Arthur William Upfield: a Biography
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ARTHUR WILLIAM UPFIELD: A BIOGRAPHY Travis B. Lindsey BLittComm MA This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University February 2005 ii I declare that this dissertation is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at a university or other institution. (Travis Barton Lindsey) iii ABSTRACT This dissertation is an exhaustive account of the life and work of Arthur William Upfield (1890-1964). It is presented as a critical biography and narrates the life of the writer, in his socio-cultural milieu, from birth. It also positions Upfield as a writer who dealt with issues of Aboriginality at a time when this was a singularly polemical subject. My work is informed by the theory of Zygmunt Bauman and others and is posited in the context of late-modern biography theory. English-born, Upfield arrived in Australia in 1911 and took work in the bush, serving overseas with the Australian army at the outbreak of World War I and marrying an Australian army nurse in Egypt. Returning with his wife and son to Australia in 1921 he intermittently carried his swag until he was employed patrolling the Western Australian number 1 rabbit-proof fence for three years to 1931. By that time he had published four novels, including two crime novels featuring his fictional creation, the part-Aboriginal, part-European, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (“Bony”), arguably the first fully-developed character in Australian popular fiction. Leaving the fence, Upfield settled with his family in Perth and wrote full-time until joining the Melbourne Herald in 1933. Retrenched, he resumed career writing to be further interrupted by a war-time intelligence posting in 1939. In 1943 the first Bony mysteries were published in America, where Upfield’s critical success was maintained until his death. In 1945 he left his wife for Jessica Uren, to whom he remained devoted. iv Upfield’s in all twenty-nine Bony novels, many of which have been translated across eleven languages, afforded him notable success both at home and abroad, in good part due to his descriptive gifts and the uniqueness of his fictional character, the part- Aboriginal Bony. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful for the help and encouragement in this work of many people, especially the knowledgeable and generous Joe and Gaby Kovess, Bill and Francesca Upfield and Don and Lynette Uren. Joe Kovess has been generous, too, in his sharing of his extensive and painstakingly gathered listings of Upfield’s articles and other writings. Others, too, have been generous - Philip Asdell, the chairman (Peter Fleming) and the board of Bonaparte Holdings Pty. Limited, Jan Howard Finder, Bill Finlay, Patricia Kotai-Ewers, Paul McEvoy, the late Louise Mueller, Brian Pinchback, Pamela Ruskin, Haille Smith and many more, including my tolerant wife Felicity. My special thanks for their interest, guidance and encouragement go to my supervisors Professors Vijay Mishra, Horst Ruthrof and Kateryna Olijnyk Longley. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknowledgments v 1 Introduction 1 2 The First Twenty Years (1890-1910) 17 3 The Bush Mould (1911-14) 25 4 The Great War and Afterwards (1914-21) 33 5 Back to the Bush (1921-27) 43 6 The West and the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1927-29) 51 7 Aborigines in Society 56 8 Aborigines in Australian Literature 70 9 The Genesis of Bony 82 10 Writing and the Fence (1930-31) 93 11 Murder on the Fence (1929-32) 103 12 Penning, Penury and the Paper (1931-34) 113 13 Struggles, Succour and Success (1934-39) 126 14 The Second War and America (1939-45) 152 15 A Life Change (1945-46) 165 16 Anthropology and the Death of the Author (1946- 173 48) 17 A Trek, the Seaside, Rain, Politics and Mud (1948- 187 53) 18 Bermagui, a Biography and Bowral (1954-58) 214 19 Recognition, Reflection and the Westering Sun 235 (1959-64) 20 Conclusion 254 Selected Bibliography 255 1 1 INTRODUCTION This is a critical biography with a difference. It is neither a purely chronological account of the life of a writer, nor is it a theoretical engagement with the production of biographies. Instead, its purpose is to present for the first time in Australian letters a comprehensive account of the life, works, philosophy and outlook of Arthur William Upfield (1890-1964). Furthermore, it positions Upfield as a writer in the context of the first half of 20th century Australian history, one who dealt with issues of Aboriginality at a time when this was an under-theorized area of critical knowledge. From the sketchy evidence we have, it seems Upfield’s early life in England was serene and reasonably stable. Born and bred in Hampshire he enjoyed a middle-class existence until for health reasons he was dispatched at the age of 20 to South Australia, where he arrived early in 1911. For some years, and it seems by choice, he took employment on outback stations, intermittently humping his swag, until in the 1930s he rode for nearly three years a section of the number one rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia, where one of his novels provided a blueprint for a real-life murder. This period, during which several novels were produced, was interrupted by his volunteering for military service in World War I and eventuated in his marriage in Egypt to an Australian Army nurse. Following a period in 1933-34 when he was contracted to, and then retrenched from, the Melbourne Herald, Upfield supported his family and himself through his writing. During World War II he worked as a civilian for a department of military intelligence 2 and found great success with his mystery novels in the American market. Upon resigning from his wartime post he resumed writing on a full-time basis. In 1946 he left his wife and son for a widow, Jessica Uren, for whom he had developed deep feelings. The somewhat inhibited Upfield thus seems to have discovered love late in his life - an intense love which ended only with his death. That period is sketched in Jessica’s letters, in her unpublished manuscript Beauty for Ashes1 and in interviews with Jessica’s son, Don. With love also came a consolidation of Upfield’s style of mystery fiction and he remains to this day one of only a handful of Australian authors who were or are able to support themselves through their writing. As an Australian writer of popular fiction Upfield has few equals, although his special contributions to Australian letters are little remarked in the standard histories of Australian literature. (The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature does, however, go some way towards remedying this.)2 What stands out is his creation of the part- Aboriginal, part-European, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (“Bony”) of the Queensland Police, arguably the first fully-developed character in Australian popular fiction. So important was Bony to his creative imagination that between 1929 and (posthumously) 1966 Upfield produced twenty nine crime mysteries featuring Bony. All but one of the Bony novels have been at various times published in Australia, Britain and America and many have been translated across at least eleven languages.3 1 Jessica Hawke, Beauty for Ashes, ts., undated, archive of Don Uren, Mansfield, Victoria. 2 Elizabeth Webby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 ) 72, 125. 3 The Barrakee Mystery (1929) has so far not been published in Australia. For various title translations see for example: Zanik Jezera, trans. F. Jungwirth (Prague: Mlada Fronta, 1965). Den Sorte Jomfru, trans. N. Gabe (Copenhagen: Wangel, 1960). De Moord op de Weerprofeet, trans. A.M. van Steyn-Dingjan (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1958). Bony Ostaa Naisen, (Helsinki: Otava, 1971). Le Business de M. Jelly, trans. Michèle Valencia (Paris: Editions 10/18, 1998). Mei-Tantei Napoleon (Tokyo: Tokyo Sogen-Sha, 1958). Die Leute von Nebenan, trans. Arno Dohm (Munich: Goldman, 1957). Passi del Diavolo (Milan: Garzanti, 1950). Politiinspektoren Kjoper en Kvinne (Oslo: Elingaard, 1975). Un Autor Muerde el Polvo, trans. A. Custodio (Mexico: Novaro, 1956). I Laga Ordning (Stockholm: Lindquist, 1976). 3 Given Upfield’s status as a full-time, popular writer with an international reputation it is surprising that he is the subject of only two book-length studies. The first major text is Jessica Hawke’s biographical work Follow My Dust!, published in 1957, which carries on its dust jacket the notation “Written in collaboration with Arthur Upfield,” an assertion that is strongly supported by stylistic evidence.4 The work draws heavily from, although from a textual perspective it is frequently an improvement upon, Upfield’s mostly unpublished autobiographical work, The Tale of a Pommy.5 (The Melbourne Herald published in January 1934 articles relating to Upfield’s early years in Australia and Upfield incorporated these articles into his autobiography.) Jessica Hawke’s 238-page book comprises in its first 39 pages a sequential account of Upfield’s family life in England to the time of his departure for Australia. After that it becomes in large part a collection of yarns surrounding Upfield. The period 1914- 20, during which time he married, is covered in one sentence - “Upfield joined the A.I.F August 23rd 1914 and became a soldier for five years”6 - and the yarns cease Upfield’s letter to Louise Mueller of 14 August 1960, archive of Louise Mueller, Germantown, Wis., complains that the Russians were publishing his books without payment, but there is no other evidence for this. 4 Jessica Hawke, Follow My Dust! (London: Heinemann, 1957). Hawke is the maiden name of Jessica Uren, Upfield’s de facto wife from 1946.