The Unpublished Plays of Miles Franklin Jocelyn Hedley Master of Arts (Research) 2007 Faculty of Arts University of New South Wales THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Surname or Family name: Hedley First name: Jocelyn Other name/s: Patricia Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: MRes School: English, Media and Performing Arts Faculty: Arts Title: The Unpublished Plays of Miles Franklin Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) With the publication of her novel, My Brilliant Career, in 1901, Miles Franklin became the darling of the Sydney literati. Great things were expected of the little girl from the bush. But five years later, nothing had eventuated; her talent, Miles thought, was barely recognised in Australia. In the hope of gaining greater writing opportunities, she shipped to Chicago where she became involved in social reform. It was hard work and ill paid, and though she bewailed the fact that it sapped her writing energy, she nonetheless felt a commitment to the cause such that she remained for almost a decade. In her spare time, though, she continued to write – and not just prose. More and more she wrote for the theatre, attempting to push into a world of which she had always dreamed. Blessed with a beautiful singing voice, she had long desired to be on the stage. This was impossible, though; her voice, she believed, had been ruined by bad training in her youth. To write for the stage, then, though a poor substitute, was at least in the field of her original ideal. Miles’ plays, though, are not remembered today, and are little thought of in scholarship, are considered, in fact, to have failed. This gives the false impression that they were always little thought of. Her correspondence, however, reveals that at least five of the plays were produced, indicating a certain level of success. Miles Franklin’s theatrical work, then, is surely worthy of further examination. This thesis looks at five of the plays in the light of Miles’ life and in the light of the society in which she found herself. In turn, it uses the plays to reveal something of the nature of the playwright herself and to show that Miles Franklin’s theatrical writing did not fail as once thought. In addition, it provides a complete bibliography of the plays (inclusive of locations), lists the duplications as they appear under alternate titles and provides synopses of a large number. This will make up for a gap in Miles Franklin scholarship and will facilitate other scholars in accessing the plays. This thesis, then, is an introduction to a new facet of Miles Franklin scholarship. 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Date ……………………………………………........................... ‘…if I could go about as the women who belong to men do.’ Miles Franklin, 1949 2 Table of Contents Chapter I Introduction………………………… 4 Chapter II The Survivors………………….…… 23 Chapter III Phoebe Lambent and Love…….…… 38 Chapter IV The English Jackaroo..…………….. 53 Chapter V Tom Collins at Runnymede………… 71 Chapter VI The Dead Shall not Return…….…… 87 Chapter VII Conclusion.……………………..….. 104 Synopses of Selected Plays………………………… 115 Bibliography……………………………………..… 125 3 I It is October 1906 and a young Australian woman steps off the train at Chicago. Her journey has been long and full of adventure, coming as she has from quake stricken San Francisco – devastated just days before her arrival there – over the Rockies and across the plains of the Mid West of America1. And before that, she had crossed the Pacific Ocean by means of the 6,000 tonne steamship SS Ventura, boarded some six months earlier in Sydney, Australia. From far to the south-west of that city – outside the area now established as the nation’s capital – she has come, from a mountainous region named the Brindabella Ranges. Here she grew up the child of pioneers and here her father and his family worked the land. Here she lived, then there at the edges of Goulburn, then fleetingly in Sydney and Melbourne, right until now as she stands by her little pile of luggage, gazing at the vast vault of ceiling that crowns Chicago’s Union Station. Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin is she who stands upon the emptying platform. She is twenty-six and already has something of fame behind her. Five years earlier her novel, My Brilliant Career, was published and young Miles, as she chose to call herself, was on the road to success. She was beckoned forth from what was deemed the simplicity of the bush to the sophistication of the city where she was swept up at once into Sydney’s luminous literary world. Everybody wanted to meet the little bush girl who had written this ‘Bookful of Sunlight’2, and so showered her with invitations to dinners and salons and harbour picnics. She thrived on the life, made lasting friends and eventually took work as a parlour maid so that she might stay in the city permanently. Domestic service was not her first choice of how things might be, nor was it her only option. Vibrant, youthful and artistic, Miles attracted the attentions of numerous eligible gentlemen, one of whom was Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson. The debonair poet, lawyer and war correspondent acquainted himself with the young writer and suggested they enter into a literary collaboration. She was reluctant, put off by his imperious manner towards her, and refused. Shortly afterwards, however, she succumbed to the allure of this dashing figure and 1 For a full account of the journey across America, see Coleman, Verna, Miles Franklin in America: Her Unknown (Brilliant) Career, Angus & Robertson, London, 1981. 2 A. G. Stephens in September 1901 entitled his review of My Brilliant Career ‘A Bookful of Sunlight’. Ibid., p. 38. 4 suggested that they work together on a play. Paterson, eager to begin, sent her a letter offering to pay her expenses for a week in Sydney. He followed this letter with one containing a cheque for £5 that she might make her way at once from her family’s home in the country to his writing side in the city. There were, it seems, suggestions of romance, to the delight of Miles’ beautiful younger sister Linda (‘When are you going to be Mrs Banjo?’3), herself affianced and desiring a similar joy for her sibling. Others, though, were less than pleased. Bush poet and Miles’ mentor, Henry Lawson, and his wife, Bertha, expressed grave concerns.