An interesting picture of Clarke’s personality is given by a writer in the Sydney Bulletin: ‘His wit was keen and polished, his humour delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly…. His face was a remarkable one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was “a noticeable man with large grey eyes,” and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius…. He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant things, and scattering bons mots with apparent ease, so that in listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such books as Horace Walpole’s correspondence and those of the French memoir-writers…. He knew not how to care for money, yet he had none [p 49] of those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, and are cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, “He had no enemy but himself.”’
In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus Clarke scarcely more than pointed to the material which the life of such cities as Melbourne and Sydney offer a novelist capable of work like that of Mr. W. D. Howells, or the series of tales of urban society in America by Mr. Marion Crawford. There is now an opportunity, and, one might almost say, a need, for fiction which shall also, in effect, be salutary criticism. The Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact that a single decade will sometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire people in a new and rapidly-developing country.
Thus, with the struggle for subsistence now keen to a degree which could not have been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a few years ago; with Parliaments, hitherto safely democratic, threatened with Socialism by the increasing practice of electing artisans [p 50] and labourers to do the legislative work of their respective classes; the crash of fortunes which never had substantial existence; the pauperising to-day of the paper millionaire of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old men, after overreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of life afresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the faltering novice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secure and cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business of government,—with these and some social aspects still less agree able to contemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may have the disposition and ability to carry on the work which Clarke had indicated, but scarcely begun, before he died.
Long Odds, Clarke’s first story, deals with English life, and bears no resemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name is chiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a mésalliance, and horseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complications of gambling and [p 51] intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less to do with sport than the title suggests. The plot is mainly concerned with the selfish, cruel, and infamous in human nature—a singularly dark theme for a young beginner in fiction to choose. Except at rare intervals when the business of characterisation is momentarily set aside, as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster Steeplechase and the Matcham Hunt, there is little suggestion of youthful spirit or freshness.
The outlines of plot and incident are attractively arranged, the expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There are traces of Dickens’ burlesque without his sympathy, and the high colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton’s wit. Disraeli’s satire, too, is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book, is allowed no opportunity to show the better, and rarely even the ordinary, capabilities of the new race of which he is ostensibly a type.
[p 52]
It is said to be a well-understood maxim of the novelist’s art that many a liberty taken with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if the writer keeps a constant eye upon his villain, and deals honestly by him. In Long Odds there are two villains, and at least two others villainously inclined. Between the four of them the easy-going hero has no chance.
It is natural that, in the construction of a novel which aims at dramatic point before anything else, the ‘simple Australian,’ as his author is at last constrained to regard him, should seem less useful than the polished and unprincipled man of the world. But in this instance the balance of interest is too unequal. Dramatic quality has been secured at the expense of tone and proportion. Of the two male characters whose exploits in rascality it becomes the real business of the story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more natural and entertaining.
There is an attention to detail in his portrait which suggests that the lineaments of the conventional society villain may have [p 53] been filled in with the help of a little personal knowledge, perhaps of some of those morally doubtful individuals already mentioned as having been among the acquaintances of Clarke’s early youth. Dacre is the chief cynic of the story, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of the small stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is both his associate and enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of dastard, and altogether disagreeable.
The author is not entirely forgetful of the interests of his nominal hero. If throughout three-fourths of the story Calverley is made the plaything of circumstances that favour only rogues, he is at last allowed a triumph in love and sport which, though unsatisfying from an artistic point of view, is calculated to soothe a not too fastidious taste for poetic justice.
Conscious of the conventional character of his principal theme, the author apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. The result of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidents [p 54] that might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; the conceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviously improbable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverley and Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness which the reader carries away from the study of so much of the bad side of human nature.