| <6 September 1918>
|
| <"Such is Life.">
| <(Reviewed by "Vigilant.")>
|
| The Blatchfords, both father and daughter have a
| queer little habit of dragging in an attack of
| influenza as an excuse for reviewing a book. Now, as
| it's plain enough that excuse won't wash as a reason
| for not reviewing a book - or for not
| reviewing it six months ago - here
| goes for the genuine truth, which is, that having
| failed in all efforts to beg, borrow, or steal a
| copy, I simply put off reading it till luck should
| turn my way. At last it has done so, and the prized
| volume reposes on my shelf. Now, I am trebly anxious
| to see the bookshelves of all my friends similarly
| embellished, first, for my own sake -
| I don't want to lose my own copy; secondly, for their
| sakes; and lastly, but by no means least, for the
| sake of the author's memory.
| Tom Collins, or, to give him his real name, Joseph
| Furphy, is no longer in the land of the living. He
| died at Claremont (W.A.) some years ago, but since
| his death two works from his pen have been placed
| before the Australian public - one a
| book of poems, which was reviewed in this column some
| eighteen months ago, and the second edition of
|
"Such Is Life,"
| which appeared towards the end of last year. The
| first edition was published about fifteen years ago,
| and was practically confined to literary circles.
| This may, perhaps be discouraging to the average
| reader, but there were reasons. For one thing, the
| Australian prejudice against Australia has decreased
| slightly since then, and tastes generally have
| changed. The style of the book is unconventional.
| Fifteen years ago unconventionality bordered upon
| indecency; today it is rather a virtue than
| otherwise.
| Tom Collins decided - not at the
| request of friends, but, he tells us, in direct
| opposition to such entreaties - to
| tell Australia something about Australia. In doing
| so, he tells us about himself, which amounts to the
| same thing, for "Tom IS Australia." He picks out from
| his old diary - one for the year 1883
| - six days, and amplifies the record
| for our benefit.
| Himself he introduces as the Deputy Assistant
| Sub-Inspector, travelling the Riverina on official duty.
| By the way he meets with other travellers
| - chiefly ox-conductors, as the drivers of
| bullock teams are politely called. The summer of 1883
| was a dry one. The grass on the stock routes was
| eaten to the dust, and each night saw a scramble of
| teamsters for quiet corners of the great squatters'
| runs. This, of course, was an illegitimate operation,
| and involved a trespass penalty of a shilling a head
| for teams of from a dozen to twenty bullocks. And to
| the carefully screened camp fires of the
| bullock-duffers we are introduced by Tom Collins
| - genially, if roughly, or, as he himself
| puts it, in Bedouin fashion
|
Stories are told, reminiscences exchanged,
| and scandal swapped for our edification. Yarns about
| duffing teams, and cleverly out-witting the
| squatters' henchmen, and other yarns about being
| neatly trapped by the same henchmen, take pride of
| place, but as the fire burns down to the embers and
| the bullocks one by one lie down with that contented
| sigh which denotes fullness, the talk drifts to more
| serious aspects of life - stories of
| struggle and failure, of sacrifice and
| disappointment, till finally sleep claims even the
| most garrulous. So we get a sort of
|
| Canterbury Tales -
| but all our own, all Australian, and all
| deeply tinged with reality. In fact we learn the
| difference between the real and the realistic. It is
| not so much a matter of truth or fiction, but of art
| against sham.
| But the stories, grave and gay, we must leave to
| the reader's own judgment. We feel sure he will laugh
| at the misadventures of the man who lost his clothes,
| and if he doesn't experience more than a temptation
| to tears when he reads of the loss of Rory
| O'Halloran's child, he's a harder man than most
| - harder than it's good for man to
| be.
| But life is not all laughter and tears. There
| remains that most valuable of human moods, far
| removed from either - the
| contemplative. And here Tom Collins excels. The
| solitary campfire, the broad plain devoid of any
| other human speck save the author's self, are the
| scenes of wonderful dialogues betwixt him and his
| pipe - with the pipe doing most of the
| talk. Here is a fragment of one of the pipe's
| discourses:
|
|
| This has the keen-visioned directness of Shaw, and
| even if it falls a trifle short of him in sparkle and
| brilliance, it also lacks the suggestion of
| tongue-in-the-cheek that, against our better judgment,
| we cannot quite separate from Shaw's criticisms of
| society.
| At the risk of copyright infringement we feel
| constrained to let the pipe talk on.
|
|
| Truly, yes, Tom Collins had a big message to
| deliver, and right well is it delivered. Ernestly is
| it to be recommended to all, but more especially to
| two classes of people - the
| doctrinaire gentlemen who imagine that the essence of
| Labor philosophy can be crystallised in a mouthful of
| slogans, or a sort of apostles creed in which 'take
| and hold' is substituted for 'descended into Hell',
| and the 'pommies' (English and Australian born) who
| imagine that an Australian book consists of a jumble
| of stupid stories about stupid people trying to run a
| stupid farm in the stupidest possible way, and who
| incidentally talk a stupid variety of broken English
| never spoken outside the
|
| "Bulletin" Office.
| Books for Students.
| Here are a few books the
|
| "Westralian Worker" has now in
| stock and recommends to speakers and students:
| -
| "History and Freedom of Thought" by
| Prof. J.B. Berry. A wonderful, future, and maybe it
| is prophetic ledge. The subject is traced from Greece
| and Rome, through the dark, Middle Ages, past the
| Renaissance and the Reformation, into the present
| day. Cloth, 2/; posted, 2/3.
|
"Outline of
| Modern Working Class History" by Will Craik.
| Reviewed in this column on July 19. The volume is
| notable for two reasons. In the first place it
| presents in a convenient manner an enormous mass of
| facts not otherwise available in collected form
| - if we exclude Sidney Webb's
|
"History of
| Trade Unionism," which is a much more
| ponderous work. Secondly, it is an example of union
| activity well worthy of imitation. Price 1/3; posted,
| 1/4.
|
"What Means
| This Strike?" by Daniel de Leon. A great
| pamphlet, giving a characteristic exposition of the
| class war. One of the best ever written. Paper, 3d.;
| posted 4d.
| "Betrayed," a propagandist play by
| Adela Pankhurst. This great play abounds in thrilling
| incidents, in smarting satire, in shaking pathos. It
| touches almost all present-day problems. It deals
| with the Now and the Future, and maybe it is
| prophetic. There is not only Home Rule and Labor
| Rebellion in this book, but interwoven throughout are
| War, Peace, Strikes, Religion, Charity, Imperialism,
| Martyrdom, Treatment of Soldiers, Women's Suffrage,
| Militarism, Morality, Political Intrigue, Police
| Court Trials, I.W.W.-ism, Socialism, Syndicalism,
| Employerdom; all, all That is With Us and the
| Spectral are here. Paper, 1/6; posted, 1/7.