amongst thorns, nor 
 in stony places. How beautiful is Nature in all her handi- 
 works ! " Only man is vile." There are tears in thy 
 voice, there are smiles in thy tears, oh gentle Anarchist, 
 as thou wanderest on and on, full of strength and sweet- 
 ness, for thy faith hath made thee whole.
 
 34 MARCUS CLARKE. 
 
 How sweetly human he was ; how human his faults ; 
 how almost divine his virtues. Surely he was a menace 
 " in such a community as ours." " Those who knew 
 him intimately," the Memorial Volume pathetically 
 remarks, " were few." But he has been dead now 
 these twenty years. He can do no more harm 
 now. There is something strangely fascinating 
 about this man, whose heart was more pitiful than a 
 woman's, and yet fearless withal as that of Sir Lancelot 
 himself as he fared forth alone with his lance in rest; 
 and he tried in vain to conceal his very goodness under 
 a veil, nay, an armour, of cynicism. His seriousness, how 
 high ! His sincerity, how deep ! What a bright spirit ! 
 
 Where, then, has he gone — this strong, sweet soul? 
 Back to " Holiday Peak," I think. 
 
 " Little Nelly (to the story-teller) : ' But, Mr. Marston, 
 did you not go back to Holiday Peak?' 
 
 " Marston : ' I do not know the way, my dear.' 
 " Little Nelly: ' But there must be a way. If so many 
 people stop there, a coach should go near the place.' 
 
 "Marston : 'There is a coach that goes to the very door, 
 little one — a coach by which we must all travel one of 
 these days — a black coach, drawn by black horses. Some 
 day they will take me when I am sleeping soundly, and 
 put me into a big box, nail me up, and put on the lid a 
 neat brass plate: 
 
 John Marston, 
 
 Aetat — (well, 34). 
 
 For Holiday Peak. With care. 
 
 This side up. 
 
 Good night."
 
 In the Press. 
 
 THE 
 
 Living Pillars of the Colosseum 
 
 A DRAMATIC PICTURE POEM 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ROMAN PERSECUTIONS 
 
 WITH 
 
 "THE ATTIS" OF CATULLUS. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY C. J. LINGHAM, M.I.S.A., London. 
 
 (Author of " The Last Hours of a Lion Heart," " The Litany of Love," 
 and "Juvenal in Melbourne : a Satire Social and Political.") 
 
 "Will be issued early in the month of March, 1902. 
 
 " The Australian Literature Society must be congratu- 
 lated on the brilliant programme it presented to its numerous 
 audience at its rooms on Wednesday evening, June 6. 
 Whatever opinions may exist as to its ability to be of 
 practical aid to Australian authors, one thing is clear — 
 that it can, when it chooses, command from certain of its 
 members really first-class fare wherewith to regale its 
 guests at its monthly literary banquets, which is more than 
 can be said of most of our literary societies. The first 
 item, Mr. Henry C. J. Lingham's ' Living Pillars of the 
 Colosseum,' is a strong dramatic poem in musical un- 
 rhymed verse, which was delivered by the author himself 
 with great elocutionary effect, presenting a most vivid 
 picture of the cruel sports and the corruption prevailing in 
 the old Roman Empire, when women and girls, as well as 
 men, were periodically exposed in the arena of the Flavian 
 Amphitheatre and torn to pieces by famished lions, 
 leopards or tigers — and all to make a Roman holiday ! 
 The reading or recitation — for it was rather the latter — 
 created a profound sensation, and was loudly applauded 
 at its conclusion. The work being pronounced above criti- 
 cism, no discussion followed." — Table Talk, June 14th, 1900.
 
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