Australian Writers Part 10

Of plot there is little--there is still less in some of the later novels--but sufficient variety of incident is given to afford scope for unusually rich faculties of sympathy and philosophic observation.

In her desire to present only real persons moving in a familiar world she merits, in _Uncle Piper_, praise almost equal to that accorded by Nathaniel Hawthorne to the novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke of them as being 'as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a gla.s.s case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.' It is, however, less of Trollope than of Howells that Tasma reminds the reader in this first story. The character of the wealthy _parvenu_ uncle, sensitive, boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yet tender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls _Silas Lapham_, that wonderfully natural and sympathetic presentment of a commonplace man.

There are numerous points of resemblance between the two, especially when they are shown contrasted with their aristocratic friends. The delightful comrades.h.i.+p of Lapham and his wife, with its curiously dry New England expression, has its counterpart in Piper's affection for his sister and their pride in each other.

The half-acknowledged social ambitions of both men, qualified by their secret contempt for the pretensions of the upper cla.s.ses, is shown in various similar ways, as is also their love of display. They differ only as their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives in the American merchant and his wife, and unconsciously sways their lives. Uncle Piper's conception of the Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has a religion of generosity and love which in the end nothing can repress--which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematic coldness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son and step-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind--the tractable section of them--there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy and reserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tenderness which is irresistible.

The superiority of Silas Lapham as a realistic portrait is not difficult to affirm; still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that the characters thus far approximate. Uncle Piper is under all the disadvantage that a figure in fiction suffers in being described largely in plain statement by the author instead of being gradually revealed in piquant dialogue.

Readers of _Silas Lapham_ will remember the rapid series of witty touches with which the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in the office of his warehouse, surrounded by samples of the mineral paint that he is so pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a dignified indifference as he answers the rather flippant curiosity of the local press interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is introduced, as all of Tasma's characters are, in sundry solid-looking pages of direct narrative. It is true that their humour and epigram make bright reading, but they are necessarily without the power of pithy dialogue to create a vivid impression of character.

Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian plutocracy need hardly be discussed. Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every community has its proportion. It may, however, be said that the owners of luxurious villas in the suburbs of Melbourne have individually a good deal more grammar and less generosity than he who was described by one of his fas.h.i.+onable English guests as possessing 'the home of a West-End magnate and the intonation of a groom.' The author herself would probably disclaim any intention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt the existence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and she certainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them.

A pa.s.sage in her third novel, _The Penance of Portia James_, gives her views on this subject, and incidentally upon Australian character. A description is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of an Australian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a _habitue_ of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron of art and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices.

To hold up the a.s.sembled party to the eyes of English readers as thoroughly typical Australians would be as unjust a proceeding as was that of Dumas _pere_ when he declared that all the inhabitants of Antwerp were _roux_ because he had encountered two red-headed girls on his way to the hotel. No one is thoroughly typical unless he be a savage or a peasant. Portia and her relatives retained their own underlying individualities none the less that they had been influenced in their outward bearing and modes of expressing themselves by a long sojourn in the backwoods of Victoria, in daily contact with all sorts and conditions of men--broken-down gentlemen, English yokels, bush-hands, and the like. After all, the moulding of character by outward influences alone is not a work to be achieved in one generation, or what would become of the theory of heredity, upon which everything is supposed to depend, more or less, in our present scientific age? If these people strike the English reader, therefore, as differing in certain respects from those he is accustomed to meet in his daily walk through life, let him remember that the differences which will strike him most are the merely superficial ones resulting from an occasional departure from the conventional rules of speech and behaviour that guide his own outward conduct, and that in all the main essentials they are, _au fond_, neither more like him or more unlike him than though chance had willed that they should be born and brought up on the selfsame patch of earth as himself. A difference in the vocabulary of the native-born Australian, or long resident in Australia, of the not too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a corresponding cla.s.s in England, is one of those facts, however, which 'n.o.body can deny.' I am not going to enter in this connection upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs.

James would have called 'hofisch' English, and the English that has been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and backwoodsmen. Suffice it to say there _is_ a difference, and Portia was never more sensible of it than when she returned, as on the present occasion, from moving among a London society crowd into the Anglo-Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington house.

Tasma's efforts to give variety to her work, and keep as far as possible out of the beaten paths of the Australian writer, have not, however, quite excluded from her novels characters which will be recognised as typical. There is, for instance, the young pleasure-loving colonial man who keeps racehorses, gets deeply into debt and love, and has sometimes to encounter awkward parental alternatives.

At least three excellent portraits of such men are given. The best is that of George Drafton, in _In Her Earliest Youth_. In no other novel are the rough good-nature and loose, slangy talk of the young Australian sportsman of the upper-middle cla.s.s more naturally expressed. The author's knowledge of the cant terms and short cuts in the vocabulary of the not necessarily ill-educated but supremely careless colonial young man is almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who has been listening to the talk of such men all his life.

Uncle Piper's exasperating 'gentleman' son George is also a noticeably clever creation in a book full of good portraits; and it is a tribute to the author's skill that as the story progresses our sympathy for him increases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding the needless agonies of rage he occasions his father.

The most vivid chapter to be found in any of Tasma's novels is that in which Uncle Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between Laura Lydiat and George, sends for the latter and threatens to cast him off if a marriage of the pair should take place. Laura is an agnostic and a sort of 'new woman' who maintains a constant att.i.tude of disdain towards her stepfather. She and George have spent much of their youth together, discussed pessimistic theories in Piper's hearing, and generally ignored him, and made him feel his ignorance in ways very trying to the temper of a man who, 'now that his money-making days were over, had a pa.s.sion for dictating absolutely to everyone about him.' 'He'd talk' and 'she'd talk,' as Mr. Piper would complain; 'and they'd spout their sc.r.a.ps of poetry that hadn't an ounce of the sense any good, honest old rhyme could show; and you'd think, to hear them, they were doing their Maker a favour by condescending to go on living at all!'

An alliance of this kind between the two people for whom he had done most with his wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was determined that it should not become a closer one. Was this not one reason for his importation of an entire family of impoverished relatives, that they and his little pet daughter, the angelic Louey, should readjust the balance of household power in his favour?

It was on the eve of the arrival of his aristocratic connections, the Cavendishes, that he determined to put a stop to his son's courts.h.i.+p.

George, at the outset of the momentous interview with his father, speculated inwardly on his chances of being able to soften the old man to a favourable view of 'the only wish that he had ever framed with a feeling that savoured of intensity.'

Before entering the ornamental tower where his father awaited him, George had composed his face to its usual expression of laziest indifference. His imperturbability always 'had the effect of a goad upon his father's temper. His face never changed colour when the old man's was purple. His voice never lost its measured drawl.'

As Mr. Piper turned and faced him you would never have traced the sons.h.i.+p in George. There was nothing in common between the sallow, indolent face of the younger man, and the spreading, heated face of the elder. George looked like any club-lounger--not unwilling to let it be seen that he is slightly bored, yet ready, with perfect acquiescence, to go through with an hour or a forenoon of the infliction of boredom, as conveyed by a father's presence.... Mr.

Piper watched him as he continued tranquilly to pare his nails, the baffled sense of helplessness that exasperated him at the outset of an interview with his son creeping over him as he watched. If George could only once have lost his head and sworn, or only once implored or threatened! But he never did. The apathy and unconcern of his att.i.tude--the veiled disrespect it implied--spoke of an indifference that was worse than the most open revolt. But surely he would be made to feel now! Mr. Piper had never tried to reach 'my gentleman'

through his 'young woman' yet.... A slight elevation of an unruffled brow just gave evidence that though his eyes were looking critically at his almond-shaped finger-nails, his ear took in the sense of his fathers words. Otherwise he might have served as a perfect model of intentness upon his hands, as the statue of the boy who to all eternity will be absorbed in the task of extracting a thorn from his foot.

Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute excitement.

'I'll see and put a stop to it!' he threatened. 'I'll take and pack her off, and you at the back of her, "my gentleman"!' George knew that the use of this expression signified especial bitterness on his father's part. 'I'll have an end of this nonsense--a painted jade like her!'

'Wait a minute, please,' said George, shutting the knife with a little snap, and settling himself back upon the window-sill; 'you are a little hard to follow, or I am slow at catching your meaning, perhaps. I understand that you had some object in sending for me.

Are you explaining it to me now? I am quite prepared to listen, as you see.'

'You're very condescending, I'm sure,' said Mr. Piper, with such withering sarcasm that George stroked his moustache and smiled. 'You put yourself about for your father a deal too much, "my gentleman,"

there's no doubt of it.' Then, with a sudden break in his voice: 'No, George; it's not much of a son you've been to me, and no one can say I've stood in your light. I'd like you to show me another young man who could carry on top ropes like you. There's not many fathers 'ud have stood it. Most fathers 'ud made you turn to long ago.'

'Do you want anything done for you?' interrupted George, with the air of a man who is laying himself out to oblige--'another tour of inspection in the north?'

Whenever Mr. Piper made allusion to George's want of occupation, it was the young man's policy to refer to this tour of inspection--a memorable tour, seeing that it had given him employment for at least three months....

If there was anything humiliating in being rated as an 'able-bodied young man who wasn't worth his salt,' as a loafer who was hardly fit to 'jackaroo' on a station, as a 'lazy lubber' who would 'go to the dogs if it weren't for his father,' George never betrayed that he felt humiliated by so much as the twitching of an eyelid.

Persistently stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as Mr. Piper stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing an inclination to yawn.

'I dare say it's all very true, governor,' was all he said in reply.

'It's very nice and complimentary, I'm sure, and I ought to be very much obliged to you. But, _a propos_ of your compliments, may I ask if it was only to treat me to them in full that you brought me up those confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that case, I wouldn't have minded waiting, you know. It's hardly fair upon a man, is it, to put him to the treadmill before he's well awake in the morning?'

'If you were like other young men,' retorted Mr. Piper, 'you'd be up and down them steps twenty times a day' (George shuddered); 'but oh no! my gentleman can crawl on to the lawn and carry on with a----'

'Stop there!' cried George, in a tone that made his father silent through sheer astonishment (George had never been known to raise his voice before). 'Do you know the relation in which Laura stands to me?'

He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and seeing the ghastly change that came over the face as he looked, he felt that he had been over-hasty. For the gla.s.s through which Mr. Piper had made a feint of looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips worked in a distorted fas.h.i.+on over his discoloured teeth; the blood rus.h.i.+ng away from his florid cheeks left them streaked with thready, sanguineous veins, mottling the ash-coloured patches; and rushed back again with a force that seemed to swell the veins round his temples to bursting....

'What's the matter, father?' said George at last, not with any of Louey's vehement alarm, but eyeing him rather gravely and curiously.

'Do you object to my looking upon Laura in the light of a--_sister_?'

'Eh?' said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable.

'Of a sister,' repeated George slowly, 'and a friend.'

'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine, thank G.o.d! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill again!'

'You mistake the position of affairs,' said George calmly. 'Laura wouldn't have me if I wanted!'

'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful.

'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?'

The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will not have Laura as a daughter-in-law 'at any price,' and that if George choose to marry her it must be as a pauper, and unrelieved of his heavy burden of turf debts. Piper's stormy, almost speechless anger, like his craving for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the same cla.s.s, in the short story _Monsieur Caloche_, are shown only in a satirical and repulsive light, which necessarily makes them appear somewhat unreal.

As a vivid study, combined with excellent comedy, the portrait of Sara Cavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishness concealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly excessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat, are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a pa.s.senger by the s.h.i.+p which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gave his weekly sermons during the voyage, Miss Cavendish was always present, and looked at him with her large eyes to such purpose that they 'seemed to be absorbing his meaning into the soul of their possessor.'

But there was nothing ethereal in Sara's thoughts. 'She had a fancy for imagining becoming dresses. She would build up a delightful wardrobe in the air, entering into as many details of her airy outfit as though it could be instantly materialised. And she liked to imagine a becoming background for her own beautiful person, in which a husband with the essentials of good birth and unlimited money, and the desirable qualifications of an air of distinction and great devotion to her, filled a reasonable s.p.a.ce.' Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreams such as it would have seemed to him almost a sacrilege to disturb, 'though it is probable that the only notion he would have been guilty of upsetting had reference to the shape of an imaginary velvet train.'

The insight and completeness with which Sara's character is depicted in the course of the story make it impossible that the reader should entirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. She is one of that large cla.s.s of women, with a limited capacity for affection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don't be shocked,' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessful suit of her clerical lover; 'I never intended to be a poor man's wife.'

As a contrast to the cold personality of the beautiful Sara, the author gives a charming picture of the elder sister's affection and thoughtfulness for others.

Margaret Cavendish and Eila Frost, in _Not Counting the Cost_, are good women of a perfectly possible and natural kind, and it is surprising to think that the same hand which drew them also found patience to draw the unhappy, metaphysical heroines of _In Her Earliest Youth_ and _The Knight of the White Feather_. Tasma is seldom so pleasing as when describing the characters of children, of whom several figure prominently in her novels. There is a delightful picture of romping childhood at the opening of _Not Counting the Cost_. The scene is a farm in the shadow of Mount Wellington, near Hobart, the city where the author spent many of her own early years. 'Chubby,' the eight-year-old uncle of the heroine of _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Louey Piper are lovable creations, though, it must be said, more quaint than natural.

One remembers the expansive dignity of the former on his first meeting with Pauline's lover, George Drafton. 'How do you do, little man?' says the latter condescendingly. 'How do you do, sir?' replies the little man stiffly, raising his garden hat. 'You are an acquaintance of Paul--of Miss Vyner's, I believe. I have the honour to be her maternal uncle.' No wonder George bursts into a loud guffaw, notwithstanding the tragic intensity of his love protestations of five minutes before!

Louey Piper's relations with her father are idyllic. She is more necessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual negotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could not have displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world changeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers of uncertain testamentary inclinations.' In her limited knowledge of things outside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presented themselves to her in the light of shocking and mysterious man-traps....

The wistful, yearning look that gave her eyes so touching an expression in the setting of her small freckled face never gave place to such a fulness of satisfaction as when her father, her brother, and her sister were all, as it were, under her eye, and safe to remain indoors for the night.'

The general praise won by _Uncle Piper_ for its author as a delineator of character appears to have decided her to give increased attention to her ability in this direction. The immediate result was scarcely a happy one. The a.n.a.lytical bias disclosed in the first story was largely extended in the second, with the usual accompaniment of a decrease in action and humour. Pauline Vyner, the central figure of _In Her Earliest Youth_, a sensitive and speculative girl, marries without love a man who has saved the life of a child to whom she is much attached. In tastes and intellectual bent the pair are almost without anything in common. The story--an unusually long three-volume one--is mainly a minute study of Pauline's disillusionment during the early period of her wifehood: how she escaped the temptations placed in her way by a man who had formerly attracted her; and how, with the birth of her first child, she experienced the dawn of affection for its father.

The story is excessively expanded for the small amount of dramatic movement it contains. Only three characters are prominently described, and these too seldom through the medium of dialogue. The central motive, moreover, is lacking in strength. It is difficult to appreciate the tragic pathos of so common a matrimonial error as Pauline's, especially as George, though uncongenial in his tastes, and not exempt from the ordinary weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to her, and would readily have improved under her influence, had she chosen to exert any.

Tasma's more recent work is better both in spirit and literary construction. Very sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative, in _Not Counting the Cost_, of the adventures of the Clare family in their quixotic travels in search of the cousin who is to restore them a long-lost heritage. In this story and _The Penance of Portia James_ the author gives some interesting scenes of Paris life. But to get the best samples of her humour, one must return to her first novel. The burlesque of Piper's pompous, genteel brother-in-law is delicious. Mr. Cavendish affects to be revolted by the necessity of being indebted to the _ci-devant_ butcher, while secretly luxuriating in his munificence.

Finally, as a means of discharging some of his obligations, he conceives the project of hunting up a pedigree for his plebeian relative, after the manner of the enterprising person who opened a 'heraldry office' in Sydney about fifty years ago, and announced his readiness to provide clients with reliable information of their ancestors, together with suitable coats of arms.

True, Piper is not a name of much promise, but there _had_ been a Count Piper somewhere or other some centuries ago, and the very rarity of the name proved that every Piper must come from one common stock. Fired by this generous idea, Mr. Cavendish gave himself up to its pursuit with enthusiasm. He would spend whole hours in the Melbourne Library poring over books of heraldry. Every chronological or biographical doc.u.ment bearing upon the age in which Count Piper was supposed to have lived was made the subject of long and minute examination. When the monthly mail day came round there would sure to be a budget of letters in Mr. Cavendish's handwriting, addressed to the different colleges and societies at home and abroad, who were to help in extracting all Pipers of any importance from the oblivion in which they had hitherto been suffered to remain.