The best of Clarke’s minor writings display the results of much general culture, but give no proof of special preparation. They are [p 73] short, concentrated, forcible—the natural expression of a brilliant, impetuous, and spasmodic worker. He overcame his natural repugnance to lengthened toil and minute thoroughness when he saw them to be essential conditions of his task. But the effort was a severe one.
In 1871, when about twenty-five years of age, he was ordered to recruit his health by a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over three years writing extensively for the press, and joining in the gaieties of Melbourne life at a rate which a constitution much stronger than his could not have withstood. The idea of writing a story of prison life had suggested itself previously during his reading of Australian history. Finding himself now without sufficient money for the proposed holiday, he decided to put into active progress this literary project which had hitherto been only vaguely outlined.
Printed records of the convict days there were in abundance at Melbourne, and from these alone such a writer could have made a sufficiently striking story. But he concluded [p 74] that he could make his picture at once truer and more vivid when the surroundings of the old settlements had become a full reality to his mind. Messrs. Clarson, Massina and Co. readily contracted with the young novelist for the first publication of the story in their monthly, the Australian Journal, and made him an advance of money. Off he went with characteristic confidence, and some weeks later returned ready primed and eager for the new work. His enthusiasm soon cooled. The story commenced to appear after the first few chapters were written, and the unbroken industry necessary to maintain a regular supply of the parts was more than Clarke could give.
Writing against time, he is said to have felt like a convict himself. The irregular dribbling out of the story so injured the reputation of the journal that for a time its circulation was reduced to one-half the ordinary issue.
Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a sympathetic memoir of Clarke, has given an entertaining account of what followed: ‘The [p 75] author would be frequently interviewed by the publishers, and would as frequently promise the copy. When moral suasion was apparently powerless to effect the required object, payments in advance were made with somewhat better results; but as this could not go on ad libitum, copy would fall into arrears again. At last it was found that the only way to get the author to finish his tale was to induce him into a room in the publishing-house, where, under the benign influences of a pipe, etc., and a lock on the door, the necessary work would be done by the facile pen; and in such manner was His Natural Life produced.’
In a note of apology to their readers in January, 1871, the publishers print a somewhat comical letter which they had received from the delinquent author. Forwarding a single chapter of the story, he tells them that they must make shift with it as best they can, and he will let them have a larger supply during the following month. The letter concludes nonchalantly as follows: ‘This is awkward, I admit, and I suppose some good-natured [p 76] friend or other will say that I have over-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself in honour of the so-called festive season, but I can’t help it.’
The story as first published was much longer than the form in which it appears in the English edition. At the request of the present writer, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who was one of Clarke’s literary friends, supplies the following account of how the novel came to be so extensively curtailed:
‘As one of the trustees to the public library (Melbourne), I saw Clarke constantly, and had always a friendly, and sometimes a confidential, conversation with him. He visited me now and then at Sorrento, and on one of these occasions he spoke of a story he had running through a Melbourne periodical about which he was perplexed. He asked me to read it, and tell him unreservedly what I thought of it. I read the story carefully, making notes on the margin, and wrote him frankly the impression it had made on me.
‘After twenty years I can recall the substance [p 77] of the letter, which is probably still in existence. A powerful story, I said, but painful as it is powerful. The incidents, instead of being depressing, would be tragic if they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But there was no one in the story whom he could have intended us to love or honour. The hero underwent a lifelong torture without any credible, or even intelligible, motive, and on the whole was a mauvais sujet himself. To win the reader’s sympathy, all this must be altered. I strongly advised that the latter part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak was described under a leader whom he named Peter Brawler, should be omitted; and I objected to the publication of a song in French argot with a spirited translation, as the latter would naturally be attributed to the author of the novel, whereas I had read it in an early Blackwood before he was born.
‘Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and said he would adopt all my suggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection of his mother’s good name the [p 78] motive of the hero’s silence, and he omitted both the things I had objected to.’