My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

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MY BRILLIANT CAREER

MILES FRANKLIN

1901

PREFACE

A few months before I left Australia I got a letter from the bush signed
"Miles Franklin", saying that the writer had written a novel, but knew
nothing of editors and publishers, and asking me to read and advise.
Something about the letter, which was written in a strong original hand,
attracted me, so I sent for the MS., and one dull afternoon I started to
read it. I hadn't read three pages when I saw what you will no doubt see
at once--that the story had been written by a girl. And as I went on I saw
that the work was Australian--born of the bush. I don't know about the
girlishly emotional parts of the book--I leave that to girl readers to
judge; but the descriptions of bush life and scenery came startlingly,
painfully real to me, and I know that, as far as they are concerned, the
book is true to Australia--the truest I ever read. I wrote to Miles
Franklin, and she confessed that she was a girl. I saw her before leaving
Sydney. She is just a little bush girl, barely twenty-one yet, and has
scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life. She has lived her book,
and I feel proud of it for the sake of the country I came from, where
people toil and bake and suffer and are kind; where every second
sun-burnt bushman is a sympathetic humorist, with the sadness of the bush
deep in his eyes and a brave grin for the worst of times, and where every
third bushman is a poet, with a big heart that keeps his pockets empty.

HENRY LAWSON

England, April 1901

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION
ONE. I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER
TWO. AN INTRODUCTION TO POSSUM GULLY
THREE. A LIFELESS LIFE
FOUR. A CAREER WHICH SOON CAREERED TO AN END
FIVE. DISJOINTED SKETCHES AND CRUMBLES
SIX. REVOLT
SEVEN. WAS E'ER A ROSE WITHOUT ITS THORN?
EIGHT. POSSUM GULLY LEFT BEHIND. HURRAH! HURRAH!
NINE. AUNT HELEN'S RECIPE
TEN. EVERARD GREY
ELEVEN. YAH!
TWELVE. ONE GRAND PASSION
THIRTEEN. HE
FOURTEEN. PRINCIPALLY LETTERS
FIFTEEN. WHEN THE HEART IS YOUNG
SIXTEEN. WHEN FORTUNE SMILES
SEVENTEEN. IDYLLS OF YOUTH
EIGHTEEN. AS SHORT AS I WISH HAD BEEN THE MAJORITY OF SERMONS
TO WHICH I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO GIVE EAR
NINETEEN. THE 9TH OF NOVEMBER 1896
TWENTY. SAME YARN (Cont.)
TWENTY-ONE. MY UNLADYLIKE BEHAVIOUR AGAIN
TWENTY-TWO. SWEET SEVENTEEN
TWENTY-THREE. AH, FOR ONE HOUR OF BURNING LOVE, 'TIS WORTH AN AGE
OF COLD RESPECT!
TWENTY-FOUR. THOU KNOWEST NOT WHAT A DAY MAY BRING FORTH
TWENTY-FIVE. BECAUSE?
TWENTY-SIX. BOAST NOT THYSELF OF TOMORROW
TWENTY-SEVEN MY JOURNEY
TWENTY-EIGHT. TO LIFE
TWENTY-NINE. TO LIFE (Cont.)
THIRTY. WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS, 'TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE
THIRTY-ONE. MR M'SWAT AND I HAVE A BUST-UP
THIRTY-TWO. TA-TA TO BARNEY'S GAP
THIRTY-THREE. BACK AT POSSUM GULLY
THIRTY-FOUR. BUT ABSENT FRIENDS ARE SOON FORGOT
THIRTY-FIVE. THE 3RD OF DECEMBER 1898
THIRTY-SIX. ONCE UPON A TIME, WHEN THE DAYS WERE LONG AND HOT
THIRTY-SEVEN. HE THAT DESPISETH LITTLE THINGS, SHALL
FALL LITTLE BY LITTLE
THIRTY-EIGHT. A TALE THAT IS TOLD AND A DAY THAT IS DONE

INTRODUCTION

Possum Gully, near Goulburn,
N.S. Wales, Australia, 1st March, 1899

MY DEAR FELLOW AUSTRALIANS,

Just a few lines to tell you that this story is all about myself--for no
other purpose do I write it.

I make no apologies for being egotistical. In this particular I attempt
an improvement on other autobiographies. Other autobiographies weary one
with excuses for their egotism. What matters it to you if I am
egotistical? What matters it to you though it should matter that I am
egotistical?

This is not a romance--I have too often faced the music of life to the
tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and
dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn--a _real_ yarn. Oh! as
real, as really real--provided life itself is anything beyond a heartless
little chimera--it is as real in its weariness and bitter heartache as the
tall gum-trees, among which I first saw the light, are real in their
stateliness and substantiality.

My sphere in life is not congenial to me. Oh, how I hate this living
death which has swallowed all my teens, which is greedily devouring my
youth, which will sap my prime, and in which my old age, if I am cursed
with any, will be worn away! As my life creeps on for ever through the
long toil-laden days with its agonizing monotony, narrowness, and
absolute uncongeniality, how my spirit frets and champs its unbreakable
fetters--all in vain!

SPECIAL NOTICE

You can dive into this story head first as it were. Do not fear
encountering such trash as descriptions of beautiful sunsets and
whisperings of wind. We (999 out of every 1000) can see nought in sunsets
save as signs and tokens whether we may expect rain on the morrow or the
contrary, so we will leave such vain and foolish imagining to those poets
and painters--poor fools! Let us rejoice that we are not of their
temperament!

Better be born a slave than a poet, better be born a black, better be
born a cripple! For a poet must be companionless--alone! _fearfully_ alone
in the midst of his fellows whom he loves. Alone because his soul is as
far above common mortals as common mortals are above monkeys.

There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or
in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class,
the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have
all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.

CHAPTER ONE

I Remember, I Remember

"Boo, hoo! Ow, ow; Oh! oh! Me'll die. Boo, hoo. The pain, the pain!
Boo, hoo!"

"Come, come, now. Daddy's little mate isn't going to turn Turk like that,
is she? I'll put some fat out of the dinner-bag on it, and tie it up in
my hanky. Don't cry any more now. Hush, you must not cry! You'll make old
Dart buck if you kick up a row like that."

That is my first recollection of life. I was barely three. I can remember
the majestic gum-trees surrounding us, the sun glinting on their straight
white trunks, and falling on the gurgling fern-banked stream, which
disappeared beneath a steep scrubby hill on our left. It was an hour past
noon on a long clear summer day. We were on a distant part of the run,
where my father had come to deposit salt. He had left home early in the
dewy morning, carrying me in front of him on a little brown pillow which
my mother had made for the purpose. We had put the lumps of rock-salt
in the troughs on the other side of the creek. The stringybark roof of
the salt-shed which protected the troughs from rain peeped out
picturesquely from the musk and peppercorn shrubs by which it was densely
surrounded, and was visible from where we lunched. I refilled the
quart-pot in which we had boiled our tea with water from the creek,
father doused our fire out with it, and then tied the quart to the D of
his saddle with a piece of green hide. The green-hide bags in which the
salt had been carried were hanging on the hooks of the pack-saddle which
encumbered the bay pack-horse. Father's saddle and the brown pillow were
on Dart, the big grey horse on which he generally carried me, and we were
on the point of making tracks for home.

Preparatory to starting, father was muzzling the dogs which had
just finished what lunch we had left. This process, to which the dogs
strongly objected, was rendered necessary by a cogent reason. Father had
brought his strychnine flask with him that day, and in hopes of causing
the death of a few dingoes, had put strong doses of its contents in
several dead beasts which we had come across.

Whilst the dogs were being muzzled, I busied myself in plucking ferns and
flowers. This disturbed a big black snake which was curled at the butt of
a tree fern.

"Bitey! bitey!" I yelled, and father came to my rescue, despatching the
reptile with his stock-whip. He had been smoking, and dropped his pipe on
the ferns. I picked it up, and the glowing embers which fell from it
burnt my dirty little fat fists. Hence the noise with which my story
commences.

In all probability it was the burning of my fingers which so indelibly
impressed the incident on my infantile mind. My father was accustomed to
take me with him, but that is the only jaunt at that date which I
remember, and that is all I remember of it. We were twelve miles from
home, but how we reached there I do not know.

My father was a swell in those days--held Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East, and
Bin Bin West, which three stations totalled close on 200,000 acres. Father
was admitted into swelldom merely by right of his position. His pedigree
included nothing beyond a grandfather. My mother, however, was a
full-fledged aristocrat. She was one of the Bossiers of Caddagat, who
numbered among their ancestry one of the depraved old pirates who
pillaged England with William the Conqueror.

"Dick" Melvyn was as renowned for hospitality as joviality, and our
comfortable, wide-veranda'ed, irregularly built, slab house in its
sheltered nook amid the Timlinbilly Ranges was ever full to overflowing.
Doctors, lawyers, squatters, commercial travellers, bankers, journalists,
tourists, and men of all kinds and classes crowded our well-spread board;
but seldom a female face, except mother's, was to be seen there,
Bruggabrong being a very out-of-the-way place.

I was both the terror and the amusement of the station. Old
boundary-riders and drovers inquire after me with interest to this day.

I knew everyone's business, and was ever in danger of publishing it at an
inopportune moment.

In flowery language, selected from slang used by the station hands, and
long words picked up from our visitors, I propounded unanswerable
questions which brought blushes to the cheeks of even tough old
wine-bibbers.

Nothing would induce me to show more respect to an appraiser of the runs
than to a boundary-rider, or to a clergyman than a drover. I am the same
to this day. My organ of veneration must be flatter than a pancake,
because to venerate a person simply for his position I never did or will.
To me the Prince of Wales will be no more than a shearer, unless when I
meet him he displays some personality apart from his princeship--otherwise
he can go hang.

Authentic record of the date when first I had a horse to myself has not
been kept, but it must have been early, as at eight I was fit to ride
anything on the place. Side-saddle, man-saddle, no-saddle, or astride were
all the same to me. I rode among the musterers as gamely as any of the
big sunburnt bushmen.

My mother remonstrated, opined I would be a great unwomanly tomboy. My
father poohed the idea.

"Let her alone, Lucy," he said, "let her alone. The rubbishing
conventionalities which are the curse of her sex will bother her soon
enough. Let her alone!"

So, smiling and saying, "She should have been a boy," my mother let me
alone, and I rode, and in comparison to my size made as much noise with
my stock-whip as any one. Accidents had no power over me, I came
unscathed out of droves of them.

Fear I knew not. Did a drunken tramp happen to kick up a row, I was
always the first to confront him, and, from my majestic and roly-poly
height of two feet six inches, demand what he wanted.

A digging started near us and was worked by a score of two dark-browed
sons of Italy. They made mother nervous, and she averred they were not to
be trusted, but I liked and trusted them. They carried me on their broad
shoulders, stuffed me with lollies and made a general pet of me. Without
the quiver of a nerve I swung down their deepest shafts in the big bucket
on the end of a rope attached to a rough windlass, which brought up the
miners and the mullock.

My brothers and sisters contracted mumps, measles, scarlatina, and
whooping-cough. I rolled in the bed with them yet came off scot-free. I
romped with dogs, climbed trees after birds' nests, drove the bullocks in
the dray, under the instructions of Ben, our bullocky, and always
accompanied my father when he went swimming in the clear, mountain,
shrub-lined stream which ran deep and lone among the weird gullies,
thickly carpeted with maidenhair and numberless other species of ferns.

My mother shook her head over me and trembled for my future, but father
seemed to consider me nothing unusual. He was my hero, confidant,
encyclopedia, mate, and even my religion till I was ten. Since then I
have been religionless.

Richard Melvyn, you were a fine fellow in those days! A kind and
indulgent parent, a chivalrous husband, a capital host, a man full of
ambition and gentlemanliness.

Amid these scenes, and the refinements and pleasures of Caddagat, which
lies a hundred miles or so farther Riverinawards, I spent the first years
of my childhood.

CHAPTER TWO

An Introduction to Possum Gully

I was nearly nine summers old when my father conceived the idea that he was
wasting his talents by keeping them rolled up in the small napkin of an
out-of-the-way place like Bruggabrong and the Bin Bin stations. Therefore
he determined to take up his residence in a locality where he would have
more scope for his ability.

When giving his reason for moving to my mother, he put the matter before
her thus: The price of cattle and horses had fallen so of late years
that it was impossible to make much of a living by breeding them. Sheep
were the only profitable article to have nowadays, and it would he
impossible to run them on Bruggabrong or either of the Bin Bins. The
dingoes would work havoc among them in no time, and what they left the
duffers would soon dispose of. As for bringing police into the matter, it
would be worse than useless. They could not run the offenders to earth,
and their efforts to do so would bring down upon their employer the wrath
of the duffers. Result, all the fences on the station would be fired for
a dead certainty, and the destruction of more than a hundred miles of
heavy log fencing on rough country like Bruggabrong was no picnic to
contemplate.

This was the feasible light in which father shaded his desire to leave.
The fact of the matter was that the heartless harridan, discontent, had
laid her claw-like hand upon him. His guests were ever assuring him he
was buried and wasted in Timlinbilly's gullies. A man of his
intelligence, coupled with his wonderful experience among stock, would,
they averred, make a name and fortune for himself dealing or
auctioneering if he only liked to try. Richard Melvyn began to think so
too, and desired to try. He did try.

He gave up Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East and Bin Bin West, bought Possum
Gully, a small farm of one thousand acres, and brought us all to live
near Goulburn. Here we arrived one autumn afternoon. Father, mother, and
children packed in the buggy, myself, and the one servant-girl, who had
accompanied us, on horseback. The one man father had retained in his
service was awaiting our arrival. He had preceded us with a
bullock-drayload of furniture and belongings, which was all father had
retained of his household property. Just sufficient for us to get along
with, until he had time to settle and purchase more, he said. That was
ten years ago, and that is the only furniture we possess yet--just enough
to get along with.

My first impression of Possum Gully was bitter disappointment--an
impression which time has failed to soften or wipe away.

How flat, common, and monotonous the scenery appeared after the rugged
peaks of the Timlinbilly Range!

Our new house was a ten-roomed wooden structure, built on a barren
hillside. Crooked stunted gums and stringybarks, with a thick underscrub
of wild cherry, hop, and hybrid wattle, clothed the spurs which ran up
from the back of the detached kitchen. Away from the front of the house
were flats, bearing evidence of cultivation, but a drop of water was
nowhere to be seen. Later, we discovered a few round, deep, weedy
waterholes down on the flat, which in rainy weather swelled to a stream
which swept all before it. Possum Gully is one of the best watered spots
in the district, and in that respect has stood to its guns in the
bitterest drought. Use and knowledge have taught us the full value of its
fairly clear and beautifully soft water. Just then, however, coming from
the mountains where every gully had its limpid creek, we turned in
disgust from the idea of having to drink this water.

I felt cramped on our new run. It was only three miles wide at its
broadest point. Was I always, always, always to live here, and never,
never, never to go back to Bruggabrong? That was the burden of the grief
with which I sobbed myself to sleep on the first night after our arrival.

Mother felt dubious of her husband's ability to make a living off a
thousand acres, half of which were fit to run nothing but wallabies, but
father was full of plans, and very sanguine concerning his future. He was
not going to squat henlike on his place as the cockies around him did. He
meant to deal in stock making of Possum Gully merely a depot on which
to run some of his bargains until reselling.

Dear, oh dear! It was terrible to think he had wasted the greater part of
his life among the hills where the mail came but once a week, and where
the nearest town, of 650 inhabitants, was forty-six miles distant. And
the road had been impassable for vehicles. Here, only seventeen miles
from a city like Goulburn, with splendid roads, mail thrice weekly, and a
railway platform only eight miles away, why, man, my fortune is made!
Such were the sentiments to which he gave birth out of the fullness of
his hopeful heart.

Ere the diggings had broken out on Bruggabrong, our nearest neighbour,
excepting, of course, boundary-riders, was seventeen miles distant.
Possum Gully was a thickly populated district, and here we were
surrounded by homes ranging from half a mile to two and three miles away.
This was a new experience for us, and it took us some time to become
accustomed to the advantage and disadvantage of the situation. Did we
require an article, we found it handy, but decidedly the reverse when
our neighbours borrowed from us, and, in the greater percentage of cases,
failed to return the loan.

CHAPTER THREE

A Lifeless Life

Possum Gully was stagnant--stagnant with the narrow stagnation prevalent
in all old country places.

Its residents were principally married folk and children under sixteen.
The boys, as they attained manhood, drifted outback to shear, drove, or
to take up land. They found it too slow at home, and besides there was
not room enough for them there when they passed childhood.

Nothing ever happened there. Time was no object, and the days slid
quietly into the river of years, distinguished one from another by name
alone. An occasional birth or death was a big event, and the biggest
event of all was the advent of a new resident.

When such a thing occurred it was customary for all the male heads of
families to pay a visit of inspection, to judge if the new-comers were
worthy of admittance into the bosom of the society of the neighbourhood.
Should their report prove favourable, then their wives finished the
ceremony of inauguration by paying a friendly visit.

After his arrival at Possum Gully father was much away on business, and
so on my mother fell the ordeal of receiving the callers, male and
female.

The men were honest, good-natured, respectable, common bushmen farmers.
Too friendly to pay a short call, they came and sat for hours yarning
about nothing in particular. This bored my gentle mother excessively. She
attempted to entertain them with conversation of current literature and
subjects of the day, but her efforts fell flat. She might as well have
spoken in French.

They conversed for hours and hours about dairying, interspersed with
pointless anecdotes of the man who had lived there before us. I found
them very tame.

After graphic descriptions of life on big stations outback, and the
dashing snake yarns told by our kitchen-folk at Bruggabrong, and the
anecdotes of African hunting, travel, and society life which had often
formed our guests' subject of conversation, this endless fiddle-faddle of
the price of farm produce and the state of crops was very fatuous.

Those men, like everyone else, only talked shop. I say nothing in
condemnation of it, but merely point out that it did not then interest
us, as we were not living in that shop just then.

Mrs Melvyn must have found favour in the eyes of the specimens of the
lords of creation resident at Possum Gully, as all the matrons of the
community hastened to call on her, and vied with each other in a display
of friendliness and good-nature. They brought presents of poultry, jam,
butter, and suchlike. They came at two o'clock and stayed till dark. They
inventoried the furniture, gave mother cookery recipes, described
minutely the unsurpassable talents of each of their children, and
descanted volubly upon the best way of setting turkey hens. On taking
their departure they cordially invited us all to return their visits, and
begged mother to allow her children to spend a day with theirs.

We had been resident in our new quarters nearly a month when my parents
received an intimation from the teacher of the public school, two miles
distant, to the effect that the law demanded that they should send their
children to school. It upset my mother greatly. What was she to do?

"Do! Bundle the nippers off to school as quickly as possible, of course,"
said my father.

My mother objected. She proposed a governess now and a good
boarding-school later on. She had heard such dreadful stories of public
schools! It was terrible to be compelled to send her darlings to one;
they would be ruined in a week!

"Not they," said father. "Run them off for a week or two, or a month at
the outside. They can't come to any harm in that time. After that we will
get a governess. You are in no state of health to worry about one just
now, and it is utterly impossible that I can see about the matter at
present. I have several specs. on foot that I must attend to. Send the
youngsters to school down here for the present."

We went to school, and in our dainty befrilled pinafores and light shoes
were regarded as great swells by the other scholars. They for the most
part were the children of very poor farmers, whose farm earnings were
augmented by road-work, wood-carting, or any such labour which came
within their grasp. All the boys went barefooted, also a moiety of the
girls. The school was situated on a wild scrubby hill, and the teacher
boarded with a resident a mile from it. He was a man addicted to drink,
and the parents of his scholars lived in daily expectation of seeing his
dismissal from the service.

It is nearly ten years since the twins (who came next to me) and I were
enrolled as pupils of the Tiger Swamp public school. My education was
completed there; so was that of the twins, who are eleven months younger
than I. Also my other brothers and sisters are quickly getting
finishedwards; but that is the only school any of us have seen or known.
There was even a time when father spoke of filling in the free forms for
our attendance there. But mother--a woman's pride bears more wear than a
man's--would never allow us to come to that.

All our neighbours were very friendly; but one in particular, a James
Blackshaw, proved himself most desirous of being comradely with us. He
was a sort of self-constituted sheik of the community. It was usual for
him to take all new-comers under his wing, and with officious good-nature
endeavour to make them feel at home. He called on us daily, tied his
horse to the paling fence beneath the shade of a sallie-tree in the
backyard, and when mother was unable to see him he was content to yarn
for an hour or two with Jane Haizelip, our servant-girl.

Jane disliked Possum Gully as much as I did. Her feeling being much more
defined, it was amusing to hear the flat-out opinions she expressed to Mr
Blackshaw, whom, by the way, she termed "a mooching hen of a chap".

"I suppose, Jane, you like being here near Goulburn, better than that
out-of-the-way place you came from," he said one morning as he
comfortably settled himself on an old sofa in the kitchen.

"No jolly fear. Out-of-the-way place! There was more life at Bruggabrong
in a day than you crawlers 'ud see here all yer lives," she retorted with
vigour, energetically pommelling a batch of bread which she was mixing.

"Why, at Brugga it was as good as a show every week. On Saturday evening
all the coves used to come in for their mail. They'd stay till Sunday
evenin'. Splitters. boundary-riders, dogtrappers--every manjack of 'em.
Some of us wuz always good fer a toon on the concertina, and the rest
would dance. We had fun to no end. A girl could have a fly round and a
lark or two there I tell you; but here," and she emitted a snort of
contempt, "there ain't one bloomin' feller to do a mash with. I'm full of
the place. Only I promised to stick to the missus a while, I'd scoot
tomorrer. It's the dead-and-alivest hole I ever seen."

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