He is a remarkable figure. It has remained for Australia to produce him, and he is peculiar to Australia. He stands now in the full blaze of the limelight. It has been centred on him for the past couple of years or more, but the operator has not thought it necessary to move the screen, and the audience, for its part, is quite satisfied. Business is keeping up splendidly. There are some who say that a prophet, and especially a literary prophet, must be without honour in his own country. True as the statement is in the main, there are occasional exceptions. One of these is furnished by the young man in the shirt sleeves and the riding breeches, the young man with the resolutely modest expression on his features, the young man who has been photographed and paragraphed throughout the continent. He is a man of much talent. English Punch and Sydney Bulletin both say so. Sir John Madden declares that a copy of one of his books should be in the hands of every boy and girl in the Commonwealth. That should be enough. Let us, therefore, sing Viva! Let us sing it unitedly, for the winter of our literary darkness is passing, nay, has passed away.
Every one is aware by this time that Mr “Rudd” writes about the back-blocks of Australia. He has discovered them. In fact, he has almost invented them. What a region it is! To the casual observer it may lack something in variety of scenery, in charm of association, in human interest. But then the casual observer is not one who need be taken seriously. Still less is he one whose opinion on literary matters is of much value. In this interior region of the great Southern continent there are shingle huts, and wire fences, and occasional gum-trees, and the dry beds of creeks, and the thin crops struggling above the surface of the ground, and, for the rest, a flat monotony of desolation. For human interest there is an occasional sun-browned, dirt-begrimed settler, an occasional ragged and vacant-faced youth, an occasional dull-eyed, but stout-hearted woman. These people are part of the life of the nation, and it is instructive to read about them. In “Steele Rudd’s” pages they have their exits and their entrances, their humorous, tragical, quaint, fantastic, sordid, and pathetic phases. The novelist has done them every justice. So much justice has he done them, that they have come, in a manner of speaking, to obscure the horizon. Three books have been written about them, and the reading public is not yet satisfied. It is still—or was a few months ago—clamouring for more; it will take as much more as the author cares to give.
It is admitted that “Steele Rudd” has done a great thing; but it may still be asked whether it is possible to praise a local writer sanely and temperately, without going into ecstasies about him, without making both himself and ourselves look ridiculous. Is there only one man in Australia whose books are worth purchasing? Has the city life, the business life, the artistic life, the ambitious life, the intense social and political life of civilised Australia nothing to say for itself? Must we reserve all our superlatives, all our limelight, and all our hard cash for this writer who keeps telling us, with persistent and applauded iteration, about the shingle hut and the awful wire fence, and the frightfully monotonous prospect of ragged selector and sunburnt plain? What of our million and a half city residents? What of the light and the love and the laughter of Collins Street and Circular Quay? Is it not a fact that these have been crowded out, unfairly crowded out, of the canvas? It is no wonder that outsiders call us parochial. It is no wonder that they say we are lacking in perspective. It is no wonder that, when we go to London, they judge us by our odd pieces of genre-painting, and tell us that there is no market for that sort of thing in the metropolis—that we had better have stayed at home.
It is astonishing how few people, even of those who have lived in Australia all their lives, have succeeded in discovering Australia. It gives one almost a shock to reflect upon the amount of misconception that has been spread throughout two hemispheres by Mr A. B. Paterson, Mr Henry Lawson, Mr “Rudd,” and one or two others. Incredible as it seems, it is yet a fact that there are several varieties of soil and climate to be met with in this benighted part of the world. A man may take himself out of sight of the seacoast, he may even settle on the land, and yet have no experiences of drought, of duststorms, of dry creek beds, or of thermometers at 120° in the shade. He may even find that the weird melancholy of his place of abode has to be manufactured out of his own imagination. In one part of the continent, and that a part getting well up towards the Equator, there are the Darling Downs, which are neither monotonously melancholy nor afflicted with recurrent drought. And at the opposite end of the continent, in the south of Western Australia, there are magnificent forests of karri and jarrah, a soil capable of luxuriant growth, a hundred thousand square miles of rain-fed land waiting for the plough. In the western district of Victoria is to be found the Southern home of English grasses, of European cereals, and of leafy trees. Another land of streams and of fertile country stretches south from Port Jackson to Twofold Bay. Within a couple of hours’ train ride of Sydney there is the western mountainous district, than which there is no finer tourist ground in this or in any other continent. When will some one write for us the romance of the jarrah and the karri forest? When shall we hear, as a change from the foreign sentiment of the Tyrolean Alps, the love story of Katoomba and of the Blue Mountains? Is there ever going to be an Australian Hardy to make lifelike fiction out of the Victorian western district? Are these scenes, these places, these happy hunting-grounds of the nature and humanity lover, to be, like the brave men who died before Agamemnon, always unknown because of the want of an inspired bard?
It is true that there is a dry and dusty and drably monotonous side to Australia. This is the side that is most constantly written about. Geographically it is of the greatest importance, because it takes up so much space. So far as its population is concerned, it amounts to little more than a bagatelle. The people who inhabit it are about as numerous as the ghosts of lost explorers in the Arctic Circle. Everything is against it as a residence for white men—its blare of relentless and scorching summers, its bleak and rainless winters, its dry creek-beds, its brick-like plains, its ungenerous soil, its tremendous distances, its fearful monotony, its unspeakable isolation. Yet it is an extraordinary circumstance that white men go there. They go to live at Burke, and at the back of Burke. Other land is waiting for them, other and more genial parts of the continent are clamouring for settlement. Yet, for some unknown and inexplicable cause, because of some hope that is greater than experience, because of some pioneering instinct that is superior to reason, because of some courage that is stronger than death, men are to be found ready to plunge into this hard wilderness, believing they can tame it and break it in.
The books of the most successful Australian novelist are concerned with the doings of these agricultural pioneers. He has exploited them for all they are worth; a critic might be inclined to say for more than they are worth, if he had not in mind the extraordinary result of the recent flotations. There has been quite a sensation on the local literary exchange. Mr “Rudd’s” debentures, after three successive issues, are as firm as ever. He has monopolised the market. Who else can command a price for this kind of paper—the paper that gives a mortgage over Australian literary securities? The promoter of Dad and Company, Limited, has had on his side the most experienced “bulls” to be met with in Melbourne and Sydney. The “bears” have so far had no voice in the matter. One particularly useful “bull” is he who operates with a pencil. The illustrations of “Our Selection,” and of “Our New Selection,” and of “Sandy’s Selection,” are very striking and effective. If there is something that the terse language of the novelist has failed to convey, or if the imagination of the reader is not quite vivid enough to conjure up the whole picture, there is the artist’s sketch or portrait to help out the illusion. Another individual, whose value in sending up literary stock can hardly be overestimated, is the journalistic fugleman. He has been unanimous from end to end of Australia, and his share in the “Steele Rudd” boom must not be allowed to go unrecognised.
It is a game that many play at, this game of novel-writing; and when some one appears with dramatic suddenness, and carries off the one prize worth having, it is necessary, it is inevitable, that we should endeavour to find out how the feat has been accomplished. We know that he has succeeded, but how, and by virtue of what gift, or mannerism, has he succeeded? Is it by sheer virtue of literary merit, style, finish, or that kind of attribute? These are what one would naturally look for in any contest where pen and ink are the chief weapons. But the search in this instance would upset preconceived ideas. “Steele Rudd’s” literary garment is pure homespun. There is no embroidery, no tapestry, no rich colouring of any sort. Even the favourite Australian expletives are much watered down. One character says “damn you” to another character, and says it often, but otherwise the vocabulary of profanity is not drawn upon. The Australian novelist might have been tempted to take a leaf out of the book of Rudyard Kipling, but he has not done so. For this we can thank him. He gives no fresh terms, puts no strain on the meaning of adjectives, and takes no liberties with the English language. He deals very largely with monosyllables. Often he leaves out introductory and connecting words, thus giving his paragraphs a jerky, staccato effect. It is a style that Henry James would marvel at, but one that the man in the street thoroughly understands. The intelligibility constitutes its great merit. Yet, even this latter quality, though it may be rare, is hardly rare enough to carry the possessor to affluence and fame.
In what, then, does the supreme virtue of “Steele Rudd’s” novels consist? Is it in the character-drawing? Here again the answer must be in the negative. A thousand readers will rise to their feet as one man, or as one woman, and point to the figure of Dad, the original selector, as a supreme triumph of characterisation. But what has Dad done to render himself original, or in any special way distinctive? As he appears in these pages he is ragged, sun-browned, simple-minded, good-hearted, optimistic, and persevering. It is a character one likes, a temperament one admires. It is a figure that the Australian public has taken to itself, and one that only a sacrilegious person would speak of in disrespectful terms. We pass by Dad with all deference, only venturing to remark that while we admire his courage and perseverance, we find his optimism somewhat reminiscent of Micawber, and his simple-mindedness faintly suggestive of my Uncle Toby. And we say without any deference, that the subsidiary figures, the Dan’s, and Joe’s, and Kate’s, and Sal’s of the “Selection” series, exhibit very little character-drawing worthy of the name.
There must be some other reason for the author’s triumph. If the cause is not to be found in a superlative literary quality, or in the subtle analysis of character exhibited by Meredith and others, it may be discoverable in the absolute fidelity to nature of certain scenes and incidents. Have we unearthed in “Steele Rudd” the Australian painter of real life—a man who can emulate in the Southern Hemisphere the example set by Gorky in Russia, or Zola in France, or Gissing in England? Scarcely this, either. From the pen pictures of these back-blocks novels the element of realism is, for the most part, dexterously eliminated. There may be—there are, pages out of real life. But if the author, or any one else, told the whole truth, or half the truth about the stunted growths and dull intelligences that result from too long and too intimate an acquaintanceship with the Australian desert, the book would not be considered pleasant reading. The people who buy it now would put it on one side with a slight shudder, and a Chief Justice would not refer to it as the kind of volume that should be in every household, and studied by every boy and girl. Mr “Rudd’s” so-called lifelike pictures are much idealised. The palace of Claude Melnotte by the Lake of Como was not more preferable to the gardener’s hut, than is the cheerful, breezy existence of Dad and Mother and their entourage to the soulless, hopeless life-struggle of a certain kind of Australian family. To be a genuine realist, you must not only give the hard facts, but reflect the atmosphere of your characters and places. The atmosphere of “Steele Rudd” is nothing if not buoyant; the writer is always confident, and always smiling, even when he is telling about ruined crops, and suffering adults, and hungry children. If he is not a true romanticist, neither is he an absolute realist. He is as far from being a Zola as he is from being a Beaconsfield.
Yet a triumph is a triumph; there must be some reason for it; it cannot be built, or, at least, it cannot be sustained on air. If we put aside the literary quality which is not stipulated for, and the character-drawing which scarcely exists, and the realism which is mainly imaginary, we are driven back on the humour—that impregnable Torres Vedras behind which every devotee of the “Selection” novel sooner or later entrenches himself. It must be the humour. The word is one that has a very wide meaning. A man might more profitably endeavour to number the stars than to bring the elusive quality of humour within the four quarters of a satisfactory definition. For practical purposes it may be observed that a humorous thing is that which strikes you as humorous—though how, and when, and why it should strike you, are matters that rest entirely with yourself. The most learned pundits have laid it down as an axiom that there is great humour in the spectacle of the fool in Lear reminding his mad and weather-beaten master of the sorry spectacle he is making of himself. “Steele Rudd,” beyond all question, is a humorist, and not the less one because his comic episodes take place in an atmosphere that is compounded much more of tragedy than of mirth. The incidents themselves—say, for example, those of the parson and the scone, of the racecourse and the worn-out brumby, of Dan and the snake-bite, of Dad and the hoe—are scarcely calculated to make a sympathetic reader laugh. But running through the episodes as a whole, and colouring the work as a whole, there is a certain suggestion of humour which it is difficult to locate or analyse; a certain lightness of touch which can hardly be explained in words; a certain buoyancy of treatment that makes reading easy; a certain creative quality that is rarest of all, and hardest of all to define.