Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 151, part 2, 2018, pp. 135–141. ISSN 0035-9173/18/020135-07 Barron Field and the Myth of Terra Nullius Justin Clemens Associate Professor, School of Culture & Communication, The University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected] Abstract While Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Barron Field published the first book of poetry in Australia in 1819. Field was also one of the founders of the Philosophical Society of Aus- tralasia in 1821. he year 2019 will see another Austral- Yet it wasn’t only his enemies who mocked. Tian bicentenary, the 200th anniversary Many of Field’s friends weren’t so keen on of the first book of poetry published in this his verses, either. In his 1847 obituary for country. You could be forgiven for knowing Field in the New Monthly Magazine, Horace neither the book nor its author; you could Smith remarked of Field’s poetry that “as probably also be forgiven for not finding the truth is my friend, even more than Plato, event all that worthy of memorialisation, let I must confess my regret that he did not alone celebration. Aside from a few special- suppress them, for the gods had not made ists in colonial literature and a handful of him poetical, his ear appearing to have been historically inclined local poets, what pos- absolutely insensible to the requisite rhythm sible interest could the (exceedingly) minor of verse”. Such judgements have recurrently poetaster Barron Field — yes, his real name been made of Field’s poetry over the sub- — and his First Fruits of Australian Poetry sequent centuries: even when his poems hold for contemporary Australians? Would are (irregularly) anthologised, it seems to they be of more interest if they were crucial be more for their quaintness and histori- evidence in the establishment of terra nullius cal import than for their inherent power or in this country? interest. No wonder Field has never really Field’s own contemporaries tended to proven to be a key reference for Australian irritation and disinterest, when they weren’t poets or their critics. downright contemptuous. The wits had, so Then again, poetry may well have been to speak, a field day with his poems — the Field’s passion but it wasn’t his day job. He man’s name, unsurprisingly, providing rich was a lawyer, and, more to the point in this soil for the punsters. As one anonymous context, at the time of producing the book squib from the 1820s, now preserved in the in question he was Judge of the Supreme Mitchell Library, declares: Court of New South Wales. Appointed in “Thy poems, Barron Field, I’ve read May 1816, Field arrived in Sydney with his And thus adjudge their meed — wife, Jane, in February 1817, and was imme- So poor a crop proclaims thy head diately catapulted into the highest echelons A barren field indeed!” of colonial society. His salary, supplemented by court fees, was very substantial; he also received a large grant of land in Cabramatta. 135 Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales Clemens — Barron Field According to C. H. Currey’s entry in the the penal colony, and who ended up tabling Australian Dictionary of Biography, Field dealt three critical reports in the House of Com- with 165 actions at law and 13 equity suits mons, wrote of Field: between April 1817 and January 1821; he “The convict part of the population of also presided at the first sitting of a Supreme New South Wales view Mr Justice Field’s Court in Van Diemen’s Land in 1819. In administration of the law with senti- other words, Field was an exceedingly ments of dissatisfaction. The free classes important personage at a moment in the of the population … equally apprehend fledgling colony of New South Wales when the effects of his violent and unforgiving the vagaries of individuals could prove to temper, as well as of his personal preju- have disproportionate consequences. dices, upon his future decisions … In my That said, Field doesn’t seem to have opinion, Mr Justice Field does not pos- been a terribly successful law man either. As sess that degree of temper and deliberation John Byrnes rather understatedly remarks, necessary to conduct the judicial business “Field was not personally popular.” It would of such a Colony.” probably be more accurate to state that he The negative reviews don’t stop there. was outright loathed both by many of his Perhaps the most eminent hater was none colonial brethren and by the imperial gov- other than Benjamin Disraeli, who in 1830 ernmental types with whom he had pro- pronounced Field to be “a bore and vulgar fessional dealings. He fought bitterly with … a noisy, obtrusive, jargonic judge … ever Governor Lachlan Macquarie, as well as with illustrating the obvious, explaining the evi- John Macarthur, whose appointment to the dent, and expatiating on the commonplace”. magistracy Field had attempted to scotch. A rebarbative and inveterate mansplainer, Macarthur’s enmity was such that he sent then, avant la lettre. It was no doubt in part a threatening letter to Field before the lat- due to his less-than-winning personality that ter’s departure to England in 1824. “You will Field spent the remainder of his career as therefore, Sir,” Macarthur writes, “be pleased an ineffectual judge in Gibraltar, retiring to to understand that I accuse you of having England only a few years before his death. knowingly and deliberately committed an In a summation of Field’s contributions in act which the manners of a gentleman forbid Dewigged, Bothered, & Bewildered: British me to name even under the sanction of your Colonial Judges on Trial, 1800–1900, John example.” This is, as Byrnes notes, an invita- McLaren concludes that tion to a duel. Given Macarthur’s notorious irritability, it was clearly lucky for Field that “Field’s record as a judge could best be he was on his way out at the time. described as mercurial, a reflection of Yet it wasn’t just Macquarie and Macarthur his conservative belief system, a commit- who were hostile to Field. Towering figures ment to the culture of English law, and in the imperial administration at home were an opportunistic streak in his character … already entertaining doubts about his reli- Field’s counsel was not invariably sound ability. John Thomas Bigge, who had been or in keeping with the Colonial Office’s dispatched to New South Wales by Earl understanding of the legal proprieties.” Bathurst to investigate the functioning of 136 Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales Clemens — Barron Field And yet, and yet … despite such cal Memoirs on New South Wales; By Various continued bad press, Field was clearly not Hands, a collection he edited, where they sit without certain impressive endowments. He rather oddly with the journal entries and was a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell, meteorological charts, the botanical descrip- a fact of which he was exceedingly proud. He tions and the imperialist opinionating. had published the self-confessed first analysis It has to be admitted that the poems are of Blackstone’s Commentaries, aimed at law pretty weird. Wreathed about with an ever- students, and it went into many editions accreting and often-mystifying apparatus of through the 19th century. He was theatre epigraphs and erudition, their subjects are critic for The Times. He was friends with the strange, their rhythms erratic, and much of great English Romantic critics Charles Lamb their matter is flagrantly plagiarised. “Botany and Leigh Hunt, as well as an aficionado Bay Flowers”, for example, is an extraordi- of the Romantic poets, especially William nary pastiche of Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, of whom Field attempted a Wordsworth (and many more), where Field biography. The publication of the latter tells a tale of antipodean botanical adultery, was, sadly for Field, vetoed by Wordsworth in which he marries one flower, only to be himself in 1840. Despite this setback, Field, seduced by another. As for “The Kangaroo”, who was a lifelong enthusiast for Elizabethan let me quote the first stanza: and Jacobean literature, prepared editions of “Kangaroo! Kangaroo! Thomas Heywood and Thomas Legge for Thou spirit of Australia, the Shakespeare Society. Lamb in particular That redeems from utter failure, seems to have had a real admiration for and From perfect desolation, friendship with Field. He reviewed First And warrants the creation Fruits for the radical intellectual journal Of this fifth part of the earth, The Examiner in 1820, before dedicating Which should seem an after-birth, one of his most celebrated essays, “Distant Not conceiv’d in the beginning Correspondents”, to the lawyer-poet in the (For God bless’d his work at first, same journal in 1822. He also informed And saw that it was good), Field of the esteem that Wordsworth and But emerg’d at the first sinning, Coleridge had apparently shown for Field’s When the ground was therefore curst: — poem “The Kangaroo”. And hence this barren wood!” Field clearly felt his verses were worthy of Whatever your feelings about their value, attention. The first edition ofFirst Fruits in it’s difficult to miss the strong satirical streak 1819, printed by George Howe in Sydney, of these jaunty lines, along with Field’s evi- and with the legend “Printed for Private Dis- dent preparedness to pun on his own name tribution” on the title page, contained two and person. But it’s also significant that poems, “Botany Bay Flowers” and “The Kan- Field is using words that, however straight- garoo”.