MR DOUGLAS SLADEN ON "THE AUSTRALIANS " AND ITS AUTHOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2055, 13 July 1893, Page 41

MR DOUGLAS SLADEN ON "THE AUSTRALIANS " AND ITS AUTHOR.

Books that give a real it sight into Australia have a melancholy interest for too many Britons just now, and they will need little urging to turn to such. At the outset I may say that I have never been more agreeably surprised than by the perusal of this book. Coming from Mr Francis Adams, I knew, of course, that it would be full of quotable extracts and smart, if bitter, sayings ; but I was not prepared for the shrewd observation and characterisation, the hitting the nail time after time on the head, the impartiality of the destructive criticism. Here and there, of course, he says things in which I cannot, as a long resident in Australia, agree with him— e.g., that the Bulletin is the best Australian paper ; but, as a rula, the statements of his which I cannot endorse are such obvious paradoxes that I do not take them'seriously. The book is divided into disquisitions on the Pacific Slope and the Eastern Interior, with the full complement of preface, introduction, postscript, and appendix, and has already appeared for the most part in the pages of the Fortnightly Review. Mr Adams i 9 not fond of Anglo-Australianism or AngloAustralians, and for this reason regards the Australia of the Ccast as of less real importance than the Australia of the Interior, which is to develop out of the muoh-endur-ing, shrewd, but uncivilisable native youth a kind of Cowboy Utopia. Same of the most interesting things jn the book are h<s characterisations of colonial politicians, For example:— Sir Henry Parties. Large and gross in build, with a great mass of white hair runniDg all over his head and face, he rises full of a self-conscious pomposity, and startles one's ears with a piping treble. The inane and tedious vulgarity of the rhetoric, the appalling aspirates dropped and added in every sentence, the hideous grammatical andprosodial blunders seem the fitting expression of an egotism as empty as it is oppressive. How astonishing that even in what, until quite recently, was the most lethargic and corrupt of the colonies such a person could ever attain to I political influence. Bufc Sir Henry Parkes requires care in the stadyiDg, and even then the part ha has I played, and is still playing, is not comprehen- ! sible without some historical knowledge of [ the conditions, past and present, of the stage, the actors, and the audience. Watch and listen to him when the wheels of debate begin to blow. Of late he has too often been feeble tyid languid, sitting huddled up with weary, blinking eyelids, the not unpathetic image of a big, sick, anthropomorphoid ape, well stricken in years. But that has only made the occasional exhibitions of his "old form" the more striking. Attacked (and no politician in Australia has been habitually attacked. with such virulent personal animus as he), he is a new man. gee him now upon his feet, with all his hair, beard, and features vibrating with pugnacity,

The rhetoric is as vulgar as ever, but no one would call it tedious or inane. Mr Adams has more hope of Queensland politicians than any other. Sir Samuel Griffith is the " central figure " of Australian politics; in Sir Thomas M'llwraith lies their only hope of largeness. Innumerable instances - might be drawn from these pages of crisp, pregnant generalisation. For instance : The truth is that in Australia the money has been made. And, .finally, jobbery, political or social, public and private, never had a dearer haunt than this colony (New South Wales). The Australian who leaves his land in any mood but one severely critical of others is looked upon as a sort of national " blackleg." His description of the Australian native is not altogether inviting 1 . The Australian-Horn. The native Australians who follow on them have too often the self -sufficiency that is begotten on self-confidence by ignorance. Lean and high strung, with the alternations of languor and activity which the terrible changefulness of their climate gives them, they wear themselves out in all they do, mistaking the exercise of nervous energy for pleasure. They have in their underside the taint of cruelty. The vigorous Anglo-Saxon, with his profuse exclamations of wrath, is giving way to the new exemplar of a suppressed viciousness twice asdangerous. The more angry the Victorian — and one may as well say the Australianbecomes, the slower he speaks, drawling out his oaths, and staring like a wild beast about to spring. The street riots of the Melbourne "larrikin" are as different as can be from the 41 rows" of the London or Birmingham " rough." It is the difference of tigers and bears at aDgry play. Religion seems to him, at best, a social affair, to whose inner appeal he is profoundly indifferent. History is nothing to him, and all he knows or cares for England lies in his resentment and curiosity concerning London, with the tales of whose size and wonders the crowd of travelling "new chums" "for ever troubles him." Here is Melbourne : On this plain, fiat and low-lying, where any comprehensive system of drainage is bo difficult as to be almost impossible, the mathematical genius bas had its chance and taken it. Imagine a huge chessboard flung on the earth, and you have what is the true and characteristic Melbourne. Behind this chessboard is a country of some 88,000 square miles (1000 larger than England, Scotland, and Wales). There are no rivers. Railways are the rivers of Australia, and all the Victorian rivers have but one mouth. And here is Sydney : Sydney is a city with charms, with the element of the ideal. Its sea gardens, planted right in the centre, are as lovely as anything of their kind in the world. Nature has done her very beist. The blue waters of the winding harbour are everywhere. Sunshine, that often seems sempiternal, lights up jewelled hues in the eky and sea as tender as Athens, or Naples, or Cadiz. The beauty of the inlets and seaside bays is almost equalled by that of the surrounding bush. And yet the final impression is disappointment. No European manufacturing city "boasts" more hideous suburbs. The shoddy contractor despotises here in his vilest and most hateful shape. The portentous centralisation of Australia is pointed out : Later on we shall see how few mouths the rivers of New South Wales and Queensland have, and shall grow to understand the extraordinary system of centralisation which has made this enormous Australia the appanage of four of five cities. Mr Adams is ruthless on Australian Literary Society. Literary society is the synonym for the company of journalists, and has superseded the old Bohemianism. A second-rate and third-rate pseudo-intellecfcualism reigns in it, and only too often it becomes a pseudo-intellecfcualism of no rate at all. It finds and deserves no published means of expression beyond that afforded in the Saturday's conversational columns of the dailies and weeklies, or in the Bulletin. The Bulletin is the one really talented and original outcome of the Australian press, but its literary criticism is that of clever, sixth-form schoolboys and imperfectly-educated pressmen, and all it knows about culture is to perpetually spell it "culohaw." One of his best characterisations is the Australian Greeley, The Typical Editor. Here, then, is our Australian Greeley. In person we have the medium-sized, thick-set, middle-aged, colonial man of business. No one feature is remarkable; all are broad, coarse, and strong ; brown, thin hair, moustache, and beard ; full, pallid, but sensual lips ; eyes of mixed colour, blue predominating, energetic, and direct. Aggresßive, good-humoured, but at the price of directing and controlling every practical detail ; educated up to the average standard and not an inch over, despising intellect and culture as associated with inevitable business weaknesses ; thoroughly indifferent to religion, but, if pressed, showing the general secular dislike and coatemptf or parsons " which lies hid in nine Australians out of ten ; demooratio, in the sense of admitting no superiors, but a vast host of inferiors — such is the man who " manages " the most perfect daily expression of the vast bulk of the people ia the one really settled and organised colony of Australia. He knew Adam Lindsay Gordon, and has absolutely nothing to tell you concerning him but that he rode " savagely." Marcus Clarke's name recalls merely the fact of his journalistic Bohemianisms. "He was the plague of my life for so many years." " We have half-a-dozen men on the paper who can write stories as well as Clarke could." One recalls Clarke's definition of the future Australian type as " a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship." He comperes with cynical indifference the failures of both Conservative and Liberal schemos for settling population. They both have the sincere desire to settle people on the land ; but desire is not fulfilment. Sir Thomas M'llwraith's scheme of a Transcontinental Land Grant railway rests, as we [ have remarked, only a scheme, and psrhaps , that is why he still clings to the idea that it would have resulted in the necessary sale by the contracting syndicates of the land all along the line, and thus of the creation of a rival populace. Sir Samuel Griffith perseveres in public worka, railways, artesian springs, rabbit fenoes, and what nofc, expending loan money (that "flourishing colonial industry," as his colleague calls it), and hoping for better times. One of the best passages in the book is the contrast between the shearers of the old colonial days and the Jin de sikoh shearer ; *