ADAPTATIONS
Stage, Screen and Other Versions of His Natural Life, –
ELIZABETH WEBBY
Clarke’s His Natural Life has been one of the most Mfrequently adapted Australian novels, rivalled by only Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms () and Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection () in the number of versions offered to the public. Each change in the dominant style of popular entertainment – from stage melodrama in the s to silent film in the s and television in the s – has produced at least one adaptation of Clarke’s novel. While, perhaps surprisingly, no version has yet been made for sound film, in Greenhouse Publications issued a comic-book For the Term of His Natural Life, adapted and illustrated by Peter Foster. His Natural Life is so far the only Aust- ralian novel to have been presented in this form. With each new adaptation over the past century, there have been alterations in the representation of the novel’s characters, themes and plot. Some of these reflect changes in society, especially changes in attitudes to the convict system, to women, to sexuality and the body. Some reflect the different opportunities offered by different modes of production, and some alterations are quite the opposite of what one might have expected, with the earlier versions often being franker and closer to Clarke’s novel than the later. Together, however, they form a significant part of the reception history of His Natural Life, within the broader cultural history of Australia.
The illustrations in the serial His Natural Life first appeared before the public in monthly serialised episodes in the Australian Journal (March – June ), for much of its run as the leading item and with most issues featuring a wood-cut illustration of scenes and characters from the novel. Although this much longer serial version of the novel has been reprinted several times, the original illustrations have been reproduced only once.1 While as crude as most cheap magazine illustrations of this period, they are interesting both for what is depicted and what is not. Apart from the illustration for December , which shows a foppish Mr Meekin lecturing a convict – probably Rufus Dawes – who is breaking stones, there is no attempt to depict convicts at work, let alone being punished. The illustrations for the instalments of June and July , dealing with the plotting of the mutiny and the convict breakout on board the Malabar, show some appropriately brutish convicts, one of whom is presumably Gabbett. But, apart from the latter, there is no attempt to stereotype the characters as either good or evil through the depiction of their physical features. Maurice Frere, for example, is shown in the illustration for August as a good-looking young man. One has to wait for the TV mini-series to again find a handsome Maurice. Stage melodrama relied heavily on visual cues – through physiognomy, make-up and costume – to alert audiences to a character’s nature, and early films and comic strips followed suit. The thin lips and shifty eyes of the Maurice of the film are repeated in the depiction of him in the comic-book version of the novel. The Gabbett of the film has very prominent teeth, to indicate his cannibal nature, while in the comic-book he is presented as more ape than man. All adaptations of His Natural Life have been based on the shorter, , book version, except for the television series. All, however, apart from the comic-book, contrive a happy ending more in keeping with the intention of the – serial if not with its substance. In neither version did Clarke contemplate anything more than a spiritual union of Dawes and Sylvia (originally Dora). He anticipated a stage version with some dismay, knowing that stage
1 In the Angus & Robertson edition. melodrama usually required a happy ending in which the hero and heroine became one in flesh as well as spirit. Many of the difficulties with any adaptation arise from the need to make things concrete and specific that in the original are abstract and general. Embodying characters raises particular difficulties for the representation of the type of idealised love Clarke imagines as existing between Dawes and Sylvia. Given the disparity in their ages, it is possible, in the novel, to see this love in terms of a parent–child or, at least, elder brother–young sister relationship. It is much less easy to do this in a visual representation, even if Sylvia is not blatantly sexualised. Ironically, the comic-book version, the only one to retain the ending where Dawes and Sylvia drown in each other’s arms, precedes this by a panel depicting Sylvia in a very revealing, and very un-nineteenth-century, body-clinging negligée. In the film Sylvia’s nightgown is much more substantial and she even has the good sense to put on her dressing gown when first woken by buckets of water coming into her cabin. But, in this version, she is going to be allowed to survive. The Australian Journal’s illustration of this scene (October ) shows Dora even more sensibly – and perhaps more accurately for the period – still in her day dress. Clarke, of course, did not have to worry about what Sylvia was wearing when the ship went down – and certainly does not bother to tell us.
Stage adaptations Ian McLaren records thirty-one stage adaptations of the novel, performed mainly in Australia, but also in England and the USA, between and .2 A number of these, however, used variants of the same basic scripts; a chronological listing of the first performances of fourteen different adaptations, including pro- ductions in New Zealand, appears on p. . McLaren also lists ‘ ‒ ’, which had been published by Richard Bentley and Son: in August in an edition of copies, at one shilling a copy. Entered for copyright at British Museum on November . This is not an acting edition, but a precis of the original
2 McLaren –. p 594: insert landscape page with chart
Robertson first edition, supposed to be adapted by Hamilton Mackinnon and Marian Clarke, and undertaken solely for the purpose of protecting copyright. (p. ) As Richard Fotheringham has noted, the copyright law in force when Clarke died in only covered his work for five years.3 This may explain the reason for the precis, and for the rash of actual adaptations in , even though there is some doubt as to whether the current copyright laws could ever have prevented stage versions of a work. By the time the precis was published, three different adaptations had already appeared in Australia. George Leitch’s His Natural Life had premiered at the Theatre Royal, Brisbane on April , then played in Adelaide and Melbourne, and opened at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, on August. Another version had been given to Sydney audiences by Alfred Dampier on June . Inigo Tyrrell Weekes premiered the third version at the Mechanics’ Institute, Williamstown, on June , subsequently playing it in the USA, –. His attempt to prevent Leitch’s version opening in Melbourne on June, on the grounds that he owned the copyright for performances in Victoria, led to a celebrated court case.4 A number of full and partial scripts for both the Leitch and the Dampier adaptations have survived, allowing an unusual insight into their respective beliefs about audience taste and providing a salutary caution against making too many inferences on the basis of scanty evidence. If these scripts were not extant, one might have been tempted to take the precis published by Bentley as the model for how the novel was presented to an theatre audience. The precis is divided into a Prologue and four Acts, with the prologue opening in England in and the remainder set in Van Diemen’s Land from –. The action follows that of the novel fairly closely, though leaving out scenes that would seemingly have been difficult to stage. So the prologue closes with Richard Devine’s capture and taking on the identity of Rufus Dawes. Act I opens with Sylvia, Mrs Vickers and Maurice Frere marooned at Hell’s
3 ‘Some Echoes of Marcus Clarke’, Notes and Furphies, (April ), p. . 4 See Roslyn Atkinson and Richard Fotheringham, ‘Dramatic Copyright in Australia to ’, Australasian Drama Studies, (October ), –.
Gates where they are joined by Rufus Dawes – all the Malabar and earlier Macquarie Harbour episodes are omitted. Act II opens in Hobart five years later; Acts III and IV take place at Port Arthur, a further five years on. Again, most of the exterior scenes of the novel are cut: episodes involving Sylvia, North, Dawes and Frere are reproduced fairly faithfully but the blow-hole episode, Rex’s impersonation of Richard Devine and the final storm scene are omitted. So are any traces of what would seem to our eyes the most controversial and taboo material: the cannibalism, North’s alcoholism and loss of faith, and Kirkland’s rape by Gabbett. A happy ending is achieved by what, again by modern standards, are the impossible coincidences of melodrama. North brings Sylvia to Dawes’s prison cell, after having told her Dawes’s story. This, one assumes, has been sufficient for her to recover her memory: ‘Amid tears Sylvia confesses her love for Dawes, and her hatred for her husband now she knows all.’5 Meanwhile, Sarah Purfoy has smuggled in a gun for Rex, concealed in a Bible, which he uses to kill Frere, before confessing to the murder of Lord Bellasis. After North has duly confessed to the robbery: ‘Major Vickers is now satisfied, and passes Sylvia to Dawes – united to be parted only by death; and North falls on his knees exclaiming, “I’ve saved him – I’ve saved him!” (Curtain)’ (p. ). The surviving scripts, however, show that the actual productions were remarkably different from this and from each other. One of three versions of the Leitch adaptation, which differ in the number of acts and scenes they contain, does end with a similar gesture on the part of North: North: Forgive me, this tardy atonement cannot undo the past, but it can give you freedom, love, happiness! Bring hither the chains that have maimed his innocent hands, and place them here on mine! (Kneels, his hands extended to Rup[ert Dawes].) Curtain. Leitch added a note: Feeling an objection to end the piece with such gloomy surroundings, I arranged another short act to follow this. The
5 For the Term of His Natural Life. A Drama in Four Acts. Adapted from Marcus Clarke’s Novel (London: Richard Bentley and Son, ), p. .
Scene same as Act Sc (or Gardens attached to the Old Home) wherein occurred the Scene now used in Act , Sc . . . But we found the end of the fifth act so strong that we made the finale there.6 Apart from Act , however, Leitch’s adaptation depicts little of the convict experience. His hero is a very much nobler version of Rufus Dawes, and in love with Sylvia almost from the start, with even his name changed to the more genteel ‘Rupert Dawes’. Leitch also avoids two of the major difficulties facing any adaptor of His Natural Life, especially for the stage – the twenty years covered and the resulting change in Sylvia from child to woman – by compressing the time span into three years, with Sylvia already an adult on board the Malabar. The role of Mr Meekin – played by Leitch himself – is considerably expanded to provide much of the comic business. He is present from the first scene at Sir Richard Devine’s house in Hampstead where he wears a lady’s boa and muff to protect himself from the cold weather. The cross-dressing motif continues in Act where Meekin is also marooned with the lovers, Mrs Vickers and Frere: ‘He has on Dawes’ convict trousers, ragged shirt, some large palm leaves round his neck, seaweed round his waist. Stick with some shorter leaves fastened to it which he uses as a parasol.’ Leitch also makes an effective use of costume here to suggest Clarke’s point about natural authority: Dawes wears Dr Pine’s clothes and Frere has on Dawes’s convict jacket and cap. Another very effective use of stagecraft is apparent in the climactic scene where Sylvia recovers her memory. As in the novel (:), she had earlier written ‘ . .’ in the sand. In Act , at Port Arthur, Dawes is being tortured on the stretcher. Frere, attempting to increase the torment, writes the same words on the stones with a smoking brand. This is a classic villain’s overreaching gesture, since when Sylvia sees the words all becomes clear to her. While the only reference to cannibalism occurs in Act in a brief comic episode with the convicts – Crow refers to ‘old Gabby’ as having ‘cooked and eaten his pal’ – Leitch’s adaptation appears
6 Leitch Papers, ML MSS /. The other two versions are in the same collection. to be the only one to attempt to deal with the novel’s homosexual content. In one version of Act , Scene , Kirkland complains to North of what has happened to him in the long dormitory, and Gabbett, as in the novel, calls Kirkland ‘Miss Nancy’. Sub- sequently, Meekin is locked in the dormitory by mistake and, it is revealed, almost suffers Kirkland’s fate: he is, of course, saved by Dawes. Since Adrian Kiernander’s research suggests that Leitch was himself homosexual, his inclusion of this material is less surprising, though still remarkable for its period.7 Leitch’s adaptation received an enthusiastic review in the Sydney Bulletin which claimed that Clarke’s ‘great work has been ably summarised, splendidly presented, and enthusiastically received’.8 On June the same paper had been much more critical of Dampier’s version; this judgement may have been in the mind of the later reviewer, who continued: Mr Leitch shows that a man may follow the pursuit of adaptor and yet have good in him. Most adaptors are sorry humbugs. Their sterile souls don’t know a good thought when they see it. They strangle fine fancies, thinking they are giving them point. Conversely, the reviewer for the Melbourne Leader thought that Leitch had merely vulgarised Clarke’s novel, producing nothing more that a standard melodrama which would appeal only to those in the pit and galleries.9 Leitch later toured his version around New Zealand, again in competition with a rival adaptation by a Mr South for the Wyeburd Company, also, according to the Leader, ‘a wretched fiasco’.10 On November, the Leader reported an interesting comment from a New Zealand paper on the difficulties of adapting Clarke’s novel: it would have been far better if neither Mr Leitch, Mr South, nor any other aspiring dramatist, had laid hands upon Marcus Clarke’s novel. It would not make a good play under any circumstances. Boucicault, who is a pretty old hand at this trade,
7 George Leitch, The Land of the Moa, ed. Adrian Kiernander (Wellington: Victoria University Press, ), p. . 8 August , p. . 9 , July , pp. , . 10 October , p. .
had the subject brought under his notice, and declared in plain words that it was not susceptible of dramatic treatment. But Leitch and Company would not believe Boucicault, hence these tears. (p. ) Though he was the leading English melodrama writer of this period, Dion Boucicault was to be proved wrong by the continuing success of the version of Clarke’s novel performed by Alfred Dampier’s company which, according to Richard Fotheringham, also influenced the silent film.11 Where Leitch had supplied an ennobled Dawes and a finely comic Meekin, Dampier offered more broadly comical convicts and a cannibal on the rampage. As the Bulletin noted sarcastically: ‘Gabbett . . . is of a cannibalistic turn, and it would add greatly to the success of the drama if he would eat his victims close to the footlights, but perhaps such an assignment would thin out the company too fast.’12 Like the Bentley precis, the Dampier version omits the Malabar episodes, opening Act in Van Diemen’s Land with the convict gang having fun at the expense of Meekin. As in the Leitch version, Meekin is also one of the marooned party who are, subsequently, joined by the convicts when their ship is wrecked. Gabbett gets very hungry, chases Meekin with an axe and eventually kills Mrs Vickers. It is this, in the Dampier version, which causes Sylvia to lose her memory – but seeing Gabbett again at the end of the play allows her to recover it. Gabbett also conveniently kills Frere though the Dampier finale does not, like others, literally fling Sylvia and Dawes into each other’s arms. The comical treatment of the convicts – and their much greater prominence in Dampier’s version – appear to contradict the common belief that Australians at this period only wished to forget their convict heritage.13 Another interesting feature of Dampier’s play is the relative lack of prominence given to Rufus Dawes. One reason for this is that Dampier himself played James North. Just 11 See his entry on For the Term of His Natural Life in Companion to Theatre in Australia, ed. Philip Parsons (Sydney: Currency Press, ), p. . 12 June , p. . 13 Cf. Historical Background, pp. ‒. It is noteworthy that Leitch’s version, which played down the convict episodes, rather then Dampier’s, was performed in Hobart. as Mr Meekin’s role was considerably expanded in Leitch’s version, so North is much more prominent in Dampier’s version. He is allocated most of the end-of-act curtain speeches, is allowed to knock down the villain and is even given a soliloquy in which to lament his addiction to brandy. All the more recent adaptations play down North’s drinking problem, while in Leitch’s version North has cancer of the stomach and drinks brandy for medicinal purposes only. This summary is based on the script surviving in the William Anderson Papers in the Mitchell Library.14 Another version, found in the papers of W. E. Baker who had played Maurice Frere in the production, has a slightly different opening, dispensing with the character of Lord Bellasis, and so preserving the virtue of Lady Devine.15 Sir Richard Devine is John Rex’s father as well as Richard Devine’s, and is killed by Rex in the opening scene. This same opening is used in the version, marked ‘Property of Alfred Dampier’, now housed in the Perform- ing Arts Museum, Melbourne. Another script, attributed to Clarke’s daughter, Ethel Marian Clarke, and dated December , again differs mainly in its beginning and end.16 In an apparent attempt to strengthen the character of Lady Devine, whom she was to play in the silent film, Marian Clarke opens her version more than twenty years earlier, on the evening the then Ellinor Wade is about to elope with her cousin Lord Bellasis. Discovering that her maid is also pregnant by Bellasis, Ellinor refuses to go through with it, and marries Sir Richard Devine instead. While giving a little more spine to Lady Devine, it draws out an already long time-span even further and appears never to have been followed in any production. This script also plays down some of the comedy with Meekin and the convicts, apparently in recognition of changing audience tastes, and the famous cannibal scene (Act , Scene ) has an annotation by her: ‘If thought advisable this scene can be cut.’ The ending is particularly interesting, suggesting that Marian Clarke had perhaps intended to play Lady Devine. Sylvia does not appear at all, and the curtain falls on the reunion of mother and son.
14 ML MSS /, undated. 15 ML MSS , undated. 16 Australian Archives, A/–/.
The number of surviving scripts which provide variants on the basic adaptation first performed by Alfred Dampier’s company in testify to its wide and long-lasting popularity with Australian audiences. Dampier continued to play in his until and it was subsequently performed by various other companies, including those of Katherine Russell, William Anderson and the Fullers, until at least . After Leitch’s return to England in , his version was restaged in Sydney by James and Charles MacMahon in . They later leased the rights to the Majeroni Brothers, who staged it in New Zealand in and in Brisbane in . Other companies also played their own adaptations, about which little is known: for example Dan Barry’s Dramatic Company played a season at Her Majesty’s Opera House, Brisbane, in June ; and Edmund Duggan’s adaptation opened at the Theatre Royal, Adelaide, on December . As the Leader reported on September , various adapta- tions were also being performed in the USA. Indeed, one produced at the Grand Opera House, San Francisco by John A. Stevens in , under the title Convict or Realistic Scenes from Prison Life in Australia, would appear to have been the first in the world: British copyright laws did not extend to the USA. Under various other titles, A Great Wrong Righted and A Great Wrong, this version was subsequently performed in numerous American cities during –.17 A review from the New York Dramatic Mirror indicates that while Stevens changed all the names of the characters, he remained fairly faithful to the novel, though with a happy ending engineered through the Sylvia-figure being shown a Bible by the Dawes-figure to allow her to regain her memory.18 In another version, by Senator James J. McCloskey of New York, played at the Queen’s Theatre in Manchester, England, during July, and at the Surrey Theatre, London, in ; another adaptation was performed at the Theatre Royal, Leicester, in . Eric Irvin lists a further version as having played at the Theatre Royal, Gloucester, on June , under the title Strong as Death.19 17 See the listings in McLaren –. 18 Review is reproduced in McLaren –. 19 Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, – (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, ), p. .
Screen adaptations In keeping with the early Australian film industry’s heavy reliance on stage melodrama for its stories, a silent film version of His Natural Life was made in by Charles MacMahon and E. J. Carroll. As MacMahon had toured the Leitch version in New Zealand in , this film was presumably based on it. The Dampier version, however, would seem to have been used for The Life of Rufus Dawes, made by Alfred Rolfe, Dampier’s son-in-law, and released by Spencer’s Pictures in .20 No copy of either film is known to survive. The pioneer director Raymond Longford, who had appeared in the film, was keen to make another version in and had already written a script when Union- Australasia decided to bring in the Americans. Longford’s script was never filmed; instead the American director Norman Dawn was entrusted with the production and American actors engaged for most leading parts. John Tulloch claims that Dawn did not use a shooting script but filmed with a copy of the novel beside him.21 Some scenes, including the very graphic cannibal chase do, however, seem to owe something to Dampier’s stage version. While Dawn’s film attempts to include all the major incidents, it is extremely hard to follow for anyone who has not read the novel. The decision to use the same actor (George Fisher) as both Dawes and Rex, presumably to make Rex’s impersonation of Richard Devine more plausible, adds to the confusion. Dawn also decided to employ a child actor as Sylvia only in the Malabar scenes, with Eva Novak (another American) given the role from the Macquarie Harbour period onwards. This has the effect of considerably sexualising her relationship with Dawes, even more perhaps than in Leitch’s version, where Sylvia is an adult throughout. Changing attitudes to the convict system, as well as a generic move from melodrama to epic, are seen in the much stronger presentation of Dawes as long-suffering convict victim and the almost complete absence of any comic material. One scene where Meekin is tossed into a trough of water survives in part – the
20 Richard Fotheringham, personal communication. 21 Legends on the Screen: The Narrative Film in Australia – (Sydney: Currency Press, ), p. . incomplete state of the film is particularly frustrating at this point.22 Compared to the melodramas, there is a much greater concentration on presenting the horrors of the convict system, with some nicely ironic cross-cutting between the officers feasting on plenty and Dawes starving on Grummet Rock. Although Gabbett is depicted as a monster, Maurice Frere is the real villain, and, as in Dampier’s melodrama, Gabbett is given the task of killing Frere at the end. Here, too, Dawn engages in some interesting cross-cutting between the convicts’ escape and the ship being buffeted by the storm which adds tension and atmosphere. Frere perishes but Sylvia and Dawes are safe together on a raft as ‘The End’ appears on the screen. If the film was, apart from those final scenes, one of the most faithful of all attempts to adapt Clarke’s novel, the mini- series for television was one of the least. While retaining more emphasis on the horrors of the convict system than the stage versions, Patricia Payne and Wilton Schiller presented a sanitised adaptation appropriate to an early evening, ‘family’ time slot. There are virtually no references to homosexuality or cannibalism, and Gabbett is shown as neither a brute nor a monster. Kirkland is a beautiful young man rather than a child as in the Dampier and Dawn versions, but one needs to have read the novel to realise the significance of this. And though North is played by Anthony Perkins – and consequently looks far more tortured than any of the convicts – his alcoholism and lack of faith receive little attention. As Rufus Dawes, Colin Friels appears to be eternally resilient in the true melodrama hero – or cartoon – fashion. At the end he is a little greyer at the temples, but otherwise physically unaffected by his twenty years of suffering. In contrast, even the original Australian Journal illustrations show Dawes as lined and haggard after his sufferings as a convict. Like the Leitch version, the television series essentially rewrites His Natural Life as a love story. But whereas Leitch had the sense to compress the time frame of the action to three years, the TV adaptation lengthens it by taking in some of the Victorian goldfields material from the original serial; the result is a fascinating if finally
22 The surviving print of Dawn’s film is an editorial reconstruction by the National Film and Sound Archive; some scenes have been lost or replaced by stills. unconvincing amalgam. Both Sylvia and Dawes are allowed to survive the storm, with their ship eventually reaching Sydney. Just when he thinks he has safely got through the voyage without meeting her, Sylvia runs into Dawes in the street; for no apparent reason, she then recovers her memory and so does not give ‘Good Mr Dawes’ away. After various adventures at the gold-diggings, and the death of Frere, Dawes is able to return to England and reclaim his identity as Richard Devine. This version ends with him going off to court Sylvia as though all that had happened in Australia had merely been a bad dream. By , the convict system had been sufficiently mythologised within Australian popular culture to be able to be used merely as the exotic background for a love story. No doubt many of those who viewed the mini-series had also paid a visit to the historical theme park, Old Sydney Town, on the New South Wales Central Coast, and watched the mock floggings carried out as part of its recreation of life in the early settlement.
In Peter Foster’s comic-book adaptation it is interesting to note an attempt to convey the horrors of the convict past via a more recent and larger-scale instance of man’s brutality to man: the Holocaust. The prison warder Troke, for example, ‘cruel and harsh, now chief constable of the island’, is depicted in a manner usually associated with visual representations of German SS officers (p. ). Although he does not actually wear a monocle, he is given a droopy right eyelid which makes it look as though he does. The use of physical deformity to portray evil goes even further in the case of Gabbett, who is given strongly negroid and ape-like features. The representation of cannibalism is, however, confined to a textual reference to ‘the maddened Gabbett, having survived by cannibalism, proudly presents to his startled captors the grisly remains of his mates’ (p. ). The accompanying small panel keeps ‘the grisly remains’ well out of frame. Likewise, assuming the comic version has been aimed at a child audience, it is not surprising to find no reference to Kirkland’s rape and very little to North’s alcoholism.
While Clarke’s novel has long enjoyed recognition as an Australian classic, all the adaptations discussed here were originally aimed at a mass or popular audience. Following the National Film and Sound Archive’s reconstruction of the film, with a soundtrack played by the Palm Court Orchestra, the film, like the novel, has become part of the Australian cultural canon. Tom O’Regan cites it as one of only two outstanding epic Australian films.23 An equivalent reclamation of the earlier Dampier stage version might be expected to follow Richard Fotheringham’s editing of that text as part of the Academy Editions volume, Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage. One of the theatrical performances of the Adelaide Festival was Natural Life, a multimedia, deconstructive reading of certain aspects of His Natural Life, staged in the shell of the Queen’s Theatre, the first theatre built in Adelaide ().24 All of these activities, together with the present Academy Edition of His Natural Life, indicate the continued potency of Clarke’s novel within Australian culture.
23 Australian National Cinema (London: Routledge, ), p. . 24 Natural Life, an adaptation by Humphrey Bower, was published by Currency Press (Sydney) in . Made up entirely of passages from the novel, the script was itself extensively adapted in rehearsal before its Adelaide and later Melbourne performances.