^

820 .S7 Z3 I 969 ^^ 3 4067 031 98 4064

'^:J

•'•,"1 ^~\ •• C^ i •"^ i *••• Lr- •^^"' -r •!.! -^'^

7o•^^> JAMES BRUNTON STEPHENS JAMES BRUNTON STEPHENS

CECIL HADGRAFT

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND PRESS © University ofQueensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1969 Set in Monotype Baskerville 11/12 and printed on Burnie Featherweight Book 85 gsm Printed and bound by Watson Ferguson & Co. Ltd., Brisbane Registered in Australia for transmission by post as a book National Library of Australia registry number AUS69-2069 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publishers.

'.. V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY DEBT is most obviously owed to the officers of the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), the National Library (Canberra), the Mitchell Library (Sydney), the Oxley Library (Brisbane), the Fryer Library (University of Queensland), to the Queensland State Librarian, Mr. J. Stapleton, and to the Queensland Archivist, Mr. R. Sharman. I should like to express my thanks to Mrs. G. Bonnin of the Fryer Library, Mr. Spencer Routh of the Queensland University Library, my colleagues Miss E. Hanger and Mr. David Rowbotham, the Director-General of Education, Mr. G. K. D. Murphy, and Miss Ruth Fiddes, who drew my attention to the Francis Baily letters. I am especially grateful to the Rev. R. Maurice King of Bo'ness, who made the Kirk Session records available to me, and to the late Sir John Ferguson for his generous loan of the Stephens letters in his possession. I have to acknowledge gratefully the provision of funds by the Senate of the University of Queensland to aid in the research on this project.

It is a point of interest that the printing of this book has been done by Watson Ferguson and Company, originally Watson and Co., the firm which between 1873 ^^^ i^^*^ published for Stephens The Godolphin Arabian, Mute Discourse, and Miscellaneous Poems; and it was James Ferguson, a mem­ ber of the firm in the second half of last century and a close friend of Stephens, who was the recipient of the most self- revealing letters that Stephens ever wrote. CONTENTS

The Background

Travel i ^

Greenock 27

Brisbane and the Bush 39

The School Teacher 67

The Public Servant 89

The Man and His Work 105

Selective Bibliography 123 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

facing page James Brunton Stephens, 1871. Courtesy Oxley Library. 54

A page from Stephens' diary, from the entry dated 8 January 1857. Reproduced by permission of Mrs. J. P. Andrews. 55

The bachelors' quarters on Tamrookum, where Stephens lived as tutor to the family of William Barker. The figure on the right is reputed to be Stephens. Courtesy Telegraph {Brisbane). 70

Brisbane, 1864. The fire in Queen Street. Courtesy Oxley Library. 70

Brisbane, 1866. The old Lands Office, centre left. The old Hospital, now the Supreme Court site, centre. The first bridge, centre right. Turbot Street at bottom right. Courtesy Oxley Library. 71

"Wyuna", Water Street, Highgate Hill, Brisbane, where Stephens lived for the last twenty years of his life. Courtesy Telegraph [Brisbane). 71 THE BACKGROUND

HE GRAVEYARD on the hillside at Bo'ness, a small T port some twenty miles from Edinburgh, is split by a roadway into upper and lower sections. In the latter stands a tombstone, erected in 1847 by his family to the memory of John Stephens, "schoolmaster of this parish who after forty- seven years faithful and dihgent services died 13th December 1844". He was sixty-six years old, and had fathered eleven children, three by his first wife (two dying in infancy) and eight by his second, Jane. The latter (nde Brunton), of Muirkirk, he married on 25 December 1820, two years after the death of his first wife. Jane, it is believed, traced her ancestry back to George Buchanan, the Scottish poet of the sixteenth century. Like many other parish schoolmasters of that time, John Stephens must have found the rearing of a large family a task sometimes bordering on the impossible. He was one member of the partly devoted, partly constrained, and wholly admir­ able band of teachers who, since John Knox's vision of a literate nation, had made the parish schools of Scotland a uniquely eflfective instrument of elementary education. A school in every parish—it was for its time a dream, of course, an aspiration not attained even by 1800, nearly two centuries and a half later; but its partial fulfilment had made a poor and small country a subject for European admiration. In these schools were taught reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, religion (the Catechism), and sometimes Latin. Standards varied greatly, though even the least eflfective schools provided enough of a basic education to build on,

[I] THE BACKGROUND while the best were hardly to be distinguished from the lower classes in secondary schools. Scots could point to it all with pride. But it was bought at a price, and the price was paid by those who taught in the schools. The parish schoolteacher was appointed by the heritors and the parish minister and had to be a member of the Church of Scotland. Normally he became ex officio, or was almost automatically appointed. Session-clerk as well. A small dwelling, which did not need to have more than two rooms, was generally part of his emolument, together with a few fees that varied with the number of pupils. The average salary until 1803 was 400 merks (about f,2'f). All in all, he might expect as much as •£^0 per annum. To such a position in Bo'ness John Stephens had been appointed. The Kirk Sessions record for 27 May 1799 reads: The session considering that Mr. John Stephens is elected Parochial Schoolmaster resolved and agreed to choose him as their Clerk. They did, and hereby do so accordingly. Mr. Stephens being sent for, compeared, and the oath de fidelis being administered the Session records were committed to him. If the forty-seven years' service commemorated by his tomb­ stone is to be accepted, he was probably in the Session's employ a year or so earlier than this. The little Bo'ness school in 1799 held no more than half a dozen "schoUars", of diflferent ages and abilities, and then and later no doubt might serve as the original of the picture sketched in A Practical Essay on the Manner of Studying and Teaching in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1823)— One boy is saying a lesson; two or three are waiting to see if their sums are right; and half a dozen are asking each a diflferent word . . . —a busy little Eden removed from the towns and the uni­ versities where sexual indulgence, the same Essay admonishes us, was a scandal to the godly: [2] THE BACKGROUND

Stupidity, blindness, madness, convulsions, and above all, consumption, are a few of the punishments de­ nounced against eady and habitual lewdness; and should none of these occur, debility is always an atten­ dant of this disgusting vice. Less like Eden is another scene briefly described in an early piece of writing by James, son of John Stephens: Presently Virtue became aware, from the confused din of many voices, that they were approaching the seat of learning. As the school was situated outside the town they were not under the necessity of climbing over any roofs in order to reach it. The din seemed to increase as they approached, so that at length Virtue was fain to cling to her aunt's gown in a state of considerable apprehension as to whether the sounds were proceeding from human children or from a collection of wild animals. In Bo'ness John Stephens lived for the rest of his life. There he educated and reared his children. There he died and was buried. The Session record for 23 December 1844—an entry no longer in John Stephen's flowing and slightly ornate hand­ writing—officially notes that Mr. Stephens having died on the 13th inst the Session authorize the Moderator to act as interim Session Clerk, and to draw the usual dues, returning the usual propor­ tion for the Poor, and giving in the mean time the Session Clerk's proportion to Mr. Stephens' family. No doubt the customary condolences were sent and the customary expressions exchanged; but it reads as a rather chill comment on the good and faithful servant. He had made his will on 24 April of the same year. That it had not been made until then, and that it was then made— this suggests some memento mori, in all probability a "stroke", for he died of paralysis. So he set his affairs in order and, one may fear, waited. [3] THE BACKGROUND

What provision was made for his family we do not know, but it is Hkely enough that they benefited from the School­ masters' Widows' Fund, constituted by Act of Parhament in 1802. To it all burgh and parochial teachers, if appointed after that date, were obliged to contribute, the amount depending on the size of annuity desired. When the father died, the tenth of his eleven children was nine years old, being born 17 June 1835. This was James Brunton Stephens, the only member of the family to attain eminence. Many years later he was to make mention of the fact that he received his first education at his father's school. It seems to have been a good foundation, and he built on it until he was nineteen. He wrote that after the death of his father he spent five years in a "hospital" in Scotland. The corresponding institution to this in England would be Christ's Hospital, famous for two of its old pupils, Lamb and Coleridge. There were already four "hospitals" in Edinburgh in the eighteenth century, two for girls, two for boys. These last were the well-known George Heriot's Hospital, opened in the mid-seventeenth century, and George Watson's, founded about seventy years later. These schools were due to the beneficence of wealthy merchants, who left endowments to provide schools and funds for the children of "decayed merchants" and ministers. They served as models for later schools of the same kind, and the example of the founders encouraged similar bequests. There were eleven "hospitals" in Edinburgh by the middle of last century, with twenty-six in all Scotland. They were free schools for poor children, and they boarded their pupils. The food they provided seems monotonous— though what boy in residence at a boarding school has ever thought anything else? A weekly menu of around 1800 sur­ vives : for breakfast a mutchkin of porridge and a half mutch­ kin of milk; for dinner beef and broth on Sundays and Thursdays, mutton and broth on Tuesdays, and bread and milk on the other days except Saturday, when there was [4] THE BACKGROUND broth and a mutchkin of table beer; at four o'clock a snack of five ounces of bread; supper as breakfast in winter, but bread and milk in summer. Fruit and vegetables do not appear. The hours of instruction were longer than they are now, and there was no provision for sport. The subjects included English, writing, arithmetic, book-keeping, and music. "Hopeful pupils", those with a "bright and pregnant genius for Letters", might attend the High School and later go on to the University. It could not have been a very full or lively existence, what with the rather severe discipline, the rigidity of routine, the fewness of hohdays, and the drabness of the uniform. The majority of those who attended were destined to be appren­ tices or to enter trades. Only a bright boy with aspirations and a love of letters was likely to end up diflferently. At the end of this schooling Stephens matriculated. There is a tradition, mentioned by a few of those who have written on him, that he attended the University of Glasgow. It is practically certain that he did not, since the university records contain no mention of him. The University of Edin­ burgh was his alma mater. He was No. 1076 of the matric­ ulants who signed for the academic year 1849-1850. Stephens embarked on Literature I. According to Alexander Suther­ land, writing in the Melbourne Review in 1884, he took "Greek, moral philosophy, and mathematics at the University; Latin, logic, and metaphysics at the New College; everywhere securing an honourable position, with occasional prizes by the way". In the 1853-1854 session he enrolled for Literature IV, and his name is on the class list for mathematics in the same period. To go further than this bare outline of his university years is to venture at the worst into guesses, at the best into probabiUties. Some accounts say that he eked out what must have been slender resources by tutoring or coaching. That is likely enough: students in Scotland had long been inured to spartan fare. On the other hand, living could be cheap even [5] THE BACKGROUND in towns. In the 1770's, according to Dr. Johnson, a man might live in luxury in St. Andrews for £1^ ^. year. About 1800 a student could survive through the academic year for £10, subsisting from October to May on oats and barley meal. The 1830's and 1840's were depression decades: in Eng­ land and Wales in 1840 there were nearly two million on the pauper rolls out of a population of about sixteen million— one person out of eight or nine being a pauper! The world's supply of gold, as the economic set-up went then, was in­ sufficient, and was not to be augmented till the discoveries in California and AustraUa produced their enormous metal harvests. So that even fifty years after the turn of the century a little money would stretch far enough for bare existence. When Stephens was a student, then, he could still make do with what to us today would appear microscopic funds. Even so, he must have had a lean time. He left the University of Edinburgh without taking a degree, tempted, it seems, by the opportunities oflfered by a tutorship in a wealthy family fond of travel. His first post was with the Massey-Dawson family, people of fashion accustomed to moving in what would have been described at that period as exalted circles. He almost certainly spent some months with the family in Paris, where at the court of Napoleon III were to be found English visitors of the approp­ riate rank. Unfortunately we have no information about the time he was tutor with this family. Even a skeleton outline of his movements that Stephens provided in a letter does not help us much except to offer leads to investigation. That the letter is accessible is itself a matter of chance. H. M. Rodewald of Auckland, buying a certain volume, found in it as inserts two letters from James Brunton Stephens in Brisbane to A. G. Stephens of the Bulletin in Sydney. Transcriptions of these came into the possession of Walter Stone, the Sydney bibliographer, who printed them in Biblionews (February i960). [6] THE BACKGROUND

The first letter does not concern us at present. The second, however, dated 12 November 1900, is a reply to a query from A.G.S. asking why Stephens did not travel. It is a half- serious rejoinder, which allows us to see for once the assertive and dogmatic A.G.S. "on the receiving end", as Stone puts it. The relevant parts, all too tantalizingly brief, are these: And wherefore should I "soot myself and travel", mister ? It is you who want to travel out of that narrow groove of modernity which is one of the most cramping of the many vogues that have come and gone in my time—the sort of thing that makes its victims ask "What has Milton to do with Australia?" Go and steep your­ self in France, Italy, Egypt, Syria, as I have done— 15 months in the first, 7 in the second, 5 in the third, nearly 2 in the fourth—and you won't ask any more questions like that. . . But to return to my travels— don't you think five years in what is called in Scotland a Hospital, three at a Scotch university, four years foreign travel (of which only a part is referred to above), and during fifteen months of which our headquarters was a yacht—(sailor life)—6 months garrison school­ master in a fort (soldier life)—six years academy teach­ ing in Scotland ... a sufficiently varied life to exempt me at 65 years of age from the question "Why don't you travel?" ... I had five months of London too at one period of my life.

[7]

TRAVEL

OUR YEARS of foreign travel, fifteen months of which F were spent on a yacht—this is hardly an itemized account of what must have been for the young student per­ haps the most fascinating and memorable years of his life. It is vouched for by Francis Kenna, a friend of Stephens, that he kept a fairly full diary covering these travels. If he did, it has not come to light. Only a small fragment remains, covering about one-tenth of those four years. These diary entries deal with part of his term as tutor with the family of Captain Leyland of the Guards, an immensely rich man who could aflford a yacht and the time to enjoy it. There were, it seems, two sons; the elder, Staunton, occasion­ ally accompanied Stephens ashore on small excursions. The accessibility of this diary, as with the letter mentioned earlier, is largely fortuitous. Stephens was survived by his wife and five children, four of them daughters. The surviving daughter, Mrs R. C. Calow, lived at Redcliflfe, a widow in her last years, until her death late in 1965. She had in her possession two small notebooks, which contained, together with jottings and drawings on geometry and trigonometry, about sixty-six pages of travel notes in Stephens' remarkably clear and uniform script. They cover, with a few gaps, the period from the second half of August 1856 to the end of January 1857. Stephens for the most part wrote his notes at night after the day's excursions, occasionally a few days later. He leads us from Constantinople to Greece, then to and through parts of Syria to Damascus. There is then a gap of seven or eight

[II] TRAVEL

weeks, after which he resumes his account of the voyage, starting from Alexandria, moving to the Nile and ending up at Aswan. There the manuscript ends. Since this diary forms, so far as is known, the sole extant record of any part of his Wanderjahre, and since it is unlikely to be published, some extracts from it are given without apology for the space they occupy. On 20 August the yacht left Constantinople, having pre­ viously put in at the Crimea while the English troops were being evacuated at the end of the Crimea War. It passed through the Dardanelles ("How mean are the Dardanelles after the Bosphorus!"), and sailed west to Greece. On 5 September they were oflf the peninsula south of Mt. Athos. We rounded the point and sailed slowly by the eastern side of the peninsula till we reached the monastery of Iveron . . . we were received on landing by several grave looking monks, who were doubtless in a state of mind between astonishment and uncertainty ... we soon made known that the object of our visit was to see the monastery, and there was not the slightest objection on their part, as I have no doubt the sight of strangers is as great a treat to these poor anchorites as the sight of ancient monasteries inhabited by modern monks is to us. Passing through a quaint old gateway, we were received by the agoumenos, or Abbot, a jolly kind- hearted old fellow, the beau ideal of a fat hearty monk, not however without the dignity and firmness that be­ came his office or the gravity that became his order. But these latter were what logicians would call accidents; the man was easy, generous, and jolly. We were con­ ducted to his room, a very plain comfortable apartment with divans all round in which we flung ourselves down to enjoy the glorious prospect which the windows commanded. They went through the church, which Stephens casually passes over because of its lavish Byzantine ornamentation— [12] TRAVEL he thought certain Eastern decoration was "barbarous"- and began their ascent to the library. The next object of interest, or rather repository of interest, was the library. It was delightful to think of visiting one of the old treasuries of monastic lore,—still more delightful to be toiling our way up the dark stair that led to it, and through the thick old doors which, as they were one by one unlocked, seemed to open upon the bygone ages,—and more delightful still to find ourselves actually within the sacred precincts—far more sacred in our eyes than the chapel . . . The library was in a state of literary confusion, but the monks seem to know which are the most curious of the books, and to take special care of them. We saw several of those mentioned by Curzon, the "large folio Evangelistarium bound in red velvet, written in magnificent uncial let­ ters"; as also the other with the miniatures of the Evangelists. Judging from my own feelings, I can imagine the exquisite delight of an archaeological scholar in exploring such treasures. It was truly very little that I could decipher, yet I knew and saw enough to carry away an impression of intense satisfaction at having seen and handled such things. I knew that they were old—that they had seen the early centuries of the Christian era—that the minds and hands of other ages had laboured over them—that these were strong and near witnesses of the truth—Uving, speaking witnesses; and this was enough. It was living in history, proving history, becoming a part of history, thus to handle the works of historic times. I cannot say whether or not increased archaeological knowledge might not destroy this nameless pleasurable feeling. It is difficult to say how far technicalities inter­ fere with the free flow of feeling. I should fancy that in a great and well balanced mind knowledge and feeling increase simultaneously, that in a little mind the increase

[13] TRAVEL

of knowledge mars natural feeling, but on account of the pride which in a little mind knowledge is sure to engender. Knowledge acquired by a great mind becomes part and parcel of the man himself, and not only harmonizes with his natural perceptions, but tends to their increase, whereas a little mind never allows its knowledge to become incorporated with itself, as it would thus lose the power of contemplating it from a distance . . . With the one knowledge is wisdom, with the other it is learning. Stephens' concluding comment on Iveron is dismissive: All is antique and primitive—the architecture, the costume—the hospitality, and the ignorance. On TO September they left the Mt. Athos area, with their land tour through Syria ahead. Three days by yacht and they were at Smyrna. Septr. 15th. Monday. Today I went sightseeing in Smyrna. The bazaars are far inferior to those of Con­ stantinople. I had a great curiosity to see the slave market, and though I have often read that slavery in the East was unaccompanied by any of the horrors which disgrace America, yet I was prepared for some­ thing more than a grinning negress hanging clothes in a yard, and another grinning negress crouched up in a doorway. I was disappointed—ill-naturedly disappoint­ ed, for when a man, who seemed to have something to do with the place, oflfered to show me some more, for backsheesh, I took no notice of his disinterested oflfer. Hating slavery as I do most heartily, how is it that I was so sorry that there was so little of it to be seen in that particular spot?—a good question to settle at some other time. Some two weeks later the yacht sailed southward. 13 October. Today we left the yacht at Beirout and commenced our

[14] TRAVEL

journey through Syria. We went with the boats as far as the "Dog-River"—for such is the signification of the modern Turkish name for the Classic Adonis. Then through Juneh, Jebeil, Ferhatta, and suddenly the reader is deUghted and elated by the note— 18th October, Saturday. Today we are on our road to Eden— only to be brought back to earth fourteen lines later— (Evening). Arrived at Eden, a pretty Maronite village, commanding a superb view of the hills and vales of Lebanon, extending to the sea. Here they remained a day. 2oth October. Monday. From Eden to the Cedars, and thence to Einetta. We arrived at the Cedars about midday. A small forest covering about three or four acres of ground is all that remains of the mighty forests from which Hiram sent the holy wood for the temple of God. There are scarcely a dozen of the ancient trees standing, but these are certainly magnificent. I got up into one of the highest and brought oflf some of the cones. There is a small chapel in the midst of the wood, the priest of which lives upon the bounty of travellers. The party reached Baalbek early in the afternoon of Tuesday, 21 October. I have made a tolerably complete survey of the ruins, and am astonished by their gigantic dimensions, and exquisite architecture. The most prominent object on entering is the famous peristyle of six enormous yet delicately proportioned Corinthian Columns. Fallen columns, capitals, architraves surround you on all sides in lavish desolation. Gigantic and imposing in their separation, what must have been their appearance

[15] TRAVEL

when they stood each in its appointed place and rela­ tion . . . On we went, still through the seemingly endless riches of ruin, and turning to the right, we crept through a low and narrow opening and found ourselves in front of the splendid portal of the great temple. The Keystone has been partially displaced, and presents a curious spectacle hanging between two others, which seem as if scarce able to sustain its massive weight. At first sight it seems as if pausing in the act of descent; but its wedge-like shape easily explains the peculiarity of its position . . . In the western wall are seen three immense stones which are the wonder of all travellers. One of them is upwards of sixty feet long and upwards of ten feet deep. By what mechanical force they were raised to their present position is difficult to imagine. There is another still larger, at a quarry in the neighbourhood, but I have not seen it. . . The next day, 23 October, Stephens went oflf to view this almost legendary stone. We went today to the quarry, which lies about a mile from the village. To walk up the great stone seems like ascending a rock. It is sixty nine feet long, seventeen deep, and fifteen broad. It is all separated from the rock with the exception of the under surface. There are several others half cut which, were they out, would be thought of great magnitude, such stones as would figure to advantage in the Pitti Palace at Florence, but here they merely serve to set oflf the giant proportions of their Cyclopean brother. The following day they resumed the march, arrived at Zebdani 25 October, stayed three days because the women were tired, and then set out for Damascus. Almost the whole of this day's ride was by the beauti­ ful banks of the Barady . . . Before coming in sight of [16] TRAVEL

Damascus the route was extremely toilsome but at a certain turn in the rocky pathway, close by the con­ struction known as the "Sheikh's tomb" we came suddenly upon one of the loveUest views which the earth can boast of. We were looking down from the glaring shelterless rocks of limestone on a far spreading plain covered with rich verdure, an almost "boundless con­ tiguity of shade"—from the midst of which rose the fair city with its graceful towers and minarets, beautiful in all the festive lightness of oriental architecture. In the far distance, skirting the forests which enclose the city, we could just see the commencement of the desert. How very appropriately do the Orientals describe Damascus as "an Emerald set in the Desert"; and it is with equal propriety that Scripture prophecy speaks of it as "a forsaken branch, an uppermost bough". Beautiful it certainly is, but with desert and barrenness on every side it is as a "forsaken branch, an uppermost bough". We were quite prepared to be disappointed with the interior. It is much cleaner than Constantinople, and is quite free from smoke, the invariable concomitant of Western civilization. It was really a treat to be in a town of a purely oriental character. In Constantinople the Frank element predominates so strongly, and I fancy, so disagreeably, that the visitor cannot throw himself into the feeUng and genius of Orientalism, sur­ rounded, as he constantly is, with all the bustle of and odour of the unhappy part of his home life. But here all is finely Oriental—the Frank is stared at and the turban has not yet given way to the Fez. Every group in the streets might be introduced into an illustrated edition of the Arabian Nights.

A few lines later this part of the diary, which is contained in the first notebook, comes to an end. It resumes on 22 No­ vember, when the yacht left Alexandria on its way to Cairo. The party then took to boats for their voyage up the Nile.

[17] TRAVEL

There were occasional stops, for instance to visit rock tombs, but the first important stay was at Thebes, which they reached on 8 January 1857. Stephens went ashore to see the site of the statue of Memnon, fabled of old to give forth a musical note when the first rays of the rising sun shone upon it. I confess I was somewhat disappointed with the Memnonium. Much of my disappointment was of course attributable to my own ignorance, as my pre­ conceived notions led me to believe that it was much more entire and the remains more extensive than is really the case. This will always be so in the minds of the untravelled so long as the descriptions of travellers are "restorations" instead of copies. But apart from such considerations, this is certainly one of the grandest ruins of antiquity. There is not the purity of Greek art, nor the profuse richness and lofty elegance of that of Rome, yet there is a massive gran­ deur—a Time-defying solidity, and a peaceful sacredness which has its own peculiar charm. This massiveness, this solidity, this aw^ul and yet quaint grandeur, are the essential characteristics of Egyptian architecture viewed as an embodiment of mind. The columns are too short, and too thick, and the architraves too small to require such gigantic support, and the whole building too low to be imposing, yet notwithstanding these eflfects, the mass inspires awe, and the detail is full of interest. There is about it the sacred feeling of a temple, and even if it had nothing but its antiquity to recommend it, the thought that it has seen the sunshine of three thousand years, and is still unlevelled—still comprehended—still full of language and History, invests it with a powerful interest. . . It is not on the spot, and in the presence of these monuments that one becomes Egyptianised. It is in the after-recollections of them. The fact is that young Egypt [18] TRAVEL will not led Old Egypt alone. You find yourself just losing consciousness of the present and falling into a delightful reverie of which the subject is, of course. Old Egypt, with its wondrous grandeur and hoary old age, when in steps Young Egypt demanding backsheesh, or vending mummy cloth, or modern antiques of all descriptions, breaking the spell with his importunate vociferation. An impudent fellow is Young Egypt, with a bit of cloth round his middle, a handsome figure and a pleasant grinning face. But he is decidedly out of place in the Memnonium, with which he has no connection whatever. The Memnonium is the palace-temple of Rameses II, the Sesostris of the Greeks, according to Sir G. Wilkin­ son . . . The statue of the Conqueror, fallen and almost unrecognisable as to human form, is one of the sights of the place. His cartouche is still perfect, beautifully and deeply cut into the granite. The foot lies at some distance, and gives a good idea of the immense magni­ tude of the statue. The best view of the statue is from the top of the propylon, which is easy of ascent. There is a head of syenite lying among the ruins which must have belonged to a fine statue. It still retains the parting smile with which it left its shoulders, and regards the surrounding desolation with the most perfect equanim­ ity .. . It would be wrong, as well as useless, to record im­ pressions which I did not feel, and I must say that my first appreciation of them did not rise to that homage which some travellers have paid to them. Of course I was struck, as everyone must be struck, by their unusual size, and solitary situation, but my first impression was of monstrosity rather than grandeur, and quaintness rather than solemnity. Yet they grew upon me as the historical associations of which they are the nucleus came into my recollection. That was the veritable vocal Memnon of priestly fraud, and credulous faith. What

[19] TRAVEL

does it matter whether or not this Memnon was really responsive to the morning sun ? Suffice it to us, as matter of reverence, that many great men of olden time gazed upon this very statue in wonder at its virtue. The heroic Germanicus, the satirical Juvenal, the philosophic Hadrian, and how many, many more whose names are in History, gazed on it, as I do now. Viewed in this light they do become solemn,—as landmarks of that most solemn of things, the History of the Past. . . This was only my first day's work on the western side, and as it is best to record impressions exactly as they were, mine wanted very little of being disappointment. I expected beforehand to be lost in the grandeur and bewildered in the extent of ruin. This was a natural expectation considering the descriptions I had read. Yet I was neither lost in the grandeur not bewildered by the extent of the ruins. There was much to strike and much to interest, still more to study; but a more flaming description than that would prepare the ordinary mind (and travellers write for the ordinary mind) for what would not be realized. I find Warburton's "Crescent and the Cross" has done me a vast deal of harm—in fact has almost spoiled Egypt for me. It is full of most perni­ cious exaggerations. Were I a librarian I should place it among the works of fiction. I don't remember in particular his remarks on Thebes, but in general he draws as much on his imagination as his memory. Two days later Stephens made his last exploration of the area. In the evening Captain Leyland, Dr. Anthony and myself set oflf to see what all Egyptian travellers see, Karnac by moonlight. Our road lay over fields on which once stood the chief part of the city of Thebes. After a half-hour's walk we came to what was once the grand avenue of sphinxes. This must have been a most noble sight when entire. Even in its present state [20] TRAVEL of mutilation it has not lost all its grandeur. I cannot conceive a more noble approach to a sacred edifice such as this . . . At the extremity of the avenue we passed under a gigantic pylon or gateway. We had a brilUant moon, and the broad shadows were most effective in setting oflf the vast dimensions of these remains. Passing by the more inconsiderable portions (though these if isolated would have been sufficient to excite our wonder) we made our way to the top of the principal propylon, which commands a fine view of the first court, and the wondrous mass of ruin between it and the great hall. But the great hall itself is the main attraction. Here indeed I was lost in admiration. Here indeed exaggera­ tion is impossible. Here was something to Egyptianise the most indiflferent. To say that there are here up­ wards of 130 columns, and that the twelve principal ones are some seventy feet in height and thirty-six in circumference, gives no idea of the effect of the Great Hall of Karnac by moonlight. Those vistas of magni­ ficent pillars—those masses of light and depths of shadow—behind, mountains of fallen propyla, before, those graceful obelisks rising dark and high from the midst of fantastic ruins, and on every column and wall and obelisk, wherever the moonbeams were falling, the deeply graven language of ancient wisdom—oh, never while I recollect this shall my insight be in want of a basement whereon to rest the thought of power and sublimity. Karnac, the CoUseum, Baalbec, I think of them to­ gether. They are three great embodiments—the first of the Sublime—the second of the Terrible, and the last of the Beautiful. They are all great, but each expresses its own peculiar character. Great things should raise great thoughts, and though mine at this time were not original, yet I am glad to remember that I felt ennobled and strengthened. I felt [21] TRAVEL

that man must have a strength beyond mortality, a habi­ tation wider than time—an independence of Time— that he must be equal to his destiny. I felt encouraged to live . . . They left Thebes on 11 January 1857. The whole trip by boat had been uneventful to this point, but a day later, just before dawn, the boats were driven ashore by a gale. This was the sole excitement that the river, as distinct from the land, provided, except for the monitor a few days later, 15 January. This brief passage is one of the few really vivid descriptions that Stephens aflfords. He is no D. H. Lawrence, seeing things like another Adam on a newly created earth. He writes a fluently formal and sometimes even eloquent prose, but he is far too fond of the vaguely emotive adjectives like glorious, imposing, noble, wondrous, and the rest, those amorphous substitutes for the concrete and the particular. In brief, he tends to tell us rather than to show us. It must be remembered, of course, that he was only twenty-one, and that he was writing under conditions that were not ideal, but all in all this fragment of a possibly fuller diary does not reveal Stephens as a master in travel literature. The monitor, however, is hit oflf in a comic sharp vignette: Today one of the sailors caught a curious reptile from three to four feet long, which we all thought at first sight to be a young crocodile, but on consulting the Penny Cyclopedia it turned out to be a monitor of the Nile, so called because it is supposed by the Arabs to give warning of the presence of a crocodile. It was a ferocious little beast as ever I saw, and withal had a sort of dia- boUcal beauty about it. Its head is just Uke that of a serpent, and like it, it has forked tongue. It keeps a most tenacious hold of whatever it catches in its teeth. Its expression of rage is Uke the spitting of a cat, and a furious lashing of the tail. I am glad to have had an opportunity of seeing the little wretch. He is now one of [22] TRAVEL

our party, having a large jar of water, and a wooden island appropriated to him as his Elba. The following day, near Idfu, Stephens went to explore a temple. The innermost part was only to be reached through a small hole. Conducted by one of the natives with a very poor light, he squeezed through, and then through two more. In the next chamber the light suddenly expired, "and I knew the meaning of Egyptian darkness". He experienced a sudden spasm of panic; but the guide, taking him by the hand, led him eventually to the outside world of sunlight. On Monday, 19 January, in the evening "we arrived at Assoun, the limit of our voyage". He goes on to describe some visits to Philae, the island sacred as the burial place of Osiris, to note his disappointment with the cataract ("A rapid would be almost too good a name for it"), and to record landing on the island of Elephantine. At this point he stops. The diary, then, covers only a short part of the many months he spent in travel. It reveals an alert and intelligent young man in search of new sights, and these are almost deliberately evaluated as emotional and spiritual pabulum. He stands oflf, as it were, and observes with interest his own reactions to the stimuli. He is quite honest in his reactions— witness his acknowledged disappointment with parts of his Egyptian experiences—but he knows that others have been aflfected and he is curious to detect whether he responds in the orthodox manner or not. Having reacted, he ponders and muses and then again wonders if these deliberations are valuable to his growth. There is a queer air of practicality about it all, as though years of Scottish carefulness, of making do with little, had given an inescapable cast to his character. It was not value for money he was after, but value for time, for eflfort, for a willing attention to what was supposed to do something in return for such an outlay. In short, it was grist to his mill. In a way, one must admit, we are all much the same here: we should all have to admit that we do expect something [23] TRAVEL from travel. But we should admit this after being pressed, or at any rate asked. Stephens was not asked—except by himself. It may be wondered if he found this diary of value, if he made literary use of it. There was, of course, the practice that it afforded. And at first sight that might appear to be aU, since the odd references in his poetry are very few. A small notebook that has survived contains some poems, most of them omitted from his published volumes. Three of these poems were written on his travels. One of them, "Loose Leaves from Olivet" (Jerusalem, 1857) has the notation: Written on the Mount of Olives. It is religious in theme. A second "To a Pupil on his Birthday", was probably for young Staunton Leyland. It is noted: Written on the Mile. The third and last is rather longer, running to eighty lines in couplets. Entitled "Nile Glances", it describes some scenes at Thebes and Philae—"The temple-isle where Osiris sleeps". They add little to Stephens' stature as a poet. Another factor, however, may now be considered. It had been mentioned by Francis Kenna, an old friend of Stephens, as far back as 1900 or so, that Stephens, in his youth, wrote two novels—or, alternatively, two short stories. These were said to have appeared in Sharpe's Magazine. Some digging was necessary to unearth these novels—for that is what they are—each fairly short, about 70,000 words in length. Copies of the old magazine. Sharpens London Magazine (to give it its full title), are to be found only in the great libraries of England and the United States, while complete runs of the issue containing Stephens' two novels are rarer still. Finally a microfilm was obtained from the University of Illinois. To read the first of these novels is to have an engaging gUmpse of some literary husbandry, to see how use was made of the ready-made description. But he was not to turn to his diary for material for fiction until about three or four years later.

[24] GREENOCK

T WAS probably late in 1857 that Stephens came back I from his travels. How he passed 1858 is unknown. In his letter to A. G. Stephens he writes of a period when he was "6 months garrison schoolmaster in a fort". This has been mentioned by a friend as being spent at Cape Wrath. The National Library of Scotland Vjiow nothing of any garrison at Cape Wrath. The Ministry of Defence Library in London have no record of Stephens as a schoolmaster in their employ. They point out that by the mid-1850's entry into the Corps of Army Schoolmasters required eighteen months' training, even for certificated teachers from civilian life. Again, his entry would be even more unlikely because of the terms of engagement: for a term of ten years after training. That he was a tutor for only six months suggests he was unofficially employed to teach the children of officers or men of some garrison. As for the "five months of London too at one period of my life", this is still a mystery. The five months were possibly spent at some private school. Since the total time—eleven months—would comfortably fill the vacant year, it is very tempting to fit it into 1858. But this is still only surmise. In 1859 he went as a schoolmaster to Greenock, on the Firth of Clyde, about twenty miles west of Glasgow. Alexan­ der Sutherland, perhaps using memories of the port supplied by Stephens himself, writes in 1884 of its dim gloomy streets, its muddy roads, and its perpetual drizzle of rain. All of which, of course, may be true without conflicting with the official account of Greenock as it was thirty years before

[27] GREENOCK

Stephens entered it. Official accounts never cry stinking fish, but the description is sober enough, and enumerates points of interest—a square in the town centre, a church in the square, a Ubrary, a Grammar School, a School for Mathema­ tics, a theatre, and a jail. The streets, states this account, were paved, lighted, and well kept. It does not mention what a later directory does, that there were about 140 dealers in spirits. The population in i860 was a little over 40,000. But, whatever its attraction or its squalor, the town almost certainly must have been more congenial to the newcomer than it was to another literary schoolmaster nearly a century earlier. This was John Wilson (i 720-1789), whose poem. The Clyde (1764), won some small fame as "the first Scottish loco- descriptive poem of any merit". His biographer, John Ley­ den, was to fall victim to an unconscious Uterary deception and in consequence to attribute more philistinism to the dignitaries of Greenock than in truth they possessed. Wilson, says Leyden, applied in 1767 for the headship of the Gram­ mar School. The officials, however, were more remarkable for opulence and commercial spirit than for their attention to literature and science . .. Greenock had imbibed the most intolerant spirit of Presbyterianism . . . Induced by this reUgious spirit, and by a cool mercantile attention to prudence, the magis­ trates and minister of Greenock, before they admitted Mr. Wilson to the superintendence of the Grammar School, stipulated that he should abandon the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making. The hapless Wilson, seeking a comfortable competence to support his large family, bowed to the demand and gave the required assurance. To avoid the temptation of violating his promise, which he esteemed sacred, he took an early opportunity of committing to the flames the greater part of his un- [28] GREENOCK

published manuscripts. After this, he never ventured to touch his forbidden lyre, though he often regarded it with that mournful solemnity, which the harshness of dependence, and the memory of its departed sounds, could not fail to inspire. The story has a sort of pathetic hilarity about it, and in a way one could almost wish it true. But it is in part apo­ cryphal. Years later in his Autobiography John Gait confessed to being the source of the error. Leyden, seeking information for the biography, had approached Wilson's daughter; she in turn approached Gait. The latter recalled that Wilson on his appointment had agreed to forgo poetry. (This has been interpreted by some as meaning that certain aspects of English should not be taught in the public hours of the school. It may on the other hand mean literally what it seems to say—that Wilson should write no verse.) Gait put it more strongly: "... he should abandon the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making"—the phrase italicized in Leyden's memoir of the poet. Gait goes on to say: "I had nothing in view save a fling at the boss-headed baillies, but Dr. Leyden took the joke as no jest, and with foot advanced and hand uplifted, declaimed on the Presbyterian bigotry at great length . . ." With a prepossession in mind, Leyden could find support for this in a letter that Wilson wrote to his son years after taking up his duties: I once thought to Uve by the breath of fame; but how miserably was I disappointed ... I was condemned to bawl myself to hoarseness among wayward brats, to cultivate sand, and to wash Ethiopians, for all the dreary days of an obscure life, the contempt of shopkeepers and brutish skippers. This is a discouraging picture, but it contains no reference to any prohibition. In any case, prohibition or no prohibi­ tion, we have little cause to mourn. It is not likely that Wilson's talent, even had he exercised it more widely, would

[29] GREENOCK have served him much. The Clyde, for example, is a poem of some 1,500 lines in the prevalent heroic couplets, full of standardized diction and description, with periodic raids on Scottish place names—Bagbie, Lamington, Wallace, Biggar, Tinto—all later to necessitate explanatory notes by the devoted Leyden. The following lines are typical enough: See how their arms the sturdy mowers wield! How smooth behind them shines the ravished field. Swinging their formidable scythes around, Each sweep lays bare a mighty length of ground. The fate of Stephens was hardly to be as bleak as Wilson's. When he went to Greenock, the town had seventeen schools, while at least seven advertisements proclaimed their authors as able and wilUng to give instruction in EngUsh, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Bookkeeping, Grammar, Geography, French, the elements of Latin, Mathematics, and Algebra. The old Grammar School, founded before 1750, together with the Mathematical School, had lately (September 1855) been amalgamated with the newly established Greenock Academy. Dr. Robert Buchanan, formerly head of the Mathematical School, was appointed Rector and Principal Teacher of Mathematics. Here Stephens first taught. In a prospectus of the Academy issued in June i860 he appears as a member of the English Department, evidence pointing to his arrival in 1859. The list in 1861 does not give the names of all the teachers of English, but that of 1862 does, and the name of Stephens is not to be found. It seems, then, that it was in 1861 that he resigned. The rector, Buchanan, resigned in i860 and set up his own school, Kilblain Academy, in 1861. Despite rivalry, there was a strong liaison between the two schools, and it was probably loyalty or attachment to Buchanan that induced Stephens to foUow him. What subjects Stephens taught, other than English, we can only guess. Alexander Sutherland, in his comment mentioned earUer, lists with apparent indignation the Psalms, [30] GREENOCK

the Catechism, the multiplication table, and Latin accidence —the finely bred horse put to the plough, so to speak. But it is hardly likely that a man of Stephens' background would have been employed in elementary tasks. And, again, it is to be noted that the standard of the better Scottish secondary schools was laudably high, and could bear comparison with —or excel—present-day examples. Francis Kenna quotes an unnamed student of the Aca­ demy who is said to have remembered Stephens, with his "clear-cut and almost feminine cast of features, his genial smile and winning ways", as taking part in school theatricals and even writing comic passages for some pieces to be per­ formed by the students. Whatever his reactions to the town, bored or active, appreciated or neglected, Stephens began his writing career in Greenock. In the evenings, at Holmscroft cottage, 55 Ann Street, in a suburb of the town, he dabbled in verse and concentrated on fiction. The small notebook already men­ tioned, which contains three poems written during his travels, also has poems dating from 1861 to 1865. At the foot of one he has noted: Published in Chambers' Journal. Two others have: Published in Sharpe's Magazine. A few of the poems are lyrics; one is commemorative, "On the Laying of the founda­ tion-stone of the Wallace Monument of the Abbey Craig, Stirling. June 24th 1861", and was written at Greenock in June 1861. A comic poem, "Three Hundred a Year", is the complaint of a husband whose wife anticipates Blondie, in the current comic strip. A longer poem, untitled, written at Greenock in March 1861, may have some indirect signific­ ance. It laments, half in fun, half in anger, the marriage of a young woman to a vulgar fellow whose only claim is wealth. He comes from "the furthest ends of earth":

Why wish I her to tarry ? Am I mad that she should marry ? No. I prayed that gentle Harry This Australian to eclipse . . .

[31] GREENOCK

Some squatter on a visit to his homeland ? Some digger who has struck it rich ? At all events, no very prepossessing sample from the country Stephens was to emigrate to five years later. His main literary interest in Greenock, however, was fiction. He completed two novels, neither of which has ever appeared outside the pages of the periodical he sent them to. The first was "Rutson Morley", which was published in Sharpe's London Magazine, 1861-1862. The second was "Vir­ tue Le Moyne", also published in the same paper, almost on the heels of the first story. In the first novel the chief character, Rutson Morley, tells his own story. Like Stephens, he is a university man who accepts a position as tutor in a well-to-do family fond of travel: in the words of the novel, "a third-class passenger is desirous of joining a family in the first-class". On his way to Paris he is brought by an ingenious trick within the ambit of a small band who intend to assassinate Napoleon III. The plot is frustrated. This occupies the greater part of the novel. As a sort of side issue, his employer sends Rutson ahead to make preparations for the family in the cities they intend to visit. It is in this novel that Stephens makes use of his travels. More than that, he makes use of the travel diary he wrote. Even a cursory reading lights upon names, places, opinions, words, phrases, and even longer passages that occur in the diary. Sometimes these derive almost certainly from un­ conscious memory traces. The narrator finds Byzantine art "barbarous"; Iveron appears as the name of a monastery and also as the Christian name of a painter who had been a monk there; the pictured saints have "positive silver halos". Longer passages, however, cannot have been unconscious repetitions. From the moment the tutor steps on French soil, enchanted by novelty, he notes the oddities of continental customs: Half-a-dozen Frenchmen, varying in age from twenty- five to forty, playing at marbles. [32] GREENOCK

And again: Every man, who has two hands, has them both in his trouser's pockets. We find a brief description, in rather lush terms, of Genoa; and in Pisa he describes quite elaborately the interior of a house, in terms so definite that it is almost impossible that he should not have lived in such a one or at least have examined it. In the same city he gives an account of a procession and ceremony in the Campo Santo. Pisa, it may be mentioned, was a city in which the Massey-Dawson family lived for some time. In the last chapter he surveys the scene from "a fair Sicilian hill by the sea", while below "a silver sea sleeps on a golden shore". To the south lies Aetna, That mighty mountain . . . zoned with all the seasons, and covered with eternal snows, whose breath, for ever ascending, tells of the measureless might that still slumb­ ers in its bosom. The biographical allusions seem unmistakable. As for the diary, it may seem visionary to hope to show that he repeated parts of a diary that do not exist. It may be remarked, however, that the passages quoted, and others left unquoted, are in the style of this diary, and that it is very probable he wrote of these places in the lost portions of the diary. Added to this are the more or less unconscious repetitions given earlier. It amounts to reasonable evidence that he was using the diary descriptions in his writing of the novel. But the most striking piece of evidence is a longer passage that can be definitely checked. In chapter X, after a lead-up containing words like "glaring" and "Umestone", we sudden­ ly encounter "one of the loveUest views which the earth can boast of". This rings a bell for anyone who has gone through the extant diary with any care. In fact it comes from the Damascus passage of 28 October 1856, and for some lines we have that entry verbatim. On that one may rest the case. [33] GREENOCK

The second novel has fewer of these personal impUcations. The chief character in "Rutson Morley" is a young Scot; in "Virtue Le Moyne" we have a young woman. We meet her first as a beautiful child, charming all whom she en­ counters. The story traces her history, her dawning love for the son of the local parish schoolmaster, his death at sea, the murder of the villain—of which she is accused—the verdict of "not proven", her stay in Italy, the titled suitor, and her marriage to her faithful but neglected admirer, the local parson. It is tolerable enough, but like the first novel it reads more or less as a potboiler. The flavour of autobiography is slight. The setting is Borrowbridge, surely no coincidence if we remember that Bo'ness, his birthplace, is a shortened form of Borrowstoun­ ness. There is also a brief glimpse of a Scottish parish school, which has already been quoted in the account of Stephens' father. The dialect used by the old servant sounds like some­ thing heard and long remembered. The glimpses of London and Florence have a particularity that, one may think, could come only from actual acquaintance with the towns. In both chapters X and XI there is mention of Australia, which may or may not suggest that Stephens' thoughts were already bent in that direction. There is one interesting paragraph, in which the school­ master is described: Mr. Hepburn was a sizeable, well-built man, and al­ though he was a schoolmaster, his clothes seemed to fit him. His coat sleeves were not down to the middle joints of his fingers, and there was not a large space of stocking between his trousers and his shoes. Still he was a very dominie every inch of him. His shirt collar was very, very stiflf, his shoes were extremely square-toed, his whiskers severely geometrical, and all his motions acutely angular. Above all, his style of speech was unmistakeably dominical. To learn a monosyllabic language would have been to him a terrible prostitution

[34] GREENOCK

of the human intellect. And so long as we have him in view, let us add that he was forty years of age, that he was a widower . . . It may be the sheerest coincidence, but we may remark that his father John Stephens became a widower in the same year (1818) in which he was forty. The temptation then is strong to take the first part or indeed all of the paragraph as a sketch from life. Neither novel is of much consequence. Both have the characteristic faults of the minor fiction of the time: an unreality of dialogue when the nobility make their pro­ nouncements—"This must not be!" and the rest of it, which contrasts with the reality of the earthy speech of the lower orders—and an abuse of coincidence, whose proverbially long arm is stretched to snapping point. They were apparent­ ly what a popular periodical required, and they probably paid Stephens for the time he spent on them. They have remained undisturbed in the files o{Sharpe's London Magazine for over a century. Understandably. It is possible that, during some of the time he was in Greenock, his sister kept house for him. In a letter he wrote from Tamrookum station in Queensland, according to Kenna, occurs the sentence: In case anything goes wrong about posts preventing you from hearing from me ere the beginning of the August mail for England, please send registered a draft for ;^i5 on the Royal Bank of Scotland to Jane Stephens, 32 Ann-Street, Greenock. One of the few contemporary references to Stephens at this time occurs in the Greenock Directory of 1866-1867, where his address is given as 6 Roxburgh Street. As a direc­ tory of this sort is printed from information available the preceding year, this address refers to 1865. This was to be his last year in Scotland.

[35]

BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

^N 28 December 1865 Stephens bade farewell to his native land. He came out on "The Flying Cloud", a vessel about 1,100-1,200 tons, carrying rather more than 400 passengers. On 28 April 1866 it reached Moreton Bay, having been delayed by very bad weather, but not calUng at any port on its four-month passage. The ship generally, runs the Immigration Officer's report, was not very clean. With the exception, however, of fifty-two cases of measles, ten cases of bronchitis, and one of typhus, little disease of any kind occurred, though diarrhoea was prevalent most of the time. There were five births and six deaths on the voyage. Complaints lodged by passengers concerned the violence of the hospital nurse, the observance—or non-observance— of the Sabbath, physical assaults by the cook, the shortage of water (though this was only temporary), the lack of candles, and the vermin brought on board by some immi­ grants. Parts of the complaint by Richard Hellyer are illuminating:

to the gentlman of the Queensland government Sirs i have to infrom you that i have A few Complaints to make Respecting of your rules that have not been Carried out on board the flying Cloud During her voyage from london to mourton bay hopeing gentleman that i shall not give any oflfence in so Doing i beleve it is your wish that no one should be Alowed to Come on board as passenger Without haveing six Changes and

[39] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

there was A great many that had onley one and it was the Couse of all of us haveing lice on us all the voyage on the 3 of January we had meat supplied to us that was not feet to make use of the Doctor said it was good A great many of the passengers Cast it over the side of the ship next morning i was told that the Rest of the meat that was in the same Barrell was throne over the Side . . . in outher Caeses gentleman Repeating of Cursing and swaring and fighting and throwing of Diflferent things one at the outher so that any one were in Danger of passing up or Down the steerage ether by Day or Night and i Did not see that the Doctor took any intrest in putting any Stop to it This letter gives support to the comment by Horace Earle (the schoolmaster on the ship), who was to be one of Brunton Stephens's friends. As well as tutoring the children, he oflfered an evening class for adults. Sixteen enrolled, but soon abandoned scholarship. Of them Earle writes: Of the above individuals I have to remark that they were most thoroughly ilUterate, not possessing the knowledge even of the simple Elements of Education. W. H. McLean, on this his "second voyage as Surgeon Superintendent of a Queensland Immigrant vessel", says: The passengers as a class were rough and difficult to manage—more especially the single men, many of whom had hardly any clothing. A great proportion of the single men were of a low class much as that de­ nominated loafers at home. The Immigrant Officer was apparently more habituated to contemporary imports: The Immigrants generally appear to be much of the same character as their predecessors, rather rough in their manners and dirty in their clothing, both fighting [40] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

and stealing are reported to have occurred occasionally. One young man of the name of "Smith" said to be of a respectable family was in a very disgraceful state, and his conduct during the voyage would indicate unsound­ ness of mind. What Stephens thought of his fellow passengers we do not know. The Queensland Times thought poorly of those who arrived in Ipswich a week later: The late arrivals by the Flying Cloud seem to be a very undesirable class of immigrants, especially the single men, the greater portion of whom are a very rowdy lot, containing amongst their number several professed pugilists who loaf about the town boasting of their various encounters, and oflfering to fight any man or men of a certain weight in the colony, for any money . . . Why Stephens came and what he expected to find are subjects for speculation. Rheumatism has been suggested as an answer to the first question. He has been described by those who knew him here as slight or even fragile, and his health was apparently never very robust. English doctors often recommended to their consumptive patients, for instance, a move to the Australian colonies, which seem to have been regarded as equivalent to sanatoria. So the explanation is likely enough. On the other hand Stephens may simply have been in search of fresh experience. He had "itchy feet", and it was not until he was nearly fifty that he occupied a position that was to prove fairly permanent in time and place. When he arrived, the population of Queensland was around 95,000, of whom about one-fifth had been born there. The rest were immigrants from the British Isles and Germany. This flood of immigration was the result of official efforts to remedy a severe lack of labour. Immigrant ships had come out as early as 1848-1849, but they could not supply the demand. Then the 1850's drained men oflf to the goldfields in the south, so that when Queensland was

[41] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH separated in 1859—the lack of labour being one of the motives behind the agitation for separation—the shortage had become acute. From i860 the Government, which mainly represented the interests of the squatters, encouraged newcomers by all means at its disposal—free passages, assisted passages, land grants, cheap land, and the rest. Parliamentary estimates of expenditure in 1862, for instance, included an amount of ;;(^22,ooo for assisted immigration. These measures had their eflfect: in the years between 1859 and 1868 the population of Queensland quadrupled. The yearly net immigration totals rose from almost 4,000 in i860 to almost 10,000 in 1862, 14,000 in 1863, 11,000 in 1864, and 12,000 in 1865. In the next year, however, the year when Stephens arrived, the number fell to 6,500. In 1867 it drop­ ped even more steeply—-to under 1,000. This marked and then remarkable decrease was the result of economic collapse. Stephens arrived, then, in the last subsiding waves of the first big immigrant surge, and we may wonder if he himself were an assisted immigrant. Proof is lacking, but the general circumstances suggest that he was. As part of its immigration policy the Government late in i860 appointed Henry Jordan as their Emigration Agent in the British Isles. As part of his campaign he proceeded to give public lectures in England and Scotland, in which he extolled the virtues ofQueensland and stressed the advantages of its land laws. (Hence his nickname—"Milk and Honey" Jordan.) It is likely enough that Stephens heard one of these or heard of them. Further, when he arrived he stayed at the home of his cousin, Mrs. Walter Hill. One clause in the older New South Wales immigration regulations allowed people to send home for their friends, when a certain remission was granted, and this concession was still to operate in Queensland. There appears no good reason why Stephens should not have made some such arrangement with his cousin. Perhaps more significant is the vessel he came in, "The Flying Cloud", which was a ship of the Black Ball Une. Jordan, in his efforts to recruit

[42] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

immigrants, devised a plan of shipping them out at no cost to themselves. He persuaded Baines, Mackay and Company, owners of the Black Ball line, to carry out emigrants and to accept payment in the form of land orders. The line put on ships and established a monthly service with the colony. And last, one of the regulations early adopted was that upon appUcation from the Board of Education the Government might provide intermediate or cabin passages for "certificated schoolmasters or mistresses of a superior class". Whether Stephens made use of any of these conditions or, if he did, which he used—this is not known; but the possibil­ ity, or probability, certainly exists. He did not, it seems certain, intend to settle on the land, but having once decided to come he would surely welcome a saving in the expenses of a passage. The only record is the registration of a land order (No. 2011/1866), issued to James Stephens, to the value of ^^30, on account of his own passage. The inference is that he paid all or part of his fare. A few of these land orders could be discounted for cash, but No. 2011 is registered as non­ transferable. No record survives to show how it was used, or indeed if it was used at all. The Brisbane that he came to contained about 13,000 people, and was in process of fairly rapid change. From a rough village it had become a township, and was now busily becoming a town. It sprawled, and its many open spaces were still grassed, and threaded with tracks rather than paths. It was divided into at least three definable areas: North Brisbane, South Brisbane, and Fortitude Valley. Kangaroo Point, on the south side of the river, might be considered a fourth. Not much levelling had been completed, so that to go from the Petrie Bight end of Queen Street to the Valley involved a climb over Duncan's Hill and then a descent much more marked than now. To cross the river at Petrie Bight people took ferries, which were small and as uncertain as their bibulous owners. To cross from the other end of Queen Street there were still punts and ferries, but a new

[43] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH wooden bridge, precariously poised on dozens of stilts, spanned the river. To go from one spot to another one walked or rode. A few had carriages. Public transport there was none; nor were there vehicles plying for hire. Bullock teams might still be seen in the streets. Walking at night was a hazard, not so much from human as from natural causes—potholes, minor chasms, banks with sudden descents, water. So it was neces­ sary, except in the dimly lit centre of the township, to carry a lantern, or a candle stuck in a bottle turned upside down and with its bottom knocked oflf. For house lighting there were kerosene lamps, candles, and slush lamps. Gas had just been introduced, but reticulation was slow in spreading. A permanent supply of clean water had just been arranged, in a limited way, by 1866. One original source was the small reservoir in Roma Street. This had been used by the penal settlement that ended in 1839-1840. Another source, the Horse Pond, was a large pool near the site of the present City Hall. This was as open to abuse as to use; horses, for instance, were watered there. In a dry season the contents resembled impure liquid chocolate. There were other pools elsewhere. South Brisbane for example using the swamps that covered what is now Woolloongabba. The price charged by water-carriers was about a shilling per fifty-gallon keg. To Brisbane in regular service plied steamships from Sydney, sailing ships and steamships from overseas, river steamer and coach from Ipswich. There were about forty miles of railway, but these stretched from Ipswich to Grand- chester and on towards Toowoomba. There was a telegraph service to Sydney. Inside the town one could look up at the signal station, formerly the old windmill on Windmill Hill, its sandstone and brick now plastered with concrete to stop the erosion. Flags signalled the arrival of ships at Albany with news from England, or the descent of notabiUties upon Brisbane, or the death of aged and respected citizens. Postage for a minimum weight cost one penny for town letters, twopence for inland, sixpence to other Australian

[44] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH states or overseas. Newspapers not more than a week old went free within the State. The transfer of money was less reliable, and the Postal Regulations contained a warning: As the Post Office, however is not responsible for the loss oi any letter, whether registered or otherwise, parties sending Bank Notes or Drafts are advised to take the numbers and particulars, and to cut such Notes or Drafts in halves, and to send them by diflferent posts. Seventeen newspapers and periodicals were appearing in Queensland, of which four belonged to Brisbane. Two of these, the Brisbane Courier and the Queensland Guardian, were dailies. All the Australian capitals indeed were famed in their early days for their newspapers, the most outstanding being those of Hobart, which in the 1820's and 1830's were remarkable for their number, their literacy, and their virulence. The most fearsome things about Brisbane were the drain­ age and the sanitation—or rather, the lack of both. Water found its own level. Two streams meandered through the town, and these, aided by various obstructions, flooded with the greatest ease. At the corner of Albert and Charlotte Streets lay Frog's Hollow, dangerous and malodorous. Despite urgent improvements made to streets, these could become impassable after rain, and often did. As for sanita­ tion, the frequency of complaints and of indignant leaders in the newspaper columns attests the public alarm. Garbage was often thrown into the streets. As for night soil, there were three depositories—cesspits, earth closets, and spots that were momentarily convenient. Cesspits stank, and some had not been emptied for over ten years. Earth closets were the responsibiUty of those who used them, and since there were river banks and a river, what more suitable places for deposition? Other factors may have operated, but these conditions undoubtedly helped increase the infant mortality of the time, when nearly 50 per cent of Queensland-born children regularly died before the age of five.

[45] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

Pests were plague-like in prevalence then and for years afterwards. Most visitors have left on record the size of cockroaches, the ferocity of the mosquitoes, the mobility of beetles, and the general ubiquity of them all. "Insect life of course abounds", wrote H. W. Nesfield as late as the i88o's, "and flies are a particular nuisance. Cockroaches attain a prodigious size, and tarantulas, scorpions, and centipedes are frequent inmates of your bed-chamber." The comments of the locals, presumably more inured to such inroads, are less frequent. Brisbane, then, was primitive in many ways, but a man could be comfortable enough. There were hotels and to spare (some three dozen of them), and there were substantial houses. Old photographs reveal the open spaces, but dwel­ lings quite often gave promise of lasting out the years. Of some 2,500 houses about 490 were of stone or brick. Food and liquor were plentiful, and the shops answered most human needs. In Queen Street and those adjoining one could buy groceries, clothing, medicines, fruit, tobacco, shoes, hard­ ware, pastry, cakes, saddles, meat, and jewellery. The most impressive building in Brisbane was Govern­ ment House, which elicited approval from the Governor, Sir George Bowen: "... a handsome and commodious Government House on the banks of the river Brisbane, here as broad as the Thames at Westminster." An equal source of pride was the Town Hall. Churches were numerous enough to satisfy the spiritual needs of the community, and represented the usual denominations: seven of them had some claims to architectural competence. Banks were being established, six being well known. Their number and size were to increase—as today may bear witness—and in 1884 Mark Kershaw was to comment: Of course the banks are the notable buildings. AustraUa is a country of banks. If ever you see an unusually large building, you may conclude it is a bank. Russians have a weakness for big churches. An Australian's hobby is to build big banks. [46] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

If a man had intellectual tastes, then he relied for the most part on his own resources and intercourse with friends of similar bent. There were a couple of bookshops and a few libraries where books could be borrowed. There was a theatre, though the performances were not calculated to arouse any but the most obvious responses. There were, however, some societies where discussions and lectures took place—a new School of Arts, a Mechanics' Institute, a Dramatic Club, and a Philosophical Society (where one might enjoy, for example, a lecture by his Honour Chief Justice Cockle on "the fundamental principles of hydrostatics"). Stephens himself delivered a lecture on "The Ruins of Thebes" in the new school of Arts about a month after his arrival. The audience was smaller than expected, for the rain had made the roads "almost impassable". The newspaper report, a fairly full one, reads rather well, and parts recall his diary entries for the Thebes and Karnac areas. The community was an odd mixture—chiefly egalitarian but with spots that were undemocratic. "Jack's as good as his master and often a damned sight better"—phrases of this tenor are frequent in the travel accounts of those who visited Queensland at this period. They may sniff or approve, but they agree in noting the ruggedly individual and in­ dependent tone of the people. The worldly success of some men of humble antecedents, the openings provided by the Land Laws, the general sense of space and freedom, all contributed to the development of this characteristic. The inhabitants would have resented arrogance or con­ descension to themselves as men. As members of a political community, as voters, they seem to have been more indiflfer­ ent. The qualifications for casting a vote for a member of the Legislative Assembly were partly based on money: possessing a freehold worth fioo; paying rent ^lo per annum; and the rest, all determined by minimum amounts. Apologists for the system thought these criteria lax enough. "The electoral qualification is liberal enough to grant a vote to every natural born or naturalised subject who has been six months

[47] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

resident in any part of the colony." That is one point of view. For other observers these conditions in themselves may not have been so severe: a harsher condition for some was, as alternative to a property quaUfication, continuous residence of six months in one electorate. By this law, writes Trollope in his Australia and New Zealand (1873), "the nomad tribes of wandering labourers,—or of wandering beggars, as many of them may be more properly described,—are excluded from the registers". The Unking of the franchise to pieces of property in individual electorates meant of course that some men could have more than one vote. In fact the number of votes a man might have could range, in theory at least, from no vote at all to sixteen. Following the New South Wales Electoral Act of 1858, elections were at first public. Section 37 provided:

On the day of nomination named in the writ the Returning Officer shall preside at a meeting to be holden at noon at the place named for that purpose in the writ and shall declare the purpose for which such meeting is held. And if no more candidates be then proposed than the member, or number of members to be returned the Returning officer shall declare the candidate or candidates proposed to be duly elected, and shall make his return accordingly. And if more than such number be proposed the Returning Officer shall call for a show of hands separately in favour of each candidate, and shall declare the result of such show of hands, and shall make his return accordingly, unless a poU be demanded then and there by some candidate or by not fewer than six electors of the electoral district . . .

Three years before Stephens arrived, young Robert Philp, aged twelve, was present at such a ceremony, which was held on Gaol Hill, where the Post Office now stands. Destined [48] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH to become Premier of the State, Philp later as boy and man was a friend of Stephens. All in all, Stephens must have found Brisbane rather a contrast in size, cleanliness, and amenities to the Greenock he had left. It was as well he did not come six or seven years earlier. Brisbane had changed even in that short time. The river was now spanned by a bridge that linked North and South Brisbane, even though the structure was intended only as a temporary one. (So temporary indeed was it that two years later some sections collapsed into the river.) Night travellers were aided by the thirty-two gas lights that brightened a few of the dark streets. A permanent water supply had at least been started, the pipes from the Enoggera reservoir at last laid. (The first water flowed into the Queen Street hydrant in July 1866.) This would, it was hoped, go some way towards dealing with the fires, though there was as yet no fire station. In 1863, 1864, and again in 1866 quite sizeable areas of buildings in the main streets had been reduced to blackened heaps. In the second 1866 blaze fifty houses and business places were wiped out, the damage being estimated at ^^60,000. Disastrous as these fires were, they had one good result: some buildings that replaced the old wooden dwellings and shops were now built of stone or brick. Queen Street by the middle and late i86o's was becoming obviously a business centre, and the height of the buildings had in­ creased. (An old photograph of Queen Street in i860 shows only about one-third of them with two stories.) The thorough­ fares, at least the main ones, had improved. The streets—if they can indeed be called that—which existed in the heart of the town in 1859 were rutted and pitted, mud in rain and dust in sun, an inconvenience by day and a hazard by night. A few years later Queen, George, Albert, and Edward Streets had in part been levelled, the carriage-ways metalled, and the footpaths defined. But the major problems of drain­ age and sanitation were to remain major problems for some years to come.

[49] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

Stephens could have come to much more uncomfortable places, but he could not have arrived at a worse time—the first of two depression years. Though the discovery of gold at Gympie in 1867 revived the flagging economy, Queensland was to pay dearly for earlier optimism. The Government had freely expended funds in assisting immigrants, but these were only part of the sums it had borrowed. Public works had been over-extended, however necessary they might have been: dredging and harbour improvements, roads, buildings, and especially the projected railway from Brisbane to Ipswich, Toowoomba, and the towns further west. All this, together with increasing land speculation, meant inflation. By the end of 1865 the pubUc debt was /^2,ooo,ooo. In 1866 debentures to the amount of /^1,000,000 were authorized. After some difficulty the Government managed to get the loan dealt with by the Agra and Masterman's Bank in England. But almost immediately an English bank closed; then the contractors Peto, Brassey and Betts coUapsed; finally, to cap it aU, the Agra and Masterman closed their doors. And these coUapses before the debentures were sold! Left penniless, the Government began to retrench, and the aid to immigrants stopped except for those already arranged for. This accounts for the halving of the number of immigrants in 1866 and for the mere trickle in 1867. It also accounted for much misery. In these two eventful years Brisbane was to witness more distress and excitement than at any time before the 1890's. Financial collapse resulted in dire unemployment. Many families went hungry, and anger showed itself at meetings, in marches, in near-riots. The most miUtant groups were the labourers on the railway line west of Ipswich. The most troubled period covered late August and early September of 1866. The workmen rode on trucks down to Ipswich, and threatened marches on Brisbane. The citizens witnessed some very odd scenes. On 10 September the time gun boomed twice from Wickham Terrace (pre-arranged as a warning), all gathered in the streets, police marched and counter-

[50] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

marched. There rose the cry: "The navvies are coming." But there was no disorder. The next day the "Bread or Blood" disturbance made much noise, but no harm was done. The restraint exercised was on the whole quite remark­ able. But things subsided, and slow distress simply continued, partly alleviated by the Gympie rush of 1867, until the 1870's. To this new, sprawUng, vigorous, depressed, independent, uncultivated town Stephens brought a considerable fund of education, intelligence, and experience of people and places. It might seem a more than adequate endowment for any immigrant; but at that period a pair of powerful and calloused hands would have promised more. Five years later Anthony Trollope visited Queensland and observed the prospects of betterment open to the unlettered labourer and farmer. They were in contrast to those open to the clerk and the scholar:

. . . the chances in any Australian colony are very bad both for men and women who go thither with some vague idea of earning bread by their education or their wits. The would-be Government clerk, the would-be gover­ ness, the would-be schoolmaster, lawyer, storekeeper, or the like, has no more probable opening to him in an Australian town than he has in London or Liverpool. One of the native-born has a comment on this subject. As late as 1887, when Thomas Hanger at the age of thirteen started as a pupil teacher, the prospects in that profession were still not glowing. In his Sixty Tears in Queensland Schools (1963) he wryly comments that after five years he might earn /^i02 per year, stay on that level for three years, ad­ vance to /^ii4, pause again for three years, take examina­ tions for entry to Class II, edge upwards through advance­ ment for twelve years, take the Class I tests, and "if things went well with me, if head teacher and district inspector regularly approved of me, I should be over fifty years of age before I reached the top classification as an asisstant teacher, and my salary then would be under ;^240 per annum".

[51] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

Stephens' university background might have seemed an advantage, but the history of his years in the schools is not exhilarating. From the time of his arrival the question of congenial work must have been in Stephens' mind. He possibly applied to the Education authorities, but if he did so, no record remains. In 1866 there were in Queensland under the control of the Board of Education about fifty schools, with 8,000 pupils on the rolls (average attendance less than 50 per cent), staffed by nearly 100 teachers. There would seem to have been a place for a cultivated man from a Scottish university. It was, however, the disastrous year of 1866, and for all we know to the contrary he may not have been able to find a position. Another immigrant, Francis Baily, who arrived in Brisbane about six months later than Stephens, found conditions almost desperate. Writing early in 1867 from (appropriately) the Temperance Boarding House, Stanley Street, to a rela­ tive in England, he laments: ... A place could not possibly be in a worse state . . . The thickest of the cloud is over us and starvation stares many in the face. For God's sake prevent anyone coming here if you can. At all events, Stephens went to live at the home of his cousin, Mrs. Walter Hill, whose husband was Colonial Botanist and Director of the Botanic Gardens. The house stood on Kangaroo Point, which in 1859 was not highly regarded but which was now on the verge of becoming fashionable. Nehemiah Bartley, speaking of the inhabitants of South Brisbane as rustics, hastens to except Kangaroo Point (in 1875) from his strictures: it was more Uke a tiny colony from DarUng Point, Sydney, than anything else. We are speaking now rather of the sylvan Shafston, the rural Norman's Creek, the beaute­ ous River-terrace with its unrivalled coup d'oeil of the great city . . .

[52] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

Here Stephens is said to have coached some private pupils, one of them being young Robert Philp, aged fifteen, to whom he taught Latin and French. When he became Premier, Philp was the benefactor of his old teacher. For some months he was on the staff of Tollerton House Academy, Charlotte Street, where pupils were taught English, Drawing and Painting, Music, German, Italian, and Dancing. Stephens is Usted as teacher of French. It cannot have been very remunerative work. If we remember Stephens' former interest in tutoring the children of a family, it should not surprise us that this is what he next turned to. Such a position had once enabled him to visit foreign parts. This time he was to visit the Queensland bush. In the letter, quoted in part earlier, that he wrote to A. G. Stephens in 1900, he went on to outline his years in Queensland. ... six years tutoring on Australian cattle stations— (Bush Life)—five years in a tin-mining centre—seven years teaching Australian Country schools—seventeen years of Civil Service, this work being Dispatch writing . . . Once again we can only lament the lack of details of time and place, for it is quite surprising how little certainty there is concerning this period, which is after all only a century ago. Some times and places and events can be pinpointed exactly, but it is still often dubious when he began and ended some of his country jobs. Even close friends of his later years differ in their conclusions or are conveniently vague. One investigator, N. C. Hewitt, for example, after digging into records concerning Unumgar, was forced to conclude merely that Stephens was there some time between 1866 and 1875. The determining of such dates is something Uke a geo­ metrical "proof by exhaustion"—in more senses than one. Certain dates are established: from the beginning of 1870 until 1883 he was employed by the Board of Education— with two periods of absence. The first period extends from [53] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH the end of 1871 to the start of 1873, that is, the year 1872. The second extends from AprU 1873 until October 1874, a year and a half. The other period unaccounted for stretches from April 1866, when he arrived in Brisbane, to the end of 1869, rather more than three years and a half. The total is six years and a couple of months. In the letter quoted above Stephens writes of "six years tutoring on Australian cattle stations". This seems to suggest that he stayed in Brisbane only a few months—perhaps six at the most, or even to the end of 1866. It was, then, in the latter half of 1866 or at the start of 1867 that he became a tutor on Tamrookum, a cattle station on the Logan about sixty miles from Brisbane. This was occupied by WiUiam Barker, whose family had held it from 1848. The life of a tutor on an outback station varied very great­ ly. Some tutors were regarded as menials—and indeed must often have deserved no better fate; others were accepted as members of the family. There cannot have been many tutors before the middle of the century, but there must have been hundreds scattered over the holdings in the eastern States in the second half of the century. Despite this, first-hand accounts of their experiences are not numerous. Their status apparently improved with the passage of years and the gradual easing of hard conditions on the stations. In 1849 Joseph Townsend in his Rambles and Observa­ tions in New South Wales expresses an attitude that was probably typical:

To return to our Illawarra farmer. He retained a tutor to educate his children, giving him thirty pounds a-year, besides board and lodging. I always felt for those who held this office. Amongst the working colonists —"men of all weather fit for every toil"—the tutor, in a long dressing-gown and yellow slippers, seems quite out of his element. I recalled meeting a dominie on horseback in the bush, when I was accompanied by a stockman, and I had some difficulty in compelling the man to hold [54] James Brunton Stephens, 1871. Courtesy Oxley Library. 1

AA^ ii^- <^^tir i£c.(fi^'/ifp^jo. i/j y4z/u> /2tirZff^.cf^ ^-^Tf^ •iHt^ i

id ,f/iit U'i^ SU/C^6LJ- — yC^c£t urh'X./ytA4£*

A page from Stephens' diary, from the entry dated 8 January 1857. -ful6i^— /Reproduced^ ^'^-^

his tongue until the unfortunate preceptor, who rode in pumps and white stockings, was out of hearing. He then exclaimed, "that's either a tailor, or a chap in hiding; her can't ride, but her can clungl" I found afterwards that the object of his mirth was a tutor in the family of a man who was once a convict, and even then by no means ashamed of having "been in trouble". He used to refer to his former predicament, saying "When I was in government they gaved me homing, and I growed quite portentous." But even when he was respected for his scholarship, a tutor might encounter some very odd situations. An Oxford man, George Carrington, in 1871 in his Colonial Adventures and Experiences tells of one brief period during his years in the Queensland outback: The most comfortable time that I spent in the colony was a quarter of a year, during which I acted as tutor to a blacksmith's children in a small Bush township . . . He found out somehow that I was an educated man, and after some cautious talk and enquiry, oflfered me a pound a week, and my board, to stop and teach his children . . . the next day we all set to, and built a Uttle slab-hut for a schoolroom ... I was provided with a miscellaneous assortment of educational works, which he had picked up cheap at a stall in Brisbane, and had kept in anticipation of some day, as he said, "getting some schooling for his children". But, as we never got beyond a little reading, writing, spelling, and simple sums, we never had occasion to use them. He insisted, however, first of all in going over the collection with me, and catechizing me in a kind of admiring way on the contents ... I believe he expected we should master all these in a month or two, and re­ quire a fresh course of reading. However, I soon found that the amount of teaching which I could get through was infinitesimal. I was on the horns of a perpetual [55] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

dilemma, for either the blacksmith was drunk or he was sober (generally the former). When he was drunk, he would not allow me to teach, on any account, and assaulted me if he found me doing it; as he always wanted me to go up to the public-house and drink with him. When he was sober, having to make up for lost time, he required the children to hold horses, and blow the bellows in the shop.

But if a tutor was sufficiently educated to teach children, and if in addition he had some outdoor interests, then often enough he could spend a year or two with a reasonable family and enjoy what was almost a paid vacation. The same Francis Baily who shortly after his arrival urged his relatives to stop anyone coming to Queensland, who wrote that "no one but great hairy rough squatters have any business here", passed two contented years (from the end of 1867 to the end of 1869) on Jimboomba, on the Logan, about thirty miles from Brisbane. In a letter to his sister (13 September 1867) he finds himself lucky:

My duties are very light and pleasant. I rise at six and take my gun into the scrub till 7I when I go to the yard for the milk, drink a pint myself, and return to breakfast. 9 to 12 I devote to my pupil who is about 12, very attentive and tractable, but backward. All the rest of the day I have to myself. Sometimes I ride after cattle, at others hunting, kangaroos—shooting—Wallabys, Bandi­ coots, Oppossum, kangaroo rats, with various birds as Curlews, Parrots, Rosellas, and reptiles as Guanas . . . I may certainly say I never spent a happier time in my life than the fortnight I have been here. In the evening if moonlight I am generally out shooting opossums or curlews, if not we have a rubber of whist or I have plenty of choice from an extensive library. I enjoy every comfort that bush hfe can aflford and am just as one of the family.

[56] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

Writing to his aunt a month later he continues in the same strain: Arnt I lucky to get such a billet as this—15 hours a week to my pupil is all I have to do, with shooting and fishing ad lib ... I am in first rate health and happy as a king. My salary here is f^o per annum and everything found me but clothes, which is equal to ^^130 in Brisbane as my only expense here is postage stamps. It all sounds too idylUc to last, and Baily was right to consider himself fortunate. A later stint of six months in the second half of 1871, on Rosewood, sixty miles west of Brisbane, was more exacting. He had to act as station accountant and to teach six children seven hours a day. He left in disgust at the insults flung at him by the house­ keeper, who apparently had the manager of the station under her thumb. A tutor, then, had to take his chance, and he was not always lucky. The type of family he entered, the situation of the station, the work he was expected to do—all these were beyond his control, except perhaps in a measure the last. But perhaps as important as anything else was the character of the tutor himself. A man like Baily, active and extrovert, had a much better chance of fitting in, of making a do of things, than an introverted student such as Stephens was. Stephens did not like the bush, or at any rate life in the bush. His background was a scholarly one and he was, from what family friends have left on record, rather impractical in everyday affairs. For physical toil he had what it is not too extreme to call a distaste. Rosa Praed in My Australian Girlhood (1902) gives us a significant gUmpse of him on a visit to Marroon, the holding of her father, Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior. The "poet" in the extract is Stephens. The men were a rude and independent set. They worked hard all day and slept heavily all night. They had no books and never saw an English paper. Yet it was curious to see how in a dim way they recognised [57] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

the poet as a being superior to themselves and of finer clay than the rest of us, and though they were ready enough to scoff at any new chum who might come among them, they did not scoff at him, unfitted as he was, with his white hands and white cuffs and nervous shrinking from exertion, for the sport and rough play at cutting trees and setting up camp which delighted Captain Sherborne and even the Dean. I heard one of the cutters say, as he watched the Dean and Captain Sherborne hewing sapUngs in order to partition oflf an unused hut for the ladies' accommodation, and then let his eyes rest upon the poet, who sat reading Greek under a quandong-tree, "Well for squatters and parsons— mind, I say for darned squatter and a darned parson"— only the adjective was a Uttle stronger—"you he's the hardest-working coves I ever set eyes on. But it's them big-foreheaded, white-handed chaps that's worth a price. They're a deal better nor us." Francis Kenna is the authority for extracts from some letters that Stephens wrote from Tamrookum to his friends at Kangaroo Point, in which he gives vent to his impatience and boredom: I am still fretting against the bush. What has roused me to-day is seeing M and B going oflf to Brisbane. I am in the land of monotony . . . deep in Euripides. W was here on Saturday and Sunday, and all was horse, horse, horse. is here to-night, and I hterally fled from the drawingroom to avoid the eternal horse, horse, horse. He is of course not alone among immigrants in finding bush life monotonous. Others found not only the life but also the landscape depressing. W. S. S. Tyrwhitt in The New Chum in the Queensland Bush (1887) expresses a judgment that reads as deUberated as the rest of his appraisal of the colony: The great fault in a Queensland landscape to an EngUsh eye is the want of foreground. This invariably consists [58] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

of bare looking tree trunks and withered grass. If only English oaks and elms could take the place of gum trees and iron barks, Queensland would be more beautiful than England itself. . . As to the ordinary bush landscape, such as one would pass through on a day's ride in any direction, the truth must be told. To an EngUshman it is ugly and un­ interesting to a degree. He has been accustomed to constant variety in his own country even if amongst tame scenery. Here there is no variety. Every tree trunk is as straight as the one next to it. Every ridge is the same in height and appearance as its neighbour and is covered with the same mixture of stones and grass. The trees and rocks have none of the beautiful forms that are universal in other countries, the former being tall, scraggy and ragged, and the latter shapeless and crumbling. As against this should be set another anecdote from Rosa Praed, which shows that Stephens could be responsive to the eerie grandeur of the Australian bush: The poet and Zack Bedo were with us. The poet gazed in a rapt manner at the mountains. All of us were silent, except Zack, who was in a discontented mood, and had been railing most of the way against the rough­ ness and deadly monotony of the bush and at the lack of those grand spectacles and inspiring influences for which his soul had begun to yearn. That was since a fair AustraUan Anglomaniac had brought him under her spell. "Oh, Lord," he said, "if there was only something to look at besides those everlasting gum-trees! Now if I could just take a trip to Europe, and get a squint at some of the pictures and statues and the old castles and the Alps—just think of the snowy mountains and the Rhine—and then look at that! Oh! I bet if I could only [59] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

see some of the sights in the Old Country I'd do some­ thing yet." "Mr. Bedo," said our poet dreamily, "the Rhine is commonplace compared with that. That's the grandest thing of its kind I've ever seen. That's worth coming all the way from Europe to look at." Zack Bedo stared, and we all contemplated anew the ravine below, the sombre scrub, the queer white trees with their skeleton Umbs, and the dull grey face of the rock. It was perhaps partly in a search for relief from station life and from this nostalgia for the days with his Brisbane friends —"I feel as tender and homesick as I used to do in my school-days when the holidays were over"—that he turned to verse. On Tamrookum he wrote the first important poetry since his arrival in Queensland. This was the poem by which, with perhaps a dozen others, he will be remembered —Convict Once. Rosa Praed has retailed her memory of the occasion: It was by the banks of Tamrookum Creek that "our poet", Brunton Stephens, composed his "Convict Once". We read it in manuscript, and begged that it might appear in the Marroon Magazine, and we thought it a slight upon that periodical—the outlet for local literary ambition—when it was sent to England instead. To the astonishment of everybody it was pubUshed by a great London house . . . and after that we thought more of our poet, though most of us preferred his "Tamroo­ kum Alphabet" in rhyme, to any of the higher flights of his genius. Indeed, the Tamrookum boys thought very small beer of the poet, because he preferred to sit and read Xenophon by the lagoon to running in wild horses out of the scrub.

Convict Once was not popular, though it received con­ temporary critical acclaim. Both verdicts are understand- [60] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH able. It is written—or is sometimes taken—as an imitation of classical metre, and to the English ear this must always seem unnatural. No attempt at quantitative measures has been anything more than an experimental tour de force in English, which insists on stress. The stanzas consist of four lines which rhyme alternately. The first and third lines contain seventeen syUables, the second and fourth sixteen. Though the suggested—perhaps intended—movement is dactylic (a strong stress followed by two weak ones), a reader almost invariably reads the lines as anapests (two weaks followed by a strong): Vastness of verdurous solitude, forest complexity boundless, Where is no stir save the fall of a leaf, or the wave of a wing; Lone sunny regions where virginal Nature roams cease­ less and boundless. Rich with the richness of summer, yet fresh with the freshness of spring. And the story is momentarily an obstacle, related as it is evasively and elliptically. The content has been paraphrased often enough—the narrator, Magdalen Power, released from imprisonment for a crime committed in her teens, takes up a position with a family containing three daughters. The eldest falls in love with a young man, Raymond, son of a convict. Her father forbids the match, declaring she may marry Raymond only if he himself proposes to a convict. Magdalen then proceeds to win Raymond for herself, but weakens in her resolve so that when the father, left a widower, proposes to her, she is enabled to reconcile him to the marriage of his daughter. Magdalen contemplates suicide, is struck senseless by a bough in a storm, confesses all in her delirium, and dies repentant and forgiven. Though the setting of the story is supposed to be Aus­ tralian, it really belongs nowhere on earth. It is, certainly in the first half of the poem, a dreamlike tapestry world, [6i] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH romanticized, static, and lush, a creation that derives essentially from a sort of nineteenth-century poetic diction. This is loaded with words such as dowered, pleasaunce, um­ brageous, languor, jasper, opaline, with phrases like sinuous subtlety, undulous ease, enamoured eclipse, bosky entanglements, sepulchred passions, and with locutions that conceal rather than express the reality they deal with. A blush, for instance, becomes a vermeil suffusion; the Australian bush tracks are transformed into long for est aisles, and the scent of gum leaves into opiate breath of these woodland retreats. The inhabitants of this enchanted domain bear the names Hyacinth, Lily, and Violet; the son of the convict lives nominally up to such expectations and labours under the name of Raymond Trevelyan. It all makes nonsense of one critic's verdict that "much of its imagery is original, being derived from Aus­ tralian sources". In fact, probably the one word with an Australian flavour in the whole poem is lagoon. Only occasionally do passages evoke what seems to be the ostensible aim:

Out on the gem-pointed Cross, and the glittering pomp of Orion, Flaming in measureless azure, the coronal jewels of God.

More often the effect is that of sheer over-writing, almost of travesty, where the near commonplace is swollen with resounding vocables into factitious importance:

Curse on those undulous pastures, and far-vista'd woods unavailing, Scant of contiguous umbrage, unmeet for the tomb that I crave.

Though the verse lacks the characteristic movement and the variegated forms of repetition, it bears fairly obviously the marks of Swinburne, one of Stephens' favourite poets, a dangerous model for an imitator with verbal faciUty. [62] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

And so one might continue: nothing would be easier than to guy other aspects of Convict Once. But a caveat is required. Though Stephens is guilty and a critic must scold him, the reason is not the obvious one. Stephens does not normally write in this fashion and, paradoxically, he is not really writing like this in the poem. He is not telling the story—it is put into the mouth of the chief character, Magdalen. She is a perverted romantic, and the often absurd diction is intend­ ed to express her and her moods. In this first half of the poem the mood is one of exultation, and the rhetorical posturing is as it were a symptom. One of the few acceptable passages bears this out. Magdalen has fallen in love with Raymond and comes upon him unseen: Down in the vines he is sitting; and radiance leaf- softened and golden On the broad calm of his brow through the veil of the vintage is shed. Blest be each bough that enshrines him! Henceforth I am ever beholden Unto the slenderest, tenderest leaflet that shelters his head. Despite the bogus pseudo-classical setting, this has its warrant. We see the figure through the eyes of the watcher, in a mood of expectancy satisfied, of momentarily fulfilled desire, where the benevolence extends to embrace figuratively the setting as weU as the beloved object. It is psychologically valid, and a reader is tempted to accept the phrasing just because of that. This is not to excuse Stephens. To do so would be to accept the fallacy of Imitative Form. But it may be noted, as further confirmation of this partial exculpation, that, once the mood of exultation passes, the diction tends to become simpler and monosyllables grow more frequent. The last fines may serve: Into Thy hands I commend me, eternal and merciful Spirit. [63] BRISBANE AND THE BUSH

Come Euthanasia! Let it be kneeUng . . . My Lord and my God! where even Euthanasia (used of course in its etymological meaning) is almost subsumed into the simplicity of accept­ ance. Stephens, then, made an error of judgment; he sinned, so to speak, with his eyes open. Had he written this way in his own persona as a poet, as an unskilful practitioner, we should find it harder to make excuses for him. The reputation of Convict Once, formerly very high, has declined considerably. One may think, indeed, that the modern complete depreciation of it is unwarranted. It is long, over a thousand lines, and yet it is sustained in its unorthodox form and tension. Even the debatable metrical experiment, when read in English accentual measure, begins to exercise its attraction. The character of Magdalen as narrator, however, is probably the most startling factor of this work; and as the poem proceeds, swept forward by the long and sometimes breathless lines, her complex, intense, and tortuous self hastens to its unfolding, its repentance, and its ultimate reconciliation with its destiny. Stephens sent the manuscript to his Brisbane friends, and Horace Earle submitted it to David Masson, professor at the University of Edinburgh. The latter kept it many months, read it at last, was considerably impressed, and forwarded it to Macmillan, the London publishers. They in turn took their time, and it was not published until 1871. Stephens was almost ecstatic over the praise from Masson, irritated beyond bearing at the delay with Macmillan, and once again delighted by the general critical approval when the book at last appeared. But more than a year before this happened he had left the bush and found a position in Brisbane.

[64] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

TEPHENS ENTERED the Board of Education before S Convict Once, his first book of verse, was pubUshed. After about three to three and a half years of tutoring he left the bush life that he found both exasperating and monoton­ ous, and became a teacher at the Normal School in Brisbane. He started on i February 1870 as probationary assistant at a salary of p{^ioo per annum. It was no longer the panic and penury year of 1866, and though prosperity was not in the air at least there had been a fairly steady if not very large increase in government works. The spread of education, however, was more marked. From 100 teachers employed by the Board in 1866 the number had now increased to over 200, the schools from 50 to over 100, the pupils from 8,000 to 16,000 (still with an average attendance of less than 50 per cent). Stephens' application to enter the Board must have been made in the second half of 1869, at least eighteen months before Convict Once appeared. It is tempting to play at historical if's and wonder what might have happened if Masson had read the manuscript immediately, if Macmillan had not deliberated so long, if in fact the poem had been published before the end of 1869. One suspects that Stephens might have remained on Tamrookum or sought another similar position, finding that the approval of literary critics sweetened his distaste for life outback. He said on more than one occasion that he needed privacy and could work only when undisturbed. Since he lived in the bachelors' quarters on Tamrookum, one may feel that he would have [67] THE SCHOOLTEACHER had at least a measure of what he wanted. But like many other writers, he also Uked the society and conversation of his feUow writers. If we assume, however, that the bush was intolerable and that an assured position, with the promise of privacy at wiU, was his aim, then he was now to have his desire. A report on an examination of pupils at the Normal School in 1866 gives some idea of the subjects taught—in this instance in Fourth Grade: Reading, General Geography, Grammar (parsing). Arithmetic, (weights and measures, vulgar fractions). Local Geography, History (especially the events of the reign of George III). One can hardly think Stephens would have found it an intellectually onerous position. Having served a probationary period (a year and a half), he was put on the permanent staff, "promoted to the rank of first assistant teacher, with position in the Normal School next to the second master", and given an advance in salary to ^^150 per annum. On 9 December 1871, after two years with the Board, Stephens tendered his resignation, and the next year he spent once more on Tamrookum. The move is so unexpected to anyone knowing his opinion on life on a station, indeed so astonishing, that it calls for some explanation. Various choices spring to mind. He may have found that he disliked teaching even more than tutoring on a station. This is unUkely, in the face of his frequent opinions on bush life made in his letters, and especially in the face of one, to be quoted later, which states his satisfaction with teaching. Or the Barker family may have missed him and his help to the children and have begged him to return. This is a guess, with no evidence either way; but again it depends on Stephens' estimate of the relative attractions of the two positions. Or—and this is a stronger possibility—he may have been suffering from ill health and have decided that a further bout of country life was needed. Yet he took no leave of absence, according to the records, until the later 1870's. Perhaps it was a sudden access of illness—in the form of a [68] THE SCHOOLTEACHER heart attack ? His father died of paralysis. He himself died of a heart attack. So such an onset was in the nature of things. Not one of these possibiUties can be summarily or with certainty dismissed. There remains, however, one further likelihood—a weakness for liquor. This suggestion must seem so strange in the face of what has been written of Stephens, a body of comment which never once hints at such a thing, that it may be suspected to derive from sheer malice or a biographer's unseemly wish to uncover something discredit­ able. There is, nevertheless, evidence pointing in that direc­ tion, which will be dealt with later. For the moment the hypothesis is offered that in the second half of 1871 Stephens found himself giving way to this weakness. He was an intro­ spective man who was accustomed to analyze his own reac­ tions. He was, in addition, a sensible if perhaps not very persistentman,and he probably took fright. A year or so away from social temptation may have oflfered itself as a solution. The evidence that he returned to Tamrookum is a letter from there, dated 4 August 1872, to James Ferguson, the Brisbane printer and publisher of the firm of Watson and Co. Clarke informs me that Robertson's agent has declined to order any copies of the "Godolphin", but that this makes no difference to your plans regarding publica­ tion. I fully expect the thing will, at least, pay its ex­ penses, but even if it should not, I hope you clearly understand that I am good for my share of the deficit. Clarke is Joseph Clarke, an old friend of Stephens, who had come out with him on "The Flying Cloud". Robertson is G. Robertson of Melbourne, who was to publish Stephens' next volume. The Black Gin and Other Poems, in the following year. The "Godolphin" is Stephens' longest poem. The Godolphin Arabian, also pubUshed in 1873, which bore out the fears expressed or foreshadowed. It sold slowly. In a letter almost two years later Stephens wondered: "Does Watson never grumble about that spec?" Ultimately the edition sold out and the poem was reprinted in 1894. [69] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

That is virtually aU that is known of the second Tamroo­ kum period. On 13 December 1872 Stephens applied to the Board for re-admission, was accepted, and was appointed to his former position at the Normal School at the same salary as before. Only a few months after his reinstatement occurred some­ thing even more startling than his first resignation—his second resignation. Perhaps resignation is a euphemism. The entry in the records this time does not read: Resigned. It reads instead: Left the Service. The date is 23 April 1873. Even this bears its minor but significant weight, for other appoint­ ments date from the first day of a month and terminations date from the last day of a month. The explanation now proffered, with diffidence but with an inner certainty, is that Stephens once more succumbed to his failing, that the Board thought it advisable to dispense with him but, as is often the kindly custom, allowed him the alternative of voluntarily resigning. So Stephens changed occupations once more and became a tutor in the family of Captain T. H. Sherwood on Unum­ gar, a neighbour of the Barkers of Tamrookum. Nobody, it may justly be thought, is going to accept with­ out evidence such a theory concerning a man invariably considered to have led a life blameless to a degree. The evidence appears in three letters later written to James Ferguson. The first, dated 26 January 1874, was written at Ballina in northern New South Wales, where the Sherwoods had gone for a holiday. The relevant portion runs: . . . Indeed to tell you the truth, my dear Ferguson, I can't get up much enthusiasm nowadays about any­ thing—except a very rare spirt. I have not got over that crusher yet, and I doubt if I ever will. I don't mean that I have hurt my brain, for I can see as far into a milestone as before, and seven months of teetotalism have reestablished my health,—but it is that / don't care, and I detest my own self so much that even my writing shares the utter self-odium. [70] The bachelors' quarters on Tamrookum, where Stephens lived as tutor to the family of William Barker. The figure on the right is reputed to be Stephens. Courtesy Telegraph {Brisbane).

Brisbane, 1864. The fire in Queen Street. Courtesy Oxley Library. Brisbane, 1866. The old Lands Office, centre left. The old Hospital, now the Supreme Court site, centre. The first bridge, centre right. Turbot Street at bottom right. Courtesy Oxley Library.

"Wyuna", Water Street, Highgate Hill, Brisbane, where Stephens lived for the last twenty years of his life. Courtesy Telegraph (Brisbane). THE SCHOOLTEACHER

The second letter was written nearly two years later, when Stephens had been accepted back into the teaching service and was stationed at Stanthorpe. It is dated 4 September 1875- ... I don't think it at all Ukely that I shall be in Brisbane at Xmas. For one thing I don't think it at all likely that I'll be able to aflford it. It is a very expensive journey from this and back. Moreover I am not at all proud of my exploits in Brisbane, and though I have now more reason than ever I had before for believing that my worst enemy is defeated and slain, I should like to have far stronger and time-confirmed pledges of victory to show . . . And last there is another letter from Stanthorpe dated 15 December 1875. ... I have now been fourteen months a Good Templar and considering that by heaven's help I have accom­ plished this without any aid of bush-seclusion or other than the solemn determination to piece together and make the most of the fragments of a broken life, I think I have good reason to believe that the enemy has lost hold of me, and that I am no longer a miserable excep­ tion among my fellows. I must confess that this closing year has been by far the happiest I have spent since I came to Australia. Not that I have done anything brilliant, or that I mean to bother my head about trying to do so. I have simply been carrying out the determina­ tion to be a respectable man, and now that I have accomplished it, both in reality and in repute, I would not exchange that result for the laureate's crown. Now that I am utterly got rid of the continual undercurrent of humiliating consciousness that I was not as others are, you have no idea how completely and thoroughly I enjoy society . . . Such self-revelations can have but one meaning. With every willingness to put another interpretation on them, any

[71] THE SCHOOLTEACHER impartial reader, it is suggested, can come only to the hypo­ thesis formerly oflfered. The facts of the case were known to his circle and probably beyond—he writes in another letter to Ferguson, referring to his future wife: "... do you think I have forgotten that there's a little woman who passes your door every day, who believed in me when all others (and small blame to them) had ceased to do so." And this must have been woundingly painful to a man as sensitive as Stephens and as averse to publicity of such a kind. The last letter, healthily cheerful, is a measure of his rehabilitation. But before he could write like that he went through many months of purgation. Not all tutors or schoolteachers with the same failing had the capacity to reform. Over thirty years earlier, indeed, there already existed the expectation or acceptance that the dominie should cut a ludicrous figure. In the Tasmanian Weekly Dispatch for 7 August 1840 Algernon Frederick W. Pilkington, commenting on the situation, pleads feelingly, if rather volubly, the cause of the bibulous scholar, who apparently is driven to drink because literate society will not accept an ill-paid fellow: Many parents . . . complain of the drunken propensities of their children's teachers—forgetting . . . that those teachers are but men; aye, too often ill-used and solitary, through an inability to procure often, than from an un­ fitness to move in exemplary society. The heart of man yearns for society . . . when, on account of his compara­ tive poverty, and . . . too frequently unavoidable shabbi- ness of apparel—he is debarred association with men of standing . . . He is driven from select company and rational recreation, to the debasing hubbub of the tavern, and endeavours to drown the pain of being a man, in the seductive contents of the exhilarating, and often replenished glass.

Stephens was to be no such figure. He cured his weakness, though the method of cure was distasteful: he fled the [72] THE SCHOOLTEACHER temptations of the town, but Ufe in the bush he stiU found unacceptable. In the letter from Ballina (26 January 1874), referring to some proposed writing, he says:

... I cannot take on anything of the kind, at Unumgar at least, and we shall be back there in a fortnight. Never was man worse situated for writing than I am there. I never seem to have any command either of time or place. And I am one of those unfortunates who must have plenty of time, and certainly of non-interruption, as indispensable conditions for writing at all. I can't "throw off" things as I hear of others doing, at odd times. I can do nothing without great labour, and it even takes me about half-an-hour to get up steam before I write a word. I am getting disgusted altogether with my writing capacity . . .

This should be noted as contrary evidence to the widely held belief, first promoted by Francis Kenna, that Stephens wrote Convict Once in three weeks. A paragraph later in the same letter we come upon one of the despairing self-revelations that occasionally welled up from the man's troubled broodings. It gives us a much more intimate glimpse of Stephens than the equable public pro­ nouncements generally afford.

... I have had a very pleasant time altogether here at Ballina, very quiet certainly, but very agreeable and godly ... I shall be sorry to go back to the bush again. Life has become a very dark look out for me. I haven't the remotest idea where I am to turn to when I am done with the Sherwoods. Fancy, I am half past thirty eight now, and by the time I am about forty, if I am spared till then, I shall have to begin all over again, and with worse chances than if it were my first fair beginning.

An even more melancholy note is heard about six months later. The bush, as usual, has become hateful, whUe the [73] THE SCHOOLTEACHER future seems hopeless. This letter from Unumgar (13 June 1874) probably marks the nadir of Stephens' fortunes as they appeared to him.

Mr. Sherwood is in treaty for the sale of the Station with the view of returning to England, so that in a few months at latest I shall again have to hump my drum, and as I anticipate very great difficulty in finding an­ other situation for reasons unfortunately only too well known to you and others, you may be sure that I con­ template the change with very great anxiety ... a couple of months may wind us up here. I am very sorry about it. Not that I like my situation, for I shall always loathe the bush as simply a merciful form of punishment, but for all that the difference between any situation and no situation is immense. I may say I was only getting re­ conciled to the place, and had made up my mind to make the best out of it by a couple of years' study, but all that is knocked on the head. I really seem destined to have no rest for the sole of my foot, much less for the seat of my trousers. I am now confronted with as com­ plete a blank as ever man had to face. I am afraid I shall have to go to some other colony, though what to do when I get there is as great a problem as it would be here. I should much prefer Queensland, were it only for the climate, for to me cold is annihilation. I fear, however, that Queensland hath cast me out. I suspect I shall be sore bestead this time ... I am writing today to Gullett to ask if he can suggest any sort of chance of living in Melbourne ... It is not literary work I want, I am dis­ illusioned of that prismatic froth. If I could get the commonest assistantship in the commonest of schools, I should think myself well off. Meanwhile I have delight­ ful visions of a shabby wretch slouching about Mel­ bourne streets with a string of ballads over his arm, or haunting the Australasian office door canvassing for a recommendation for a soup ticket. . .

[74] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

It was not only to Gullett that he appealed. Some time in June or July he applied to the Board for reinstatement. That body, with a greater compliance perhaps than we are accustomed to attribute to officialdom, replied on 28 July that: "The Board of Education have favorably entertained your application for readmission into the service as a teacher . . . from the time that you are prepared to enter on your duties." It was a gracious enough gesture, especially the last concession. It was made up for by a demotion to Class IIB and a reduction in salary to ;^i30 per annum. Stephens apparently took a month or two to settle up his affairs with Sherwood, for he did not resume teaching until i October, when he began at Stanthorpe. From this time on he apparently had no more of his old troubles. The last years of his life, indeed, were punctuated by recurrent illnesses of greater or less severity, but these were the ills that flesh is normally heir to. He found enjoy­ ment with his fellows, he married, he had children, he was kept busy, he was promoted to a more congenial position. He had, one might think, reason for contentment: he had come into harbour. So one might think. When he went to Stanthorpe the township was between two and three years old and had just about reached its peak. Before 1872 the area was part of a sheep station, the only building a hut on the banks of Quart Pot Creek. This odd name derived from the loss of a quart pot by the manager of the neighbouring station. But since legend is not to be denied, there is the story by Donald Gunn:

Patrick LesUe left his quart pot at where he camped on one of his trips from Maitland to the Darling Downs. He sent his black boy back for the quart pot, and Leslie in his diary marked it as Quart Pot Creek.

Some time later A. C. Gregory, appointed warden, gave the township the name of Stanthorpe. And again Donald Gunn offers an alternative: [75] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

Father used to say the reason it was not called Quart Pot was because the Government was afraid that in the future Stanthorpe might become a cathedral city and have a Bishop, and that it would never do to call him Bishop Quart Pot. The rush to Stanthorpe began a month or two after A. Ross took samples of stream tin to Warwick in February 1872. The township grew fast, Cobb and Co. put on a twice- weekly service, and by 1875 there were nearly 2,000 alluvial miners on the field. Their thirst was catered for by thirty pubs (often of bark and calico) and shanties. In what passed for the main street stood the Roll-up Tree, where the miners met and talked things over. From 1872 to 1875 Stanthorpe produced tin to the value of about ^^700,000; from 1875 to 1880, about ;^8oo,ooo; and then the decline set in. By 1884 Mark Kershaw could write: Stanthorpe is a funny little place. It consists of a few low, one-storied houses along the sides of wide roads, I can't call them streets. They have too much grass on them to be streets . . . The hotel was like a little old- fashioned English hostelry. There was the white-capped maid servant, and there was the open hearth with its huge log fire . . . A change indeed from the roaring days! The years that Stephens passed in Stanthorpe were happy and healthful. At first he found the contrast with Brisbane a little hard to endure. Writing to Ferguson on 9 December 1874, a few months after his arrival, he mentions an actor in Brisbane whom he had heard about and goes on to say: I have read the critiques . . . with what Swinburnians would call a sweet subtle ravin of delicious hunger. We have nothing of that sort here higher than juvenile Christy minstrels and Good Templar readings—in which by the way I am asked to take a part at a public enter­ tainment on an early day, but which I doubt if I will do [76] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

it, for first I can't read, and second the audience have no understandings unless perhaps for the On-Stanley- On style of piece, fit only for the dux boy of a parish school to declaim on the examination day. Fancy what would be the effect of reading them a page of Keats! And in the same letter, alluding to some pieces of his that are likely to appear shortly in the Courier, he gives vent to his doubts: Three successive failures in authorship are not usually esteemed the prognostics of success. I feel that instead of flourishing my name in newspapers, I ought to hide my diminished head. If I had two hundred a year I wouldn't write another line. This black mood was to lighten very much as time passed and his health improved. He accepted a place on the execu­ tive of the local Book Club, and tended to come out of his sheU. He began to feel a keener urge to write, and in a letter of 4 September 1875 we have: I had a notion I had pumped myself dry, but I am getting into a healthier frame of mind than has been mine for many a long day, and I fancy I could do a little stroke even yet. When there is a touch of spring in the air I feel some of the old tremors, and itching at the finger ends. Near the end of 1875, W. H. Traill (later of the Bulletin) came up from Brisbane and stayed some time in Stanthorpe. The pair found each other congenial, and seem to have been accepted by the townsfolk—thus (15 December 1875): I am as thick as thieves with all the "people worth knowing" in the place, and between picnics, and "evenings", and croquet-parties etc. etc. I get as much enjoyment out of my fellow men, (especially fellow- women) as one could desire. Traill will tell you if you ask him what a lot of nice people there are here, so jolly and so fraternisable. But [77] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

you must not think I am wholly given over to the pleasures of this world. I beg to state that I daily do an honest man's day's work, and I am more convinced than ever that nature intended me for a dominie, as the work never palls on me, and I never feel thoroughly in my proper place as when I have my class before me.

However ostensibly cheerful, this letter is not of course wholly what it seems. Though the quotation marks show him with tongue in cheek, it is a trifle disturbing, for instance, to find a man of Stephens' sensitivity and cultivation appa­ rently so satisfiedly at home among the worthy folk of a little mining township, while the comment on being in his proper place before his class rings a little determinedly contented. All the same, despite this faint echo of whistling in a grave­ yard, it is a letter such as he certainly could not have written a few years earlier. The touches of playful, almost schoolboyish, humour that break through his moments of gloom find their way into these later letters. He writes that the hotel does not give him enough privacy; so he has hired a cottage left vacant by the local Presbyterian parson. Here he will have no excuse for not writing. And he goes on to recount one of those ridiculous incidents that the most serious of men can delight in:

No man ever had a more secluded study. I am in the midst of a paddock—the church grounds in fact—quite sequestered. I should say barrin' the goats—which in wet weather congregate from all quarters of the globe, and take refuge under my parsonage. The beggars keep bumping the floor just under my heels, and no logic of stick or stone can get them out. I thought I had one old fellow nicely the other day. His neck was just nicely discernible through a little opening in the floor, and I dropped a lighted match just where I knew the nape must be. Would you beUeve it?—the sole result was smoke and smell, and never a budge budged he. [78] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

And he takes a wise man's absurd pleasure in little triumphs that are equally absurd, for example his recitation at a local entertainment: Self struck on a new vein—gave them Wendell Holmes' "Aunt Tabitha"!—intended to make it a reading, but it turned out a recitation!! got carried away with the subject!!! did it in two voices!!!! didn't know the voices were my own till I was done, and heard all the folks roarin' and laughin' and the back seat whistlin'. I'll have another try at that sort of thing. But not tonight. ..

The year 1876 was to be an important one for Stephens. It was his last year at Stanthorpe, and at its close he was to be promoted to a headship at Ashgrove. More than this, he was at last to marry Rosalie Donaldson, whom he had probably met in his Kangaroo Point days and continued to meet while he was at the Normal School. An excited letter to Ferguson, dealing with these prospects, is unfortunately undated—Stanthorpe, Wednesday evening, 1876—but it was probably written about the middle of the year. He thanks Ferguson for some good offices—" . . . you have acted the part of sincere and warm friend . . ."—and continues:

Many many thanks. I feel the better for it, even though I don't feel very sanguine, as I fancy Griffiths objection will gather weight if he ponders over it, and especially if he talks the matter over with any one less warm­ hearted than yourself... if I were alone in the matter I could bear it more lightly. It is the feeling of doubleness in my possible disappointments and in the certain delay, that nips me so hard. I could grin and bear any mortal thing if it weren't that I had elated and inflated Miss D. with prospects that were to have been consummated just about this time or shortly afterwards. Anderson seemed so very confident—even going the length of advising me to avail myself of the July holidays to get married in— that I thought I was at least justified in looking forward [79] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

to September or October. However there is no one to be blamed. I know all was meant in kindness, and even if Griffiths says No, I presume it won't be out of maUce or uncharitableness. Meantime I await the issue in a considerable state of anxious flutter, from which I need not ask you to release me as soon as you can, as I trust you will do without solicitation. The purport of all this is not quite certain, but it seems most probable that Stephens had been encouraged to believe that he would receive a headship in the Brisbane area before the end of the year. By Griffiths is meant the Hon. S. W. Griffith, later to be Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, Chief Justice of Australia. In 1876 he was the Queensland Attorney- General and also Secretary for Public Instruction. Anderson is J. G. Anderson, later to be Under-Secretary, but at the time District Inspector of Schools. As it turned out, Griffith (if ever he was potentially unfavourable) agreed to the appointment. A Department file, initialled by Charles James Graham, Under-Secretary for Education, and dated 22 September 1876, runs: As the Ashgrove School buildings are now in a for­ ward state, I recommend that J. Brunton Stephens, II.I. be appointed as Head Teacher. Mr. Stephens is only waiting for an intimation that he will receive an appointment to get married, and if his appointment is approved, arrangements will be made to give him leave of absence at an early date for this purpose. The memo, after a few remarks about the small size of the school, goes on to state that it will nevertheless be attractive to Stephens, since he is "anxious to have access to libraries, etc. in town". A notation in the margin approving is initialled by Samuel Walker Griffith. Stephens proceeded to take five weeks' leave from 9 Octo­ ber. As it happened, he took six, and resumed teaching on 20 November. These weeks he presumably spent in Brisbane. [80] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

On 10 November, in the Roman Catholic Presbytery, he married Rosalie Mary Donaldson, aged thirty, born in Kingstown, County DubUn, daughter of Thomas WiUet Donaldson, gentleman. Her mother was christened Bettina Schaffsgotsche. That it was a love match is attested by friends at the time and by the few elderly people now surviving who knew his family after his death. But it is possible—though here one is faced with conflicting memories and tales—that the marriage was not completely welcome to all members of the Donaldson family. The mother could proudly trace her ancestry back to central European nobility—hence the Schaffsgotsche, from the Austrian count of that name. A middle-aged Scottish dominie with no brilliant past and seemingly no more brilliant a future—this may have seemed to Bettina Schaffs­ gotsche Donaldson no very attractive catch for her daughter. Again, there was the old vexed question of the "mixed marriage". The Donaldsons were devoutly Catholic; Stephens had, of course, been reared in the Presbyterian faith. He had read widely in the scientific hterature of his period, he seems to express in both letters and publications a secular attitude, and his mild scepticism was tolerant of all creeds—or of no creed at all. In this matter it is difficult to draw conclusions from his verse with any assurance. He paid tribute to a God, though how he thought of Him is not clear. He versified Psalm XC and translated the Stabat Mater, but these may be regarded as poetical exercises. He could write of his searchings— I, who know all the weakness and the fear. The weary ways of labyrinthine doubt —but these were commonplace among nineteenth century men of letters. The reader has a feeling that Stephens took much of all this as material for verse. He used successfully, for instance, the discovery (made in 1862) of the star that caused the perturbations of Sirius. Belief in natural law was thus confirmed, and the dark companion became [81] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

No Dark Companion, but a sun of glory. Similarly Death, dreaded like the dark, might reveal itself as No Dark Companion, but a thing of light. The searcher finds—or thinks he finds—what he seeks: I looked above; and heaven in mercy found me This parable of comfort in a star. But, once again, such analogies are stock devices: what the poet wrote is not necessarily what the man believed. All we may say is that the man who seeks comfort does not feel certainty—no very illuminating conclusion! For himself he reserved the right to believe in a Creator. In a letter of January 1875 from Stanthorpe he looks at the theory of evolution as then expounded: Have you read Dr. Biichner's "Man" (translated by Dallas?). Tyndall is a timorous recruit compared with this man. He certainly "makes no bones about it"— makes a clean sweep of all creeds. From my calm height (I am on a second story verandah) I now look down upon an indefinitely progressive monkeydom. I wag my aborted tail and put my tongue in my cheek pouch at the simian anthropoids playing fantastic tricks in the backyards of the monkey houses below. Fellow-gorilla, adieu—I mean to say, a I'Univers. Some day we shall know—or will it be night, night, night ? Well, in spite of Biichner I say d Dieu. The difference of creed, however, never seems to have been any source of family disagreement, according to his last surviving daughter. The girls were brought up Catholics, and were buried according to the rites of that church. Stephens, ostensibly at least, lived and died a Presby­ terian. The remaining three or four weeks of the school year he spent as relieving teacher at Kelvin Grove Road. A letter [82] THE SCHOOLTEACHER to the Department is extant from the Head of the school, Thomas B. H. Christie, written early the following year, in which he commends Stephens: "I trust you will let me have the help of a male assistant to occupy the place so ably filled by Mr. Stephens during the latter part of last quarter . . ." For the rest of his teaching career Stephens was to have his own school. From i January 1877 he was Headmaster at Ashgrove, and remained there for six years. His salary remained constant—^^150 per annum. His eyes troubled him a little; he complains, for instance, that he cannot read much at night and that small print quickly becomes un­ readable. To gain relief he took a month's leave about the middle of 1879. These years were uneventful. In August 1878 he writes to Traill: What shall I say of myself? Jog-trot, jog-trot,. Peaceful monotony, all the happier because it has no annals . . . Wife well, child well, self well. Altogether not an object of pity . . . He had his family responsibilities, his school, his friends, and a small salary. He wrote, as he had been doing regularly almost since his arrival; at Ashgrove, for example, he com­ posed the first of his four well-known patriotic poems, "The Dominion of Australia (A Forecast)": And heavenward faces, all aflame With sanguine immanence of morn. Wait but the sun-kiss to proclaim The Day of the Dominion born. One of his most pleasant associations was his connection with the Johnsonian Club, of which he was one of the moving spirits in its foundation in 1878. The club tended to be peri­ patetic, and its headquarters ranged over scattered spots in Brisbane. In 1881, for instance, it met in Belle Vue Cottage adjoining the Belle Vue Hotel. Some of the members then, besides Stephens, were Carl Feilburg, John Flood, J. E. [83] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

Byrnes, Horace Earle, K. I. O'Doherty. Then it shifted to Elizabeth Street, and at last to Adelaide Street. Stephens makes reference to this habit in his poem, Johnsonian Address, which he read at the Inaugural Dinner in the Club's new premises on 7 January 1899: We, too, from shifting stage to shifting stage Have plodded through our thirsty pilgrimage. From well to well—at least from pub to pub— We've humped the sacred Lares of the Club. One of his more important Uterary concerns with the Johnsonian is a poem which he read to the members. Accord­ ing to Spencer-Browne, Stephens later destroyed it in case it should offend the religious feelings of the tender-skinned. There seems no reason to believe this story. Stephens men­ tions the poem, "Angela", in a letter as early as September 1875, and at least two MS copies are extant, both in his own hand. It is a lyric, and it possibly constitutes the ending of a much longer poem, in blank verse, in which an unbeUever laments the Christian creed of his beloved. Of this long and sometimes rather pedestrian meditation only a brittle and rather fragmentary copy is known to exist. Since the lyric, Uke the meditation, wiU probably never be published, it is here given in full. We talk of the gods! Are they many or one ? I have found them many—have found them none. Many in happiness—none in despair— Angela! bhnd me with golden hair! We talk of life! While we muse we burn. To whence it came shaU the flame return ? I tremble, and cannot understand— Angela! reach me thy gentle hand! We talk of death! Is it rest or no ? Beginning of peace, or a newer woe ? Only a higher wave to meet ? Angela! Oh for the sound of thy feet! [84] THE SCHOOLTEACHER

We talk of Fate! With her foot on our neck. What manner her countenance need we reck? Yet we writhe till we catch the stony eye— Angela! quieten me, or I die! We talk of sin! We rebel at guilt, And arraign the heavens for life-blood spilt! Who is my Mother? I am but clay! Angela! Angela! Teach me to pray. We talk of heav'n! It were pretty to dwell For ever in fields of asphodel! Yet I shrink from the blaze of the sunless skies— Angela! Oh for the light of thine eyes! I dream of hell! and the dark distress Of the soul in eternal loneliness! Why should I gaze on the lurid glare ? Angela! blind me with golden hair! Near the end of 1882 an offer—or a decision—ended his teaching days. A daughter of the Governor, Sir Arthur Kennedy (so goes the accepted story), thought it shameful that a man of Stephens' poetic talents should spend his days in an elementary school. The result was that Stephens was appointed to the Colonial Secretary's office as despatch writer. He ended his headship of Ashgrove at the close of 1882. For a fortnight in 1883 he was, theoretically, Head of Sandgate (i January-15 January). After that he became a public servant.

[85]

THE PUBLIC SERVANT

BOUT THE MIDDLE of January 1883, as a clerk in A the Colonial Secretary's Office, Stephens entered on the longest period of his life that was to remain unbroken by anything more serious than births of children or occasional illnesses—these last, unfortunately, destined to grow more frequent and more troubling as the century drew to its close. He was to have nearly twenty years of settled life, which afforded him, after some months to find his feet, reasonable leisure, access to libraries, and the companionship of fellow men of letters. One welcome change was the salary: as correspondence clerk he was paid ^^300 per annum. At no time in his teaching career had he received more than /^I50. It was characteristic that he took some time to adapt him­ self and that the new state of affairs was seen to have dis­ advantages. He always had reservations, perhaps from an habitual dubiety, perhaps from a reluctance to present him­ self to a jealous providence as a man now content with his lot. Writing to Traill as late as ten months after his appointment, he first of all mentions his ill-health, concludes with the trouble that his eyes are causing, and in between expatiates on the obstacles to writing:

I don't know very well what to say about writing— I have been very unprolific for some time back. My mind has been chiefly taken up with learning my new trade, and trying to adapt itself to my new circumstances. The consequence is I haven't visited the ethereal regions for a long time . . . [89] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

I am one of three in a room which is a perfect thorough­ fare. However, they are making additions to the building —four new rooms, and if, as I have every reason to ex­ pect, I get a room to myself, I shall have the chance of turning out a good deal of private work . . . In 1883 he was, indeed for some years had been, recog­ nized as one of the leading literary figures in the country. Kendall in 1880 could say: "I claim for Brunton Stephens the first place among Australian poets." The stress on the adjective meant, for Kendall, that George Gordon McCrae (to whom he was writing) was superior as a poet, a verdict which today seems odd enough. This lopsidedness makes us suspect equally a further comment by Kendall: "He [Stephens] is a man of unmistakable genius." There is no need to accept such superlatives; but similar opinions were held at the time. Stephens' body of work by then was sub­ stantial enough to elicit recognition. It was all produced in the 1870's, a period when Kendall and Gordon were the only others to publish poetry of any consequence. His Convict Once (1871) had had a succes d'estime and had not proved very popular. But its repute continued. His next volume. The Godolphin Arabian (1873), did not sell any better, in spite of advertising by Watson, the publisher. In the Courier of 26 April 1873 about one-third of a column on the front page was devoted to the book, quoting reviews from the Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane papers. It is widely believed that Stephens wrote The Godolphin Arabian to satisfy readers who objected to Convict Once and who demanded something diflferent, something more essen­ tially Australian. James Tyrrell, for instance, in his Postscript (1957) quotes—though without reference or assigning author­ ity—the complaints of friends: "Yes, it's very fine, Stephens, but why don't you give us something racy of the soil—some­ thing horsey?" The reaction of the badgered author is said to have been: "So I sat down, and crammed myself with Stonehenge's Rural Sports and other works on the horse, and

[90] THE PUBLIC SERVANT produced 'The Godolphin Arabian'. My horsey friends were delighted. 'That's the sort of thing that will take', they used to tell me". It may be noted that, as with so many legends about Stephens, this had already appeared verbatim in Kenna's article in the Bulletin of 20 June 1903, over fifty years before. One critic at least has used the order in which the two poems were written as evidence that Stephens' poetical career was an assimilation to his Australian back­ ground and the demands of its inhabitants, and that the process involved a cheapening of what Stephens had to offer. In short, he became an Australian, and in doing so ceased to be a poet—if indeed he ever was one. The whole affair, put in such terms, seems improbable. That his horsey friends should have been delighted is hardly possible: the poem is not racy nor of the soil. If they wanted something Australian they certainly did not get that. Nor do they seem, despite their delight, to have bought up many copies themselves. And their predictions of popularity were woefully oflf the target—it was over twenty years before a second edition was called for. As for the theory of decline, not every reader will detect in the second poem any marked lapse of competence. The Godolphin Arabian, a long poem of about 3,000 lines, is a highly sophisticated piece of work, and in its period it is not at all surprising that it did not win readers. As for later critics—here H. M. Green is a notable exception—they have either consistently under-rated it or not dealt with it at all. Even H. A. Kellow, otherwise the most satisfactory writer on Stephens, omits all mention of it from his Queensland Poets (1930). It tells the life of the stallion Scham, ancestor of the modern racing strain. Stephens prefixes an extract from Youatt's The Horse: "... Lord Godolphin possessed a beau­ tiful but singularly-shaped horse, which he called an Arabian, but which was really a Barb . . . and became, in even a greater degree than Darley, the founder of the modern thorough-bred horse." The outline of the story he took from [91] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

Eugene Sue's prose tale, which had first appeared in La Presse as a serial in 1838. Scham had been sent to the King of France by an Eastern potentate, had been got rid of as an oddity, and had faUen into the hands of a brutal carter. A Quaker rescued him but in turn gave him up because of his intractable qualities. At last Godolphin added him to his stable, not intending at the time to use him as a sire. Scham's faithful attendant, Agba, saw to it that his idol mated with Roxana (destined for a higher honour), and in consequence he and Scham were banished. The offspring, however, proved such a treasure that Scham was restored to the stud to found the strain of thoroughbreds. The stanza used in the poem is the ottava rima, a form made famous by Byron in "The Vision of Judgment", and "Beppo", and "Don Juan". The six alternately rhyming lines followed by a couplet, all pentameters, are conveniently re­ presented in the formula: 8/5 abababcc. A reader may feel that, in a language rather sparing of rhymes (which English is), such a stanza not only lends itself to comic treatment but even seems to demand it. The rhymes in the first six lines often have to be sought, they may be forced, they rely on ingenuity. And ingenuity is the foe of solemnity. The con­ cluding couplet may clinch or reverse or surprise or supple­ ment. It was not only Byron's genius that made the form so adequate to the matter, the feeling, and the tone—the form made its own contribution. Nobody is going to pretend that Stephens is the equal of his great model, but he is certainly a very apt pupil. He has a metrical dexterity, a deftness in rhyming, a fondness for puns and comic rhymes. All these together find, for the first and last time in Stephens' verse, their opportunity for gUttering expression. Almost any page can provide varied examples: of fertility—

There's not a thing to match it in the town— Such pawing, whinnying, fondling, smoothing, pressing! [92] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

Such caracoling, ramping, stamping, snorting. And all the while that impish cat cavorting— of rhyme— Agba, though mute, was 'cute, and very few men Could equal him in natural acumen— of unrepentant punning— Restless he lay on insect-swarming Utter, His body bit, his meditation bitter— of a rich gallimaufry, with all the company on stage— This is the Uttle pony bay that bore The Moor that led the Barb that bore the Cat,— All on the jog to Gog-Magog, all four Way-sore, and dust galore on top of that,— A-trot, till o'er three score rough miles and more A-trot they've got, and spot their habitat. . . (I hope the critics will find this to be a Fine specimen of Onomatopdia). Though a light-weight production, the poem has in parts an undercurrent of the grim, where Scham is brutally treated, which is handled with a sardonic restraint, as if the poet laughed so that he might not weep: You should have seen that drayman then and there Fracture his whip-shaft on the horse's head; You should have seen him dance, and heard him swear At the dumb thing that lay three quarters dead; You should have seen him back his foot in air. Then kick it in the nostrils till they bled . . . or, where worse torments are in store: The monster smiled a grim and bitter smile, As who should say. Let no man dare to hinder;— Twisting his torch, and heaping chips the while. Enough to turn the horse into a cinder . . . [93] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

The theme is unusual, the treatment in accord. It is in­ fused with a bright vitality that seldom flags. The vicissitudes of Scham and his attendant, varied and extreme, the moods of elation and despair—all are recounted in a tone of tongue- in-cheek gaiety and cynicism. It is, in its kind, the most notable narrative poem in Australian literature; indeed— putting aside the qualification—as a long narrative it is hard to think of its equal in our writing. It is certainly the most elaborated example of the grotesque or fantastic in AustraUan poetry. For the collector it is hard to come by, a rarity never reprinted in any collection of Stephens' verse. This may help to explain its long and undeserved neglect. In the same year (1873) appeared The Black Gin and Other Poems. Then followed One Hundred Pounds (1876), a novel which John Ward of the Week and Gresley Lukin of the Queenslander had bid for as a serial (Lukin won); Mute Discourse (1878); Marsupial Bill (1879), one of his best out­ back comic poems; and Miscellaneous Poems (1880). All this meant that, though Gordon was more popular—at least for his "Sick Stockrider" and "How We Beat the Favourite"— and Kendall was recognized as a poet reaching greater heights, Stephens was widely known. In the eighties he was certainly the most competent poet writing in the country. Here one encounters the difficulty of deciding who held such opinions. Those who wrote certainly did. But the limited audience and the even more limited number of critics were not influential enough to prevent some odd conclusions. Contemporary literate commentators on the scene could reveal astonishing gaps in their awareness. A semi-official publication, Queensland: Its Resources and Institutions, containing a dozen or more lengthy essays on aspects of Queensland life, could find eleven lines adequate to deal with the literature:

The Englishman all over the world appreciates his daily paper. Queensland Englishmen are no exception to the rule; hence it follows that the hterature of the [94] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

colony as represented by the Press is large and varied. Every town possesses its newspaper; some, three or four —daily, weekly, and bi-weekly. Many of these journals are of a very high class, and nearly all of moderate tone, which causes them to present a very vivid contrast to the highly-spiced sensational journals of our cousins over the Pacific. Queensland can boast of writers in other walks of literature, whose productions have been very favourably received in the old country; and the services of these gentlemen are accordingly in constant request by the leading journals.

This in 1886! It is true of course that writers contributed to newspapers and periodicals, but the impression left is that the newspapers were of ultimate concern. And R. E. N. Twopeny in his Town Life in Australia (1883) is equally summary: Strictly speaking, there is not, and cannot yet be, any such thing as an Australian literature. Such writers as live in Australia are nearly all English-born or bred, and draw their inspiration from English sources. A new country offers few subjects for poetry and romance, and prophecy is by no means so inspiring as the relation of the great deeds of the past. But yet there has been at least one amongst us who may claim to have had the real poetic afflatus, and whose subjects were invariably taken from the events of the life around him. This was Thomas Gordon, the author of "How we Beat the Favourite", and several other short pieces of verse of rare merit, and redolent of the Australian air. George Brunton Stephens is another versifier, who at times showed signs of genius; and it is not long since a Mr. Horace Kendall died, who ran oflf sheets of graceful verses with considerable talent and no little poetic fancy.

Thomas Gordon, George Brunton Stephens, Horace Kendall— three names and three errors! [95] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

But from this time on Stephens wrote Uttle poetry of any consequence. There are a few publicly patriotic verses and some attempts at drama; the rest of his writings are comments on topical themes for newspapers and critical essays and reviews, some of these finding their way into the Bulletin. Four of the patriotic poems have won and still hold their position. "The Dominion of Australia (A Forecast)" appear­ ed in 1877. Then followed "The Dominion" (1883), where Stephens urges all the States to join the movement to Federa­ tion, and praises Queensland, "the youngest, yet most fair", for her early response: Whose Ups, sun-smitten, earliest spoke The herald words of coming good. And with their clarion summons broke The slumber of the sisterhood.

The revised edition of "An Australian Anthem" (1890) has remained the best-known: Maker of earth and sea. What shall we render thee ? It was sung at the inauguration of the University ofQueens­ land at the end of 1909. On the accomplishment of Federa­ tion he spoke as a national voice: the poem, "Fulfilment: AustraUa Federata", was published in every State on I January 1901. It is a celebration and at the same time a warning—the future of the Commonwealth lies in our hands: the Charter is signed;

But not so ends the task to build Into the fabric of the world The substance of our hope fulfilled. For any reader who insists on seeing Stephens as a man in process of becoming Australian this may serve as a worthily climactic work. With it he took out, as it were, his naturaliza­ tion papers. [96] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

As for his critical essays, the most controversial appeared in the Bulletin's Red Page on 2 October 1897. It is partly a review of Barcroft Boake's verse, but mostly a comment on Stephens' objections to some contemporary poets. These he calls antistic, presumably a portmanteau of anti- and artistic. These poets he finds almost entirely negative, carping and critical of conditions but taking the easy way of opposition instead of fulfilling the poet's true function: ... it is not the business of a poet, quoad poet, to save Society. It is the poet's mission to make Society more worth saving. It is his mission to make the individual a more valuable article, by enriching his intellect, by stimulating, enlarging, intensifying and exalting his sympathies. The essay evoked quite a storm of excited protest and one pertinent sardonic note from P. Luftig, who suggested that Stephens rightly condemned the poets he did, but had not stressed the central fact, that they were essentially minor poets: "... creative poetical power is entirely independent of pessimistic or optimistic bias." Another essay by Stephens, again in the Bulletin, on 7 July 1898, defended Tennyson against the charges that he was shallow of thought and lacked passion. This time A. G. Stephens joined the fray, and concluded that Brunton Stephens, like Tennyson, belonged to the sixties and seven­ ties. He thought the tendency was inevitable, even indeed beyond Brunton Stephens' control, to defend a position that the literary world had now passed beyond. This time the attack turned against A.G.S. and again the replies were hot with resentment. These two essays by Brunton Stephens were the most fruitful of literary controversy last century in all the issues on the Red Page since its inception on 29 August 1896, when A.G.S. first adopted that title for his arena. Stephens' critical credo, never formulated at length, finds expression also in his correspondence. Some of the letters he [97] THE PUBLIC SERVANT wrote to Francis Kenna (also of Queensland) in the nineties express quite forcibly and with a personal intensity how he looked on some contemporary poets—January 1893: Why is it that you young poets of today deal so much in abstractions? Why don't you give us something con­ crete ? . . . what we, your readers, want you to do is to make us see. The fondness for introspection and indulgence in pessimistic soul-searching are alien to his poetic outlook—April 1893: I am at war with pessimism as a literary cult. You will only narrow your literary scope by remaining in it. . . I assure you my opinion is not due to old-fashioned- ness or non-receptiveness of modern ideas ... I am constitutionally pessimistic. I have "been there"—and am still apt to go back. But that would not justify me in making a cult of pessimism, any more than my being a leper would justify me in disseminating a poetry of leprosy. The extract is revealing in more ways than one. There is the hint that poetry (for Stephens?) can be a therapeutic medium. He continues: . . . the longer I live, and the more poetry I read, the more does my appreciation of absolute accuracy of expression increase. Have you read much of Rossetti ? Now, there is a man who can meet all the modern "symbolists" and other -ists on their own ground, and lick them . . . take his "House of Life". The sublimation of thought in it is not more remarkable than the un­ contestable accuracy of expression, the definiteness, the precision of every wonderful phrase. It is not suggestion, he points out, that he objects to; it is indefiniteness. And he goes on to reject phrases in Kenna's verse such as Days of dire. [98] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

An interesting national point is raised a little later in this same long letter. Do roar and war rhyme? To us they do, but Stephens unexpectedly comments: "The technique of verse is at such an advanced stage now that I don't think rhymes like that are admissible." And what ^ho\l\.forlorn and dawn? Again (unless we are Scots, or Americans of certain areas) the rhyme is perfectly normal. Stephens remarks: "Well, you have Swinburne to back you. But as I am a Scotchman and pronounce my r's, I can never reconcile myself to this sort of thing." His severest condemnation is saved for poets whose sole concern is their soul: "How is it that you are always singing about your damned souls?" For himself he would feel it a "criminal misuse of faculty to keep on always yowling about my soul". This thought provokes one of those outrageous bits of flippancy that he was, luckily for us, often prone to: To me it indicates lack of intellectual capital, lack of supplies from without, when a man has to turn round on himself and digest his own stomach. Such poems— and they are very prevalent nowadays—always suggest to me the idea of a man with an Aeolian harp fixed in his bowels, which is played upon by flatulence caused by his own emptiness. Kenna's reply is not extant. But his impatience at what he probably thought of as the conservative bUndness of an old fogey appears in the margin in the form of an exclamation: "How long, O God!" Like many another poet Stephens tried his hand at drama, and like many another poet he was unsuccessful. It was a lean time for plays, both in England and Australia. He published Fayette in 1892, a comic opera set (though time and place are irrelevant in this fantasy) in the period of the goldrushes in Victoria. Tom Truman, a wealthy digger, has so much money that he hardly knows what to do with it. He proceeds to set up a troupe of actors, and this short play is a light medley of comic interplots, recognition, song, and [99] THE PUBLIC SERVANT dance. The best things in it are the rhymes and oddities of fancy: Fau. In the bracken the brigalow spreads his lair. And the stealthy corrobboree crouches there. Loo. And the venomous jumbuck crawls along In the wake of the loathly billabong. Fau. The boomerang hides in each hollow tree, With his ponderous jaws agape . . . It is in the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition and still has its idiotic charm. Just possibly a good amateur company might revive it and find themselves playing to full houses. Stephens wrote others, none of which he could persuade anybody to produce. In the very last years of his Ufe he had two or perhaps three plays in manuscript, one of which Randolph Bedford took to England, Stephens said he liked writing dramatic pieces and wished he had begun thirty years before. We need not echo the wish. These literary preoccupations filled his spare moments, sometimes no doubt in the office, certainly in his study at home. His official position as correspondence clerk was troublesome rather than demanding, and his prose was more than adequate for what he had to write. And these duties he managed with a touch or flourish of style that became fairly well known. Over the years he received the usual promotions, and by July 1898 he was Chief Clerk with an annual salary of ^^500. The Premier and Chief Secretary at this time was the Hon. Robert Philp, whom he had coached as a boy over thirty years before. On 8 August 1901 died Henry Stephen Dutton, the Under- Secretary, a friend of long standing. The vacancy would normally have fallen to Stephens, but he was not anxious for it. A letter of 12 August 1901 to Randolph Bedford gives his reasons: Poor Dutton is dead. He was my best friend here. I had two best friends, Byrnes and Dutton, and now both are gone. I need not tell you, I am in the blues. [100] THE PUBLIC SERVANT

I presume there will be a scramble for Dutton's billet. I am the next in the natural order of succession, but if the Under Secretary is to accompany the minister about the country as Dutton did, and be ready for missions to Sydney and Melbourne at any time and at a moment's notice, I am afraid they will have to get a younger and stronger man.

Philp apparently did not want to fill the position imme­ diately, and he did not want to pass over his old tutor. Stephens kept his position as Chief Clerk, but became as well Acting Under-Secretary (gazetted January 1902)—-a sort of caretaker, and obviously without the travelling duties. Indeed the last three years of his life were shredded by attacks of illness. An earlier certificate from a doctor, ironically enough, attributes Stephens' absence from work to "pseudo angina", a diagnosis from which the passage of a few years was to remove the qualifying adjective. Applica­ tions for leave, in more profusion than a healthy man would submit, came regularly or sporadically to the Colonial (later Chief) Secretary. They were invariably granted. His superiors, unlike Stephens himself, must have known what was likely to happen. He died fairly quickly from angina pectoris, which is often agonizing in its process. He seems to have been spared much pain. He had been ill for two or three days, but on the Friday (27 June 1902) he attended the office until late in the after­ noon. That night he had a heart attack. Feeling better next morning he dictated some letters to be typed (he had, as not infrequently, taken work home). His apparent recovery lasted until late that night. In the early hours of Sunday, 29 June, he felt ill. A doctor was sent for, but Stephens died before his arrival. He was at least granted the wish he had often expressed, that his last summons, when it came, would come quickly. He did not leave his family affluent. One of the girls be­ came a librarian, another a clerk. That women should work [lOl] THE PUBLIC SERVANT if they wish seems natural to us now. It was not quite like that in the early i goo's. One absurdity of social attitudes of the period was the belief that a gentlewoman did not soil her hands. It must have been tartly unwelcome to Rosalie Stephens to see two daughters having to take up paid positions. The resentment, there is some reason to believe, transferred itself to the dead man. It is true that for many years the family preserved a pride in the poet, in the books and papers he had left, and in his Australia-wide reputation. But all this was hardly a substitute for the comfort now less available. And so, it is not too unkind to suggest, the latent feelings about a marriage not perhaps answering to family antecedents may have quickened. Except for a handful, the books and papers that visitors were shown at one time have not survived. Of his son few memories remain. There persist old stories, naturally unconfirmable, that he did not live up to his father's expectations and that he exhibited signs of his father's failing. He thought it good to enlist for a contingent going to South Africa in the Boer War. After that all trace of him vanishes. The later efforts by his family to track his movements, if any, did not succeed. The funeral to the South Brisbane Cemetery was, in the double phrase, "well attended". The mourners ranged from the Governor to the Premier, the various Ministers, Members of Parliament, representatives of most branches of the Civil Service, and a host of those who had known him in person or by repute. It was not only James Brunton Stephens, Chief Clerk and Acting Under-Secretary, who drew after him this crowd of mourners. In their amorphous way Queenslanders had become aware over the years that they had in their midst a man of letters who belonged not only to them but to the whole country. They even knew by heart some of his poems—not the best, but anyway they knew them. However little they valued literature, they recognized what was expected. They did him proud. It was the greatest pubUc tribute that Brunton Stephens received.

[102] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

HOUGH NO LIFE of Brunton Stephens has been T written, notices of him in his lifetime were frequent enough, while obituaries and memorial accounts proliferated after his death. These outUnes of his career and the comments on him as a man all bear a striking similarity to one another. The general picture they present is one that is bland in the extreme—a man who lived a hard-working youth, a con­ scientious manhood, a monotonous maturity, and a dutiful official old age; a man who was mild and lovable, talented and learned, friendly and respected. His writings aside, he is oflfered to us as hardly diflferent in life and personality from almost any other amiable mediocrity. Now there is no doubt that some of all this is true. To offer a different interpretation, merely for the sake of being different, is tempting, but to succumb for such a reason would be to abdicate honest biographical function. And yet it seems clear enough that the orthodox picture is unsatis­ factory—not because it says what is untrue but because it omits what is true. Its limitations do not allow for shading and contrast. The last word is the operative one: the facts of Stephens' life and works provide, if not a pattern, at least a sequence where contrast is a dominant note. It is all too easy, for instance, to overlook the great differ­ ences between his life before he left Scotland and his life after he arrived here. In his childhood he endured the spareness of all Scottish children of his class; in his teens it was still the same, except that he had to fend more for himself But for

[105] THE MAN AND HIS WORK some years after that he had a life that even now—in however affluent a society—is denied to all but a fortunate few. He travelled, and in comfort, and he saw both European cities and Near Eastern places that it was the prerogative only of the wealthy to know. He lived en famille with rich and fashionable people. There is every reason to believe that he enjoyed what can only be called luxury of a kind unknown to most people. He really was a man of most unusual back­ ground and experiences when he left the Old World. The New World of the south for some years had little use for him. And yet he had a great deal to oflfer any perceptive purchaser. The shock must have been almost traumatic. Assuming that the hypothesis of his indulgence is true—if not, one may be forced to think the aberration, however temporary, was of a more ominous nature—the wonder is that the weakness did not become permanent. He paid heavily, but he bought himself out of it with that inner consistency that was one of his most admirable qualities. When he reached Queensland he was thirty-one, an age— so the traditional belief runs—by which anyone who is going to be a poet must have already made something of a mark. Stephens had done nothing of the sort. Rich in experience of people and places, with a background that might be called exciting, with enough leisure and then, at Greenock, with perhaps more than enough, he had produced nothing but two pot-boiling novels, a few trivial comic poems, and a couple of religious effusions. The opportunity existed, the works did not appear. If he could not write under these favourable conditions, then the Australian conditions should have dried him up completely. But it is a commonplace of literary history that he did all the best work when he was complaining of the adversity of his lot. Within fifteen years after coming to this inhospitable land he had written the works by which he is most justly to be remembered. Only a few Federation poems remained to set the seal on his fame as the most notable poet of the time writing in AustraUa. Kendall overshadowed him [io6] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

—or should have, for any sensitive reader—until Kendall died in 1882; but from then until the middle of the nineties, when Lawson and Paterson arrived, Stephens remained, writing prose and occasionally verse, and his reputation kept growing, although he was producing no work comparable to what had gone before. It was a state of affairs altogether unpredictable. We still encounter irony when we consider the grounds of his reputation. It is certain that his work will never recover the repute or the popularity it once had. Nevertheless his name is still fairly widely known among us—and, in general, for the wrong reasons. The critic may refer to Convict Once, but this for most people is merely a name. Most of those who recall Stephens think of "To a Black Gin" and a couple of the patriotic poems. These last may be defended as examples of genre, as reasonable attempts in a kind where greater poets than Stephens have not been very successful either. But "Black Gin" is another matter. One would think it a poem most unlikely to find favour with us today: it appears, despite its ingenuity—perhaps because of its ingenuity—both cruel and vulgar. One poor excuse we can offer for it—and it is a poor excuse—is that it hit the taste of the period, and that apparently Stephens was quite in accord with his period. In all the contemporary comments on the poem no note of deprecation is heard. As it stands, it mirrors the attitude—or one attitude— towards the aborigine. (Much harsher attitudes it is all too easy to find.) The white settlers were, in the eyes of the aborigines, at best intruders, at worst murderers. Pushed out of their hunting grounds, finding game scarce, the aborigines killed the stock of the intruders. The intruders punished, and this euphemism can all too often cloak a shocking reality. The blacks killed in reprisal. Their tribal laws saw the whole white community guilty, so that some decent settler, return­ ing at evening to his hut, might find desolation and some bodies. He gathered a "hunting party" and "hunted", and [107] THE MAN AND HIS WORK a whole tribe was obliterated. It was a sequence of grisly chapters of direful misunderstandings. A bitter little poem by Frederic Urquhart appears in his Camp Canzonettes (1891). Urquhart for a time was Commis­ sioner of the North Queensland Mounted Police, and he spoke from experience. The old bushman in the tale rejects tolerance—his calamity demands something very different. He returns to his hut: Sal were a-lyin' foremost— With her head agin' the door— All cut and hacked to pieces. And her Ufe-blood on the floor . . . And the kid were there, half-roasted In the fireplace at the side: I've alius hoped he weren't put there Afore his mother died. As was the custom, he called for all too wilUng aid: There were eight of them native troopers. And me and their boss made ten; And the mercy them devils gave to Sal Were the mercy we showed then. A prose version of a paraUel situation appears in Cuthbert Fetherstonaugh's After Many Days (Melbourne, 1917). The setting is Queensland, the period 1860-1865. While I was at Tinwald Downs the blacks killed two shepherds of a neighbour at Avon Downs, and wounded another, so the neighbours were asked to make up a party to follow the blacks. They followed the tracks for about a week, when Fether­ stonaugh with three native trackers rode on ahead. Before we had gone a mile we picked up a single track, and soon after we rode right into the blacks in some open forest country. They were running from all direc­ tions for the scrub. Dick shot one fellow, but he got away [108] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

in the scrub. I managed to cut off one big "buck". I fired all five barrels of my revolver at him, while I was gallop­ ing along close to him, and I could have sworn every bullet must have hit him. At last he bailed up like an old man kangaroo. He looked splendid. Of course he was stark naked, a fine big man, with his hair flying out from his head, and his eyes flashing. He was whirling a paddy melon stick over his head and apparently looking at me. I had one shot left in a single-barrelled pistol, and I took a steady aim at him over my arm, Dick shouting at me, "Look out, directly that fellow throw him." As he threw the stick I fired. Instead of throwing the paddy melon stick at me he threw it at Dick and struck him on the arm as he raised it to save his head, and the buck fell down dead, shot through the heart. We followed on after the others, but saw no more of the mob. We gathered up a lot of nullah-nullahs and spears, boomerangs and things. We took some away, and went back to camp and reported ourselves. We all agreed that we did not want to shoot any more of them. In 1865 the author "had in a most extraordinary manner . . . found my own soul and . . . God", and seven years later entered the ministry. Others saw both sides of the bloody problem. John Dun- more Lang wrote patiently, some officials stressed that faults lay initially and most heavily on the white settlers. Some, with a sort of fatalistic acceptance of future injustice, thought of the situation as soluble only in terms of extinction—if civilization was to spread in Queensland, then the aborigines were doomed to deprivation or death. But whatever their attitude—hostile, indignant, impartial, kindly—practically all agreed in finding the aborigine degraded and ugly. This is the aspect that Stephens underlines: Thou art not beautiful, I tell thee plainly. Oh! thou ungainliest of things ungainly; Who thinks thee less than hideous doats insanely.

[109] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

Most unaesthetical of things terrestrial, Hadst thou indeed an origin celestial ?— Thy lineaments are positively bestial! From what we can with reason find in Stephens—an essential decency and kindliness—we may just conceivably think of him as indulging merely in ajeu d'esprit, as not really beUeving the gin a sheer animal, "foul" (his own word), and without a soul, despite what he writes. But his readers must not only have thought it all perfectly true but also have considered it quite fitting and proper to put it down on paper. We may well wonder if the attitude has changed so much among those who still enjoy the poem. Behind all these contrasts stands Stephens himself, afford­ ing as great a contrast in estimation and reality as anything else. Orthodoxly we are told that he tutored, he travelled, he taught, he came to Queensland, where again he tutored and taught, and then—as a sort of apotheosis, perhaps ?—or finis coronat?—he became a respected pubUc servant. This innocuous picture leaves out so much. And the concluding years of service and repute tend to overshadow what went before. These last nineteen years of his life seem so tame, as probably they were. They tinge preceding years: by impUca- tion these must have been tame also. All we should say is that the last years were part of Stephens' life. They were tame, but the tasks they brought cannot be held to have tamed him. Marriage (at the age of forty-one) and the years (forty-eight on entering the Colonial Secretary's office) had that task in hand without needing help. Anyhow, defects of vision, rheumatism, and cardiac ailments were there at time's beck and call. But the years before were diflferent, and Stephens always was more than the placid figure we have come to accept. He had, we may believe, an inner core of selfhood that was not of self-sufficiency nor of self-confidence and certainly not of selfishness. In the language of his own age he would not be considered a "gentleman", for he had neither money nor [no] THE MAN AND HIS WORK birth. Today neither lack would weigh with us as it did with his contemporaries. He had what was more important, and perhaps the best word for it is "breeding". His father was a poor parish schoolmaster, and yet he was a man of import­ ance in the township, the equal, or the superior, of the parson in learning, overworked and underpaid, but possessing his own inner resources. He stood on his own feet, he had fibre, he owed his society service, and this he paid in overflowing measure. He offers himself as the representative of an essen­ tial Scottish class. His son was certainly his superior in scholarship, and he did not have the same grinding responsi­ bilities of a family and place. Stephens, then, came from good stock, and by the time he reached Queensland his education, his travels, and his social experiences made him capable of mixing on equal terms in almost any society. What he lacked to attain wordly success in this country was a ruthlessness of character. Intellectual ruthlessness, or perhaps it would be better to call it integrity, he had. Authority, in the person of A. G. Stephens, or Jose, or any­ body else, he could meet with assurance. But he could not be pushing. And perhaps his own inner quality allowed him to withdraw too easily. But he felt more deeply than his works show. Only in the few luckily preserved letters to Ferguson do we see the blank despair and the resentments that lay underneath the subdued facade. It was in such circumstances that the man appeals to us most. He seems there more human than we have known him to be, much more a man than a respectable and respected flgure who had a flair for comic verse or patriotic declamation. Rejected, lonely, and then (as he felt) disgraced—and this for a reason that his lean Scottish upbringing must have made so terribly humiliating—all this might well have destroyed another man of different temper. That such things did destroy others the stories of Lawson afford all evidence we need. But the fibre Stephens inherited allowed him to survive. This is not the picture of him that we are accustomed to. There were two Stephens, the public picture and the man who stood behind [III] THE MAN AND HIS WORK it. Both are in their own way worthy, but the second is not only the truer and fuller one, it is also the human and com­ plex and troubled one that makes him real. His value to us has its anomalies. Like most writers, he did not waste material. The use he made of his travel notes for his two early novels has already been noticed. The topical, the local, the legendary, the accidental—all found a place, A notice appears in the newspaper that a huge alligator has been brought down from the Fitzroy River and will be on show, and Stephens writes "Big Ben", Or, at Stanthorpe, he hears the story—or stories, for more than one shepherd is going to claim that he was the original—that a kangaroo nearly drowned a man. Donald Gunn gives chapter and verse:

There is a tale told about a shepherd whom I knew well. He was a married man with a family. One of his sons now lives in Warwick, and he reminded me the other day of how a kangaroo nearly drowned his father. His father, at the time, was shepherding on Warroo, and the ration carrier was Charlie Perrie, an aboriginal. When going to the hut with the rations, Charlie heard most queer noises coming from a distance; the noise started with a cooee, and ended with a gurgle. On cantering over to where the noise came from, he found that the shepherd's dog had baled up an old man kangaroo in a shallow waterhole. The dog was not game to tackle the kangaroo, so the shepherd, to help the dog, threw sticks at the beast, but overbalancing himself, he fell almost on top of the kangaroo, who promptly grab­ bed him and held him up to its breast by a pair of strong forearms. Every time the shepherd called for help the kangaroo used to duck him, and his "cooee" ended in a gurgle. Of course, Charlie Perrie soon killed the kangaroo. Another shepherd on Nundubbermere, near Stan­ thorpe, was almost drowned in a similar way. These [112] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

incidents, were the foundation of Brunton Stephens' "Marsupial BiU". Everyone knows that Brunton Stephens was a State school teacher at Stanthorpe, and he knew these shepherds. Or he reads in the Queenslander a tall story by James Warrell of Sugarloaf: 'A boy of mine, about 11 years old, was sent a message last Saturday week, about i o'clock p,m. About half-way between my place and Connolly's, on a well-used road, a kangaroo came from behind, took him up, and carried him, without stopping, to the Maryland Company's ground—about a mile-and-a-half—over some very rough country. The lad got back home about dusk, his face bloody, and seemingly half mad. He soon became sensible, however, and by the time I got home—an hour afterwards—he was sufficiently recovered to be inter­ viewed. "Well, WilUe, did you not see the kangaroo before he caught you?" "No, he was just on to me before I knew." "Were there any more kangaroos?" "Not then, but about half-way there was a big mob of kangaroos, and we all went together." "I suppose you were crying?" "Yes, all the way." "When he dropped you, what did he do?" "Nothing; stood and looked at me for a minute, and then went oflf with the mob," . . . I think the lad must have been crazy for a while; his coat was split open down the back, but, although his face was covered with blood when he got home, there was not a scratch on him. The kangaroo must have been a good-sized one to carry him (about 65 lbs. weight) so far, and without a spell; and it seems strange that in the act of jumping he did not strike the boy with his feet. I have not the slightest reason to doubt the truth of the boy's statement. What was the motive that prompted the action ? Some say that if there had been any water convenient he would have drowned the boy. I have a notion that the kangaroo was one that had lost its joey, and was making an attempt to adopt one.'

[113] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

Moral: When a child of tender years goes alone where kangaroos may be, a dog, large or small, is very good company.

It was on this, according to a note attached to the poem, that Stephens based Marsupial Bill, or the Bad Boy, the Good Dog, and the Old Man Kangaroo, which he reprinted from the Queenslander as a booklet in 1879. The most amusing example is to be found in the short story that he printed in the same volume with his novel, A Hundred Pounds. It is a rather drawn-out piece of humour called Bailed Up with A Whitewash Brush. Now this is the sort of title, one feels, that nobody sits down and invents. In fact, it is certain that it came from a phrase Stephens had caught and remembered. He was tutor on Tamrookum, and was visiting the Murray-Prior family on Marroon, who had as one neighbour Captain Sherwood on Unumgar. Rosa Praed tells the incident, a fantastic occurrence, in her My Australian Girlhood—though she mistakenly uses "Sherborne" for "Sherwood". On that occasion, riding over to visit Sher­ wood, they encountered a couple of poUcemen at the Unumgar Crossing, who gave them news of a horse-stealer in the area. Sherwood had been told that the man might head that way, and had been asked as a Justice of the Peace to arrest him if he did. The visitors went on and were met by Sherwood at the sliprails:

he looked a comical figure enough—a white apron tied round his waist, a floppy felt hat fastened under his chin, a large paste-brush in one hand, his coat be­ spattered, and the ends of his moustache plastered to his face. He told us that he was whitewashing his dairy, and on the lookout for the horse-stealer. "I shall bail him up with my whitewash brush," said he.

Which is precisely what he did do, when about half an hour later the criminal appeared on a lame horse.

[114] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

Captain Sherborne went straight up to him and seized the bridle, brandishing his whitewashing brush in the man's face as he dismounted. Out of this Stephens concocted a more elaborate piece of comic misunderstanding, in which the wielder of the white­ wash brush tells his own misfortunes. The danger in offering such examples of literary economy is that Stephens is made to appear lacking in invention. After all, this use of experience is the prerogative and habit of any writer. Stephens uses his raw material more or less as a jumping-off place—he elaborates, not only with verbal trappings but also with plot. The last incident, for example, does not remain in that form but is completely transmogri­ fied, ingeniously if a little tiresomely expanded, Sherwood, if he ever read the story, would hardly have recognized himself. And so for other material, Stephens had an individ­ ual touch in these things, and especially in the comic sphere. To go further afield. For his Godolphin Arabian he acknow­ ledges a debt to Eugene Sue, but it is purely factual and in a narrow sense at that. The poem stands on its own feet. And as for Convict Once, however forced and improbable a critic may find the theme (as A. G. Stephens did, for example), the fertile ingenuity, the sheer if misplaced originality, is undeniable. Stephens had imagination, however wilfully it manifested itself. He also had learning, though for him it was an acquisition and of more dubious value. He was the first scholar to write in Australia who deserved much respect as a poet. It would be absurd to think of him as in the same range as Brennan, but he still belongs to the same classification. Neither Harpur nor Kendall, both more dedicated poets, compares with Stephens in scholarship. Lowe or Deniehy might equal him there, but their poetry is not comparable. So, for what the label may be worth, he is our first notable scholar-poet. Unluckily, though in a different way from Brennan, his scholarship can get in the way of his poetry. In Convict Once,

[115] THE MAN AND HIS WORK for instance, the sonorous Latinisms—umbrageous, contiguous, and the rest—are sometimes the misdirections of learning, and it is these that may limit the poem to the status of a period piece. The learning is of most advantage when Stephens uses it for comedy. "The Courtship of the Future (A.D, 2876)" predicts the Patent Mutual Blood-Transfusers, that provide experiences beside which kisses seem pallid, while "The Power of Science" (love-making in a museum) is something of a foretaste of A, D, Hope, This skit on evolu­ tion is among Stephens' lightest and wittiest pieces:

I showed how sense itself began In senseless gropings after sense;— (She seemed to find it so herself, Her gaze was so intense,) And how the very need of light Conceived, and visual organs bore; Until an optic want evolved The spectacles she wore , . . I sang the Hymenoptera; How insect-brides are sought and got; How stridulation of the male First hinted what was what.

The other device he uses most effectively for comedy is rhyme. Examples have been given from The Godolphin Arabian, a very rich storehouse; a lesser treasury is "A Picca­ ninny", where he playfully apostrophizes a three-year old aboriginal girl, "a smockless Venus":

Hast thou no questioning of what's before thee ? Of who shall envy thee, or who adore thee ? Or whose the jealous weapon that shaU score thee . . . No faint forehearing of the waddies banging. Of club and heelaman together clanging. War shouts, and universal boomeranging ? [116] THE MAN AND HIS WORK

"A Piccaninny" is possibly the best of its rhyming kind, while "To a Black Gin", so offensive in one way, is accept­ able in this. To enjoy today such poems as these two we must perhaps discard beliefs in racial equality or doubts that beauty is one and indivisible, and see the poems through the eyes of a century ago. But we need do no such things to appreciate the ingenuity of diction and rhyme. There have been three masters of comic rhyme in English—double or treble rhyming or unexpectedly funny single rhyming—all B's: Butler (of Hudibras fame), Byron, and Browning, A reader is tempted to add a fourth alliteratively to the list— Brunton, It may be as well to stress the large space that the comic occupies in Stephens' verse. Apart from Convict Once and the four patriotic pieces, the best of his verse is comic. The Godolphin Arabian, in many ways his most considerable achievement, has a particular kind of comedy as its very essence. In the most satisfactory edition of his poems, that published in 1902, there are about sixty pieces, and about half of them are funny, or are meant to be. But even here the very success undercuts his standing. He is an excellent comic poet: he is not an excellent poet. This distinction has probably kept some of his serious poems, like Hood's, rather less valued than they would be if they existed on their own. So we have an apparent injustice done to his learning, a state of affairs that is diversely destructive; when he applies learning to serious verse he makes it soggy or portentous; when he applies it to comic verse he mostly succeeds with brilliance—but in the comic vein. The contrast makes the serious work seem even more a failure. Being what he was, Stephens under these circumstances simply cannot win. Some of this he must have been aware of He was probably even more aware of himself This may help to explain his frequent dissatisfaction with the conditions that surrounded him. In the bush he found life monotonous, the landscape often enough imposing (though he did not want to write

[117] THE MAN AND HIS WORK about it), the talk repetitive to the point of mania. Under such conditions, he suggests, who could write ? One did well merely to escape. Of course it could be worse—no job at all was worse than a bad one. With blank prospects, he wel­ comed school-teaching—the humblest assistantship would be a haven. So this was given him. He became a headmaster. He applied for a bigger school. And then, having got what he had once so earnestly desired, he could lament his hard lot, not so much for lack of money as lack of time. When headmaster of Ashgrove he could write to Traill in August 1878 regretting that he had not had time to write before this: "Want of time is not a mere conventional phrase with me, as you will find for yourself if ever you are brought so low as to turn primary-schoolmaster." Rescued, he finds the Civil Service routine and correspondence have to be mastered. Anyhow, from 1883 onwards his health is much more un­ certain than it was before. When these plaints are gathered in one paragraph instead of being spread over a number of letters over a number of years, they seem to show him cantankerous, and Stephens was not that. But it is true that he seldom expresses much satisfaction with his lot. Money—or the lack of it—played a part. His marriage (1876) made greater demands on his resources. But much of the complaint was our common human unrest—the grass is always greener in the next paddock. Perhaps the real underlying cause was the self-knowledge. He delighted in recognition—witness the pleasure he found in Masson's approval of Convict Once and in the critical praise the book called forth. But underneath he knew that he was not a really great writer. Anybody with his insight and his verbal dexterity would recognize what he could do; but he could also recognize what he could not do. Such reflections on truth are poor consolation. So he indulged, as we all do, in thoughts of what might be. (Lawson, on the other hand, was constantly lamenting what might have been—the past was unfair, so he did not look to the future.) If conditions [118] THE MAN AND HIS WORK only were ideal: privacy, a competence, congenial company, lots of books! Then he might produce work that would do himself justice. Some such mechanism as this was at work. It was the human penalty for being honest and realistic, and at the same time romantic and idealistic. After his death critics speculated what he might with justice have been afforded—some sort of sinecure that would have allowed the man of letters free scope. And other critics wondered if it would have made any difference. Men have produced great works in adversity and in comfort, both. For any example of the poet at leisure another may be cited of the poet under stress. It is perfectly inconclusive, this guesswork, since poets do not happen to be chemicals and no controlled experiment is possible. But we may think the second critics were right. Stephens wrote under varying conditions, and there is no reason to think he would have written anything better than the best work of his that we have [Convict Once? The Godolphin Arabian?) if he had been given all he wanted in the way of money or leisure. He would have written more—that is all. We can with not much forcing provide our own, and last, paradox, and say that he not only seemed more valuable to his contemporaries, but that in fact he was more valuable, than his work warranted. Without him Queensland could point to no figure in literature (unless Essex Evans can be put up as a candidate) until years later, Baylebridge for instance rested unknown (for many he is still unknown), until Kellow wrote of him in 1930, There would without Stephens be not far short of an arid century from Separation in 1859 until the advent of Judith Wright, We might say he gave Queensland a measure of self-respect. Scholarly, witty, competent, it was good for everybody that he came when he did.

[119]

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

WRITINGS BY STEPHENS Poetry Convict Once: A Poem. London: Macmillan, 1871. Cathedral Chimes. Brisbane: Cleghorn, 1871. The Godolphin Arabian: The Story of a Horse. Brisbane: Watson; London: Sampson Low, 1873. Second edition, 1894. The Black Gin and Other Poems. Melbourne: Robertson, 1873. Mute Discourse: A Poem. Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson, 1878. Marsupial Bill, or the Bad Boy, the Good Dog, and the Old Man Kangaroo. Brisbane: Gordon and Gotch, 1879. Miscellaneous Poems. Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson; London: Mac­ millan, 1880. Convict Once and Other Poems. Melbourne; Robertson, 1885. Second edition, 1888. Johnsonian Address (in Rules of the Johnsonian Club). Brisbane: Diddams, 1898. The Poetical Works of Brunton Stephens. Sydney: Robertson, 1902. My Chinee Cook and Other Humorous Verses. Melbourne: Cole, 1902. There is no complete edition of the poems of Stephens. Some that were published in periodicals and newspapers have not been collected, while some in manuscript have not been printed at all. These are not in themselves of much importance. The Poetical Works of 1902 is the best collection and omits little of consequence except The Godolphin Arabian, which is to be found only as an individual volume.

Drama Fayette, or Bush Revels: An Original Australian Comic Opera in Three Acts. Music by G. B. Allen, Mus. B., Oxon. Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson, 1892. Two, or possibly three, other plays were written but not published. The whereabouts of some are unknown. "A Jubilee Pardon" exists in manuscript, the possession of Mr. Paul Calow.

Fiction A Hundred Pounds [Added, Bailed Up with a Whitewash Brush]. Melbourne: Mullen, 1876. Second edition, Melbourne: Cole, 1897.

[123] SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Rutson Morley" and "Virtue Le Moyne" appeared as serials in Sharpe's London Magazine (i 861-1863) and have not been reprinted. Criticism Stephens wrote many reviews and some critical articles. His best-known pieces of criticism appeared in the Bulletin (Sydney), 2 October 1897, 13 November 1897, 31 December 1898.

Stephens' Letters and Manuscripts The most important letters are those to W. H. Traill (in the National Library, Canberra); to Francis Kenna (in the library of the late Sir John Ferguson); and, most significant of all, those to James Ferguson (in the Fryer Library, University of Queensland). Some notebooks of Stephens are the possession of his grandson, Mr. Paul Calow. These contain portions of his travel journal, some poems, a play ("A Jubilee Pardon"), and copies or clippings of pieces already published. The Oxley Library (Brisbane) has manuscripts of Fayette, "In Doubt", "Three Words", "Women in Literature", and a type­ script of the play, "A Jubilee Pardon".

CRITICAL COMMENTS ON STEPHENS These began to appear about twenty years or so before Stephens' death. The most significant are by the following writers in the newspapers, periodicals, or books listed against their names: Martin, Arthur Patchett. Melbourne Review, Vol. 5, 1880. Clarke, Marcus. Leader (Melbourne), 19 March 1881. Sutherland, Alexander. Melbourne Review, October 1884. Cargill, H. Queensland Review, May 1886. Smeaton, W. Centennial Magazine, June 1889. Byrnes, T.J. Courier (Brisbane), 6 July 1894. F. D. Queenslander, 2 November 1895. Kenna, F. Bulletin (Sydney), 30 October 1897. Turner, H. and Sutherland, A. The Development of Australian Literature. London and Melbourne, 1898. Sutherland, A. Argus (Melbourne), 5 July 1902. Kenna, F. Bulletin (Sydney), 20 June 1903. Evans, George Essex. Lone Hand (Sydney), January 1908. [124] SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hebblethwaite, James. Bookfellow (Sydney), i April 1913. Anon. Courier (Brisbane), 22 January 1921. Kellow, H. A. Queensland Poets. London, 1930. D.D. Telegraph (Brisbane), 29 January 1935. Cumbrae-Stewart, F. W. S. Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 24 May 1935. Anon. West Australian (Perth), 22 June 1935. Irving, L. Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 28 July 1935. Tyrrell, James. Postscript. Sydney, 1957. Hadgraft, Cecil. Australian Literature. London, i960. Green, H. M. A History of Australian Literature. Sydney, 1961. Ewers, J. K. Creative Writing in Australia. Melbourne, 1962. Clarke, Donovan. Australian Literary Studies, June, 1964. Dutton, Geoffrey (ed.). The Literature of Australia. Melbourne, 1964. Semmler, Clement. Australian Literary Studies, December, 1965.

GENERAL Kirk Session Records (Bo'ness). Gait, John. Autobiography. London, 1833. Greenock Directory (i 861-1862). Baily, Francis. Letters (holograph) in the Mitchell Library (Sydney) (1867-1869). Carrington, George. Colonial Adventures and Experiences. London, 1871. Trollope, Anthony. Australia and New Zealand. London, 1873. Grant, Jane. History of the Burgh and Parish Schools of Scotland. London & Glasgow, 1876. Twopeny, R. E. N. Town Life in Australia. London, 1883. Kershaw, Mark. Colonial Facts and Fictions. London, 1886. Fletcher, Price (ed.). Queensland: Its Resources and Institutions. Brisbane, 1886. Tyrwhitt, W. S. S. The New Chum in the Queensland Bush. Oxford, 1888. Knight, V. V. In the Early Days: History and Incidents of Pioneer Queensland. Brisbane, 1895. Bartley, Nehemiah. Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences. Brisbane, 1896. Weedon, T. Queensland Past and Present. Brisbane, 1898. Praed, Rosa. My Australian Girlhood. London, 1902. Salmon, T. J. Borrowstounness and District. Edinburgh and London, 1913- [125] SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fetherstonaugh, Cuthbert. After Many Days. Melbourne, 1917- Greenock: Its History and Industries. Cheltenham and London, 1921. Perry, H. C. Memoirs of the Hon. Sir Robert Philp. Brisbane, 1923. Spencer-Browne, R. A Journalist's Memories. Brisbane, 1927. Gunn, Donald. Links with the Past. Brisbane, 1937. Palmer, Vance. The Legend of the Nineties. Melbourne, 1954. Greenwood, G. and Laverty, J. Brisbane, 1859-1959. Brisbane 1959- Hanger, T. Sixty Tears in Queensland Schools. Sydney, 1963. Courier {^v\sh2i.ne), passim. Unpublished theses (University ofQueensland): Allan R (10=6) "Population Trends in Queensland, 1861-86" • Crook P. (1958) ''Aspects of Brisbane Society in the Eighteen Eighties ; Klemschmidt, M. A. (1951). "Migration and Settlement Schemes in Queensland"; Tomkys, R. L L (1930). Queensland Immigration, 1859-1901 " Material in the Queensland Archives and in the Queensland Department of Educadon.

[126J / / ^ ^^ (' " V: • i /;