Читать книгу Knocking Round - J Le Gay Brereton - Страница 5

Table of Contents

(Inaugural Address to the Sydney University Literary Society)

That I-a lecturer whose talk so many of you are forced to endure at painfully regular intervals—should be asked to address you now is a proof of extraordinary kindness on your part, or of extraordinary cruelty; I am not sure which. You are compelled to attend my lectures. Is it from a stern sense of justice that you compel me now to maunder at an unaccustomed hour? But really I am as much the victim of fate as you. Still, I believe in compulsory lectures, because they bring together, in impressive surroundings, a number of young enthusiasts of similar tastes and aspirations. And no young people are more likely to gain enormous benefit from this enforced companionship than those who delight in literature and aim at literary expression. Nothing clarifies thought more than the effort to communicate it; nothing expands and corrects it more effectively than free discussion. And if you desire your literary purpose to be clear and precise—to move directly to its goal instead of wavering uncertainly towards it—nothing will help you more than the necessity of exercising your critical faculty on the work of others. At first you will find your own work so near that it will not be easy to focus a critical eye on it; you will be too ready to offer yourself explanations and excuses. You will not find it easy to stand off and take an impartial view, and your personal interest will possibly blur your judgment. But when you are accustomed to taking the critical attitude towards your friends' attempts, you will very soon be able to join with the others in detecting the genuine merits and defects of your own.

Hitherto there has been no attempt, at this University, to organize the literary group for that mutual criticism which is the most effective form of mutual help. At all times academic birds of the literary feather must have found comfort and encouragement in each other's company; and, as the students increased in number, the need of a Literary Society became more imperative. You have recognized the call and have answered to it. The result of your organization, it may be hoped, will not be overlooked in future histories of Australian literature.

We had nothing to hold us together in the old days, except our magazine Hermes. There was no Union building, and our common-room was a bleak place, furnished with cane-seated benches and sawdust-bedded spittoons. Hermes was not the organ of the Undergraduates' Association, but the private property of the editors. Just before I came to the University, the men who were working most actively for the struggling journal were Dick Windeyer, H. R. Curlewis, Leslie Curnow, Jim Pickburn, Vallack and Chris Brennan. On turning up the file in the Fisher, I get the impression of an academic fashion—a mixture of assumed seriousness and extreme flippancy. The most consistently flippant of the group seems to have been Brennan, the most purposely earnest was Windeyer; Curlewis held the balance by being seriously humorous. When I arrived, Pickburn was still an undergraduate, and during my course and for a while afterwards he and I conducted Hermes. There were others on the staff, but, as always happens, the work fell on the small minority. He supplied the brilliance and I suffered the anxieties and heavy yoke of copy-collecting. He was the only colleague in whom I had trust—the only one in whom I recognized a genuine literary talent; and his high enjoyment of the immediate present and facile methods of making the most of the moment prevented him from developing his gifts. He knew no discipline. He was wayward and exuberant, an able speaker, an accomplished parodist; and one always felt—this particular one always felt—that he was squandering mental treasure. His admiration of heroic sacrifice and his sympathy with the oppressed made him an almost fanatical lover of William Morris. Honours students may be interested in his translation of "The Battle with Grendle's Mother" into the verse of Sigurd the Volsung; it was issued on 23 May, 1892. But he shone chiefly as a writer of light, brisk prose and of hilarious verse. When an irreproachably attired Englishman filled for one year the chair of the mathematical professor, it was Pickburn who put into his mouth the Swinburnian chant beginning—

Lo, I am a man

Most faultless of raiment

I am he that began,

When Gurney away went,

To lecture on high mathematics in Sydney for similar payment.

It was he, too, who produced an excellent drinking-song, of which I recall the opening lines—

Or ever we sever and part

I must drown the dull care of my heart;

All you who think with me, come here and drink with me,

Drink, ere we sever and part.

The evening students of those days were in evil case, and we day men knew nothing of them and never thought of them. The Union has made a difference since then. I doubt if Dowell O'Reilly wrote anything for Hermes while he was attending evening lectures, but I had made friends with him elsewhere, and soon he was quite a constant contributor. When the paper was issued three times a term, and the proprietors had to disguise their multifarious contributions by anonymity and a variety of pseudonyms, a constant contributor was like an angel with manna. He began at the end of 1891 with a story galled "A Theosophical Romance" and a revised version of one of his brief but much-polished lyrics—"The Loves of the Rivers." Later he contributed a metrical serial, "The Rime of a Hairpin," in six Fyttes, characteristically fantastic and satirical. But his most memorable contribution was a delicately beautiful poem, "The Sea Maiden," as light and lovely as foam itself. This we printed on 17 October 1893. He was always at his best when a seawind blew his verses into shape.

You must understand that we young University writers were not and could not be closely associated. Even Pickburn I should not have seen with any frequency, after he became a law student, had we not both been active members of that excellent body, the Dramatic Society; and the best of our helpers were no longer at the University.

Among those of our contributors who have since gained some celebrity as men of letters was Brennan. He had ceased to be the perpetrator of high spirited jokes and nonsensical paragraphs. His first published poem was a sonnet which appeared in Hermes on 6 November, 1891, after his departure for Europe with a scholarship, and it expresses very plainly the austere courage of an intellectual adventurer:—

Farewell, the pleasant harbourage of faith,

The calm repose 'neath sunny skies and bright—

Or was it darkness, vainly thought the light,

And all we worshipped but a fleeting wraith?

Me from that haven, with vexation fraught,

Doubt drives to wander: in adventurous bark

I follow e'er, 'neath lowering skies and dark,

O'er gulphs of gloom and misty seas of thought

Upon their oar-blades' vanished track, who sped

To greet the rising sun, if sun there be.

Yet never unto them that light was shown,

Nor ever, since these mingled with the dead,

Hath sun arisen on that shoreless sea,

Nor man won way into the vast Unknown.

This was, I believe, Brennan's first attempt at poetry, and if it has not the strong individual note of his collected verses, it has the advantage of being universally intelligible. The following number contained a sonnet in reply, laboriously compiled by some theological students at St Paul's, who thought that a skiff that had been driven from the shores of Roman Catholicism might be lured from dim horizons to the safety of an Anglican roadstead.

All that we can reasonably hope, Brennan once said to me, is that we may survive, by virtue of one or two pieces printed and reprinted in anthologies. He and Dowell are sure of that measure of immortality, if of no more. But the worst of the unencouraged University littérateur is that he is apt to allow his ambitions to be swamped by the waves of worldly interest, or to abandon his pilgrimage for the sake of some more alluring quest. I can think of many a man whose promise thus remains unfulfilled. And sometimes a cruel destiny cuts the branch that might have grown full straight.

There was a very interesting group just before the war. You will see the names of a couple of them in the Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. In that volume you may read the sonnet in which Duncan Hall tells how he feels the majesty of Night and hears "The shudder of her plumes among the pines." But Duncan is more widely known for his comprehensive book on The British Commonwealth of Nations—work of a kind which begins to grow obsolete almost before it is completed—and at present he is in Geneva, preparing, for the League of Nations, reports on the drug-traffic. He has rightly followed the most insistent call.

Of that same group was Roderick Kidston who then listened to the voice of Oine.

In a land of many waters, by a sun-forsaken lea,

Oine, fairest of the siren daughters, gave her heart to me;

And her voice was low and tender, and her tresses floated free,

But her eyes in magic splendour mocked the foaming-crested sea.

His poems were sometimes thin in substance but always had a sufficiency of poetic meaning, and he was a master of melodious rhyme and rhythm. Perhaps he attained a limited perfection too early and despaired of further triumph. He sits now in the unfertile dust of the law.

An intimate comrade of his was the brilliant young wit, Adrian Consett Stephen, who bade fair to be a dramatist of distinction. But then came the war, and darkness.

I have not forgotten another notable group—that which included Leslie Holdsworth Allen and Henry Mackenzie Green. The University Librarian knows more about it than I.

What I wish to emphasize is that all of those young literary entrants of the past would have profited by such an association as you have happily founded, and that Australian literature would have gained appreciably.

And outside the University, too, there is no association that will provide for writers and other artists the kind of social intercourse which would give incentives to the original worker. What we want, I suppose, is a place where we can go when we please with a sure and certain hope of meeting congenial spirits, and where we can talk and listen as we please, on the topics that we find of common interest.

There is a Junior Literary Society, of course. It admits young writers "provided they are over sixteen years," but I've not been told at what age the membership must cease, nor the degree of youthfulness which disqualifies one for enrolment. I am not feeling old, myself, but I doubt if they would admit me, after finding out that I was writing for the press in the eighties. Mrs Curlewis ("Ethel Turner") is the president, but, as her books prove, she is eternally young. As long as you are no older than she, the Junior Literary Society should attract you. It provides a springboard for diving into journalism of the more literary kind, and encourages an enthusiasm for artistic effort. I hope that it may presently supply your own society with annual recruits.

The Women Writers have their own organization, but what they do no man may dare to guess. And there is a Fellowship of Australian Writers, which gathers once a month in a noisy room to hear discussions and lectures, but has no premises of its own.

Casting an eye over the last thirty years, or thereabouts, I see the phantoms of several little clubs in Sydney—regular gatherings of men who took a special interest in literature or included it in their devotion to art at large.

One of these was the Dawn and Dusk Club which clustered about that lover of smooth verse and beautiful images, Victor Daley. I'm not sure that it was bound by any severe regulations, or that its meetings were more notable for intellectual communion than for conviviality; but it was satirically stated that it derived its name from its practice of meeting at dusk and parting at dawn. Had I been a member, no doubt I should be able now to rebut the slander. Roderic Quinn was one of the happy band, and with him were Billy Melville, Bertram Stevens, who was always defying his philistine instincts by giving his hat a Bohemian tilt, and Fred Broomfield, who swaggered and boomed with melodramatic fervour, talked with vociferant eloquence, and swept up the ends of his moustache with the air of a Bobadil. The late George Taylor was another haunter of Dawn and Dusk, and, indeed, was the chronicler of the Club. His little book, Those were the Days, will interest you all.

The Boy Authors were a very different crew. Though I was privileged to attend their meetings, I understood that I was not a fully qualified member, but at best an out-patient. The name of the club indicated no more, I suppose, than that they were of the coming race—that they had the buoyancy and faith and force of a new generation. They tolerated a few visitors, but they themselves were the real thing. The world would never be the same again when once they had "arrived." They had all the confidence of creative genius. Among them was a vigorous young man, not, strictly speaking, an author, but a painter and a boxer, whose name was George Lambert—a fellow of power and ambition, to whom difficulties were a pressing invitation. He had the deep humility of the true artist, though humility was almost the last quality which his friends would have ascribed to him; he knew precisely what he could do, he judged his own potentiality aright, and he was aware of the need of development. It must have been he who set the tone of the whole club. Strength of character is always an impressive quality.

W. B. Beattie, another Boy Author, was a musician, a teacher of singing, but he had lately blossomed into literature, and "The Love Story of Tamar Niell" was being published in the short-lived Australian Magazine, with illustrations by his friend Lambert. It was a highly original story, for the name of the hero was Chelub. I remember watching Beattie languidly dropping sheet after sheet of a voluptuous romance on the floor, as he reached the end of the manuscript page. He read his own words unemotionally, as if they were the list on a washing bill—as if his lovely princess, who rose pinkly glowing from her bath of snow, were no more than a frog in a puddle, and his ecstatic prince a small boy waiting to nab it.

Arthur Adams also was there. He had not yet lost the ingenuous shyness which he brought from Maoriland, and he uttered his verses with a world of tender appreciation. Since then he has attempted to veil his native sentimentalism with a figleaf of worldliness.

There was a more prosaic style about Souter—the artist who is haunted by impossible cats that he created in an unguarded moment. He was a watchful critic, humorously awake to absurdity.

Women attended the meetings, too—after unavailing protests from some of the members. The lady who was to become Mrs Lambert wrote short stories, and, as Lambert considered that she, at least, ought to have a chance to read them, of course she had to be admitted. And Louise Mack, looking round and fluffy and infantile, settled into a cosy chair like a chicken in a broken egg-shell. In those days, the presence of women seemed inevitably to mean a suppression of normal thirst, so the meetings closed with the distribution of sweet biscuits and small cups of coffee.

One evening, Brennan was invited to come and read something of his own composition. He came, perched uneasily, and read—

Because this curse is on the dawn, to yield

her secrecy distill'd of nuptial tears,

and day dismantles, casual, nor reveres

whate'er august our brooding dream reveal'd;

because that night to whom we next appeal'd,

no more gestation of inviolate spheres,

shameless, is mimic of the day, nor fears

the scant occurrence of her stars repeal'd:

Therefore, if never in some awful heart

a gather'd peace, impregnable, apart,

cherish us in that shrine of steadfast fire,

be these alone our care, excluding hence

some form undesecrate of all desire,

the wings of silence, adamantine, dense.

The wings of silence folded heavily over the astounded company, till Louise Mack timidly asked the poet if he would mind reading his sonnet again. With fitting solemnity he read it again. There were murmurs of thanks, and inarticulate ejaculations. Criticism was stricken dumb. For once at least the educational purpose of the Boy Authors lay gasping for breath.

That society lasted only a few months. Perhaps its vitality was drained by the departure of Lambert for Europe. It was otherwise with the Casual Club, which survived for many years. The Casuals began as a tiny group gathered for reasonable conversation by R. F. Irvine. They dined together in town once a fortnight, and then repaired to some artist-member's studio, where they sat and smoked and said the wisest things they could force their brains to formulate. In those days one could get a fairly good meal for a shilling, and when we took to haunting a dining-room where we paid eighteen-pence each, and had the privilege of drinking a kind of red ink which, though it was called "ordinaire," would not have proved a satisfactory substitute for the fluid sold by stationers, one member at least complained that the expense was excessive, and pined in exile. The rest of us became extravagant. We abandoned ordinaire and bought burgundy, which the proprietor evidently kept in a very dusty place. The waiter treated the dirty bottles reverently and carried them round in a basket to match. That is the height of luxury; but even then we were not contented but sought out new inventions. We bought supplies on our way to the studio, and a regiment of bottles stood to attention and then manoeuvred about the table while we talked. The talk became less deliberately sapient, but not less brilliant. The number of members increased. Sometimes visitors came and dined with us and were granted an opportunity to converse with us. Hornell, the English artist whose pictures are made up of a harmony of flowers and foliage and blossomy childhood, was one of our guests; another was Jack London, who talked about the ways of prize-fighters; and I have vivid recollections of the burly Randolph Bedford, breezily telling stories that require the full force of his personality to produce their extraordinary effect. One evening, too, a well-known journalist dropped in, and I knew by the dignity of his bearing that all was not well. Our burgundy tipped the scale towards insobriety, and he grew portentously irritable, till at last he challenged the meekest of us to a duel. We escaped the swashbuckler by scattering, as if the "casualty" were over; but we gathered a little later in a wine-shop.

When a studio was not to be had, a wine-shop was a comfortable rendezvous, and there was one which provided an excellent retreat among portly barrels in a rather dimly-lighted cellar.

The club had only one rule—that every member should be, ex officio, a vice-president; there were no other office-bearers. It was generally agreed that there should be no speeches.

In the course of time, some members discontinued their attendance, though not their membership—once a casual, always a casual, dead or alive—and new members drifted in. One of the eldest in years among us was the youngest in spirit—Julian Ashton, the veteran artist, a sturdy fighter in the cause of art, and consequently a firm opponent of many of his fellow painters. The talk, when it turned on art, was illuminating to all of us. Julian Ashton learned what he had not realized earlier, that words must be selected and placed as carefully as colours, and immediately he tried to apply this new lore by writing some prose sketches, which he ventured, in defiance of all precedent, to read to us. In all his talk there was a flavour of what would be called cynicism in a less happy and genial spirit. He thought this was the result of long observation, the fruit of experience, an opening of the eyes to reality. Of course it was temperamental. He sucked it with his mother's milk. It was always welcome. Would one ever quarrel with the bitterness of beer at its best?

If he was the youngest member, his son Howard was the most elderly; his scornful maturity was decisive. He was as incompletely equipped with doubts as a fossil with nerves. Even Arthur Adams, who had adopted all the cynical certainties of the Bulletin office, seemed a simpering youth by contrast. But let me hasten to add that Howard Ashton was then, as he is now, a thoughtful, original, and able artist; and I should not venture to jest at his expense if I were not aware that his sympathies are as liberal as his knowledge is wide and his talent manifold. One passion of his childhood he retained under the veil of scientific research: he swapped locusts with collectors who foraged in other lands.

The most buoyantly enthusiastic member was Lionel Lindsay, who blew in like a sea-breeze, and spoke in quick brief sentences, with rapidly repeated monosyllables that he fired like a Lewis gun.

We had two men who shone as wits. First came Norman Gough, the French lecturer, whose swift word-play was so slick that its flashes were a dance of white sparkles. W. B. Beattie was no less witty, but his manner was less vivacious and his jests, over which he himself chuckled infectiously, were even more telling.

Dowell O'Reilly, watchful and eager-eyed, was slyly provocative. He was equally a delight to look upon, whether he were obstinately argumentative—patting his arguments with his pipe-stem, as if they were foundation-stones—or joyously absorbing the general chatter.

But I cannot describe them all—Harry Weston (with his air of innocent surprise at his own jokes), Souter (using a Scottish accent, and scratching the palm of his hand on his stubby head), Bertram Stevens (who had the reputation of an impartial Boswell), J. J. Quinn (the beaming authority on French fiction), Sid Long (whose refined taste for good wine made him a little untrustworthy as custodian of our surplus supplies), Leon Gellert (who went to the war to find out if he were a coward, and came back, as he said, convinced that he was), Hal Eyre (the cartoonist, a dryly humorous raconteur), Radcliffe Brown (the bearded young anthropologist, who left us to become Director of Education at Tonga), H. S. Nicholas, Arundel Orchard, Carl Kaeppel, Vivian Crockett, the universally informative A. W. Jose, the wandering Austrian, Hemmer (who was afterwards deported for his follies), and the rest of the varied company which was held together by good-fellowship and a devotion to art.

In its latter years the club was dominated by Brennan. His scholarship was broad and deep, his artistic interests varied, his voice a thunder from the Olympian throne. What he said came with authority. Whatever the topic, his knowledge was a charm that could command silence in all but the flippant or foolish. The club had found its Johnson, and became gradually a group of admirers and disciples. Its tone changed. It lost some of its effervescence. Its very existence depended on its dictator.

I offer none of these other clubs as a model for you. If you have any originality you need no model, but will create your own manners, breathe an atmosphere that no predecessors have inspired, and help each other in ways peculiar to yourselves; but there are some qualities that you must have in common with these others—a joy in life, an impulse to artistic expression, a willingness to learn, a 'readiness to be of service. A true comradeship will then bind you together, and the world in which you live will be the better for it.