Editorial Problems in Presenting Trouope's Views on Australia
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Editorial Problems in Presenting TroUope's Views on Australia by R. B. JOYCE, B.A., LL.B., M.Litt., Senior Lecturer in History, University of Queensland Almost a century ago Australia had a distinguished visitor, the mother, whose caustic Domestic Manners of the Americans had famous English novelist Anthony Trollope, who has been been a best seller in both America and England. Both Anthony's described as "a big, red-faced, rather underbred Englishman of West Indies and the Spanish Main (1859) and his North America the bald-with-spectacles type. A good roaring positive fellow".^ (1862) are good social analyses with a wealth of historical interest With his wife this hearty author was planning to see one of his sons, in their pages, and it is not surprising that as recently as 1951 a who with the help of Anthony's money had recently taken over new edition of North America was published: it is important to a station near Grenfell in New South Wales. Besides TroUope's see how successful was his parallel analysis of Australia. For all already published successful novels — to which he added another these reasons a case can be made that TroUope's Australia and on his way out to Australia, and two more partly using his New Zealand should be readily available. Certainly such reasons Australian experiences — he had agreed to write a descriptive were sufficient in 1960 to persuade Dr. P. D. Edwards — of the book based on his travels. He had already written analyses of English Department, University of Sydney, who was then working other societies, after his visits to the West Indies in 1858-9 and to on some literary aspects of TroUope's novels for his London North America, during the Civil War in 1861-2. Trollope was in doctorate — and myself as an Australian historian that a new Australia for almost exactly a year. He reached Melbourne on 27 edition should be prepared. July 1871 and after visiting all the Australian colonies left Melbourne for New Zealand on 29 July 1872. During this time his first impressions of Australia were published as letters in the English Daily Telegraph, and he published in 1873 his Australia and Nev.> Zealand, a two-volume analysis of Australasian life. The reasons why a new edition of this book is now felt to be needed are implicit in these facts. Anthony Trollope was an English visitor: it is important to trace what differences between England and Australia he noted after the eighty-three years of Australian history — did he discern the existence of an Australian nationalism or patriotism which was significantly altered from its inherited English pattern? Anthony Trollope was a successful novelist, who had shown his ability, especially in his clerical and political books, to analyse society and record its subtlest nuances: it is important to see what such an accurate observer thought about Australian manners. Again Anthony Trollope was a good mixer — "a good roaring positive fellow" — and could by some be called "underbred" as he was not from the aristocracy. He belonged to the upper middle-class, as the son of an unsuccessful lawyer turned farmer and of a remarkable mother-writer. He had been a public servant in the English post office for 27 years (until his profits from his novels allowed his retirement). It is important to see what an Englishman of this class thought of Australia, and his characteristics are significant in so far as they enabled him to mix with different groups, club men in towns, and squatters in the country but not to ignore the goldminers, or the "nomad tribe" — he used the term — of pastoral workers, free selectors and city workers. Further, Trollope had a son in the colony in whom he had interests, both sentimental and financial: it is important to see how this shrewd novelist, who in his autobiography scrupulously lists the profits made by each of his novels (up to a total of £69,000), estimated the chances of happiness and economic profit for migrants from England to Australia. Trollope was experienced in writing travel books and analysing real, as opposed to fictional, societies. Indeed it might Portrait of Anrhonv Trollope plausibly be argued that he had inherited this ability from his Appl>2lon's jourrtal. \\\' iMay \ ^ iSyoi , y^^ Queensland Heritage Page Five What are the versions of TroUope's work on which a new and allotted space for each section. In manuscript the introduc edition should be based? All versions of the book have been for tion was to have 30 pages, Queensland 150, New South Wales a long time out of print, and all copies are in sufficient demand 200 and Victoria 220. This would complete the first volume. In for them to be almost unavailable in second-hand bookshops. The the second volume Tasmania was to have 100 pages. South most basic source is clearly TroUope's original handwritten Australia 150, Western Australia 80, New Zealand 240 and a manuscript, which is now deposited in the National Library, conclusion of 30 pages. A comparison with the completed manu Canberra. This consists of 1,156 pages (a National Library script shows how closely this plan was carried out. Thus in 'Volume comprehensive numbering which includes manuscript pages, I, allowing for amendments, his introduction had approximately documents inserted and blank pages), and includes various 30 pages, Queensland 190, New South Wales 195, 'Victoria 195, corrections, changes and erasures made by the novelist himself. and the conclusion, appendix and index 20 pages. The only main TroUope's writing is reputed to be difficult to read but, as one of variation was that his conclusion to Volume II was much shorter the editors, I must confess that I have acquired a certain ability than he planned, but this was balanced by a section he added on to understand what he wrote. Partly this is a confession of Australian Institutions after the Western Australian chapters. empathy based on my own calligraphy, much maligned as On the side of the manuscript pages are names of individuals illegible, but it is also based on practice in reading other historical which appear to be those of the compositors who set the hands, and even on the mundane tasks of deciphering the hasty manuscript into its formes. These men presumably worked for writings of students in essays and more especially in the stress of the English printers. Virtue and Company, who set up the first examinations. Most of the words which Trollope has deleted can English edition, published by Chapman and Hall, which appeared even be copied, for he either drew a single line through brief in February 1873 in two volumes. rejected words or sentences, or sometimes simply a cross through Before this book was pubHshed there was available an earlier larger sections. Unfortunately seven chapters, part of his analysis version of TroUope's views, the letters in the London Daily of New South Wales, are missing from the manuscript. Telegraph. There were ten of these, published between 23 Trollope was notoriously a writer who worked to a strict December 1871 and 28 December 1872. They were ostensibly timetable and plan, and this is shown clearly from his manuscript anonymous, being signed "Antipodean", but it is clear that the and working diary. He planned to write, while he was abroad, identity of the author was widely known, since identification and two volumes each of 600 pages of manuscript (each page to have criticisms of Trollope as the writer appeared in Australian news 250 words), which he said was equivalent to 500 pages of print papers. In some cases these letters were reprinted in full in (in demy octavo, that is 81 inches x 5i inches, each of 300 words) Australian papers, often under TroUope's name. Thus the Brisbane Courier reprinted his first letter on 23 February 1872 with the comment: "Under the heading of 'England in Australasia', Mr. ^V-''>W/(^^'<^ Trollope is publishing in the Daily Telegraph the result of his visit to this quarter of the globe, commencing with Queensland. As the opinions of the great novelist are certain to have great weight and influence, and will be accepted by hundreds of thousands, without question his observations on this colony are of special interest to us". The Australasian was more cautious: •> y if an article on 23 November 1872 commented that in the Daily I I mwmmmmtM Telegraph of 2 October appeared a letter to the editor, signed Antipodean, on Victoria and its goldfields. The writer was presumed to be Anthony Trollope. The bulk of these letters was reproduced unchanged in the published book, but particularly in the early letters (on Queensland and New South Wales) there is ^ ""yrT".^ ^ material that was not later published. Instances are his claim that he would "avoid all violent party politics, for fear of making any of the colonies too hot to hold me before I reach the end of my work" and, in the same letter of 23 December 1871, his -<« ^M^it-tiC*, y MC tUt^tn*^ «W /Ki, *•*. <»fe strongest strictures on the town of Gladstone: "A more melancholy failure to the eye than Gladstone men cannot behold. The shortest sojourn there gives rise to fears of mania. Lengthened residence would certainly be rendered impossible by suicide." y'^h»4^^A .mZ fM 4H*, ^^^-^W'^^ 'S&.^sSt, ^^^s**.*^ •^fSH^ x'Mi^A 3fc^^^^*Xc 4^ /^ nU* 5er While Trollope was in Australia he had arranged for his work r" ( '"•""fpKintv.a^miffr. M- to be serialised in the weekly periodical produced by the M y>'^f \ ^*-ft'* Melbourne Argus, the Australasian.