Where the Dead Men Lie/Memoir
BARCROFT BOAKE
To Australians, lovers of letters, the brief and thwarted life of Barcroft Boake must remain always a theme of regret. By education he was poorly equipped for poetry. He found his talent late, and early made an end. His small performance was completed in a period of scarcely more than a year. Dying by his own hand at the age of twenty-six, he achieved little of all that his capacity promised. Yet, had fortune favoured, this ill-starred idealist might easily have won recognition as one of the foremost poets of Australia.
For those who have learned to know him well, admiration of the poet may merge in admiration of the man. With many defects, Boake had no vices. From a hundred little sources flows evidence of his courage, of his generosity, of his unselfish affection, of his simplicity and worth. That shy, moody, dispirited bushman had a heart of gold—his mother's.
Boake's mother was a native of Adelaide, where she was born on 5th January, 1845. Her maiden name was Florence Eva Clarke. She was the only child of her parents; and at the time of her marriage on 7th March, 1865, she had been living with her mother in Sydney, having come thither from Adelaide on the death of her father several years previously. Her father, Henry Clarke, was by profession an accountant, and in many ways she resembled him. Her mother outlived her, and died on 8th August, 1894.
When Florence Clarke married she was twenty years old. She was then of a middle height, rather slender and delicate in appearance; with clear skin, large blue eyes, and beautiful golden-brown hair, long and silken. Her son Barcroft inherited her noticeable Jewish nose and keenly nervous temperament: in manhood he is described as ‘simply a hard masculine likeness of his mother.’
Barcroft Capel Boake, father of the poet, was born at Dublin, Ireland, on 12th November, 1838. His unusual name of Barcroft had been handed down in the family for generations; and came to him from his cousin and godfather, the Rev. Barcroft Boake, D.D., one-time incumbent of Holy Trinity Church, Balaclava, Melbourne. As a lad he gained some experience in photography; and when he emigrated to Australia at the age of twenty he found a profitable living in the business.
The young couple were married at St. John's Church, Darlinghurst, by the Rev. Edward Rogers. They commenced their life together at Vergemont Cottage, Waterview Bay, Balmain; where their first child, Barcroft Henry Thomas, the subject of this memoir, was born on 26th March, 1866. As a boy he was in no way remarkable. A portrait of him at the age of five shows a smiling, sweet-faced child beside a sweet-faced, smiling mother—the resemblance in feature and expression being then, however, less distinct than it was later.
Shortly after Barcroft's birth the home was shifted to No. 330, George-street, Sydney, where his father for long had a photographic studio. Here the family lived two years, removing then to a house purchased at Lavender Bay, on the North Shore of Sydney harbour, where ten peaceful years were spent. When ‘Bartie’ was about nine years old, Mr. Allen Hughan, of Noumea, New Caledonia, paid his father a visit. Mr. Hughan was an intimate friend, and on leaving begged that the boy, to whom he had taken a fancy, might be permitted to go with him to Noumea for a time. The Boakes consented, with the condition that their son should be taught French; and during an absence of two years he acquired a moderate knowledge of that language.
While the boy was in Noumea the Boake family removed to North Willoughby, not far from Sailor Bay, one of the arms of Middle Harbour. Here, on 4th November, 1879, Mrs. Boake died of puerperal fever, after giving birth to twin boys—one of whom died in infancy, while the other, an idiot, lived to the age of fourteen. She had in all nine children: two, a boy and a girl, died in their third year; four daughters are now living.
Mrs. Boake's character is described as combining force and tenderness in a singular and charming degree. She was of cheerful temperament: fond of society, yet preferring the intimacy of home. For a long time after her marriage she continued to study French and music, that she might be able to teach her children. Her death was a keen grief to the family: the irreparable loss altered their whole future. Writing to his friend Mr. Hughan, Barcroft, then thirteen years old, said: ‘Mamma has been taken away, leaving a little baby boy behind—what an exchange!’
His father at this time was prospering in business, and Barcroft grew up a sturdy lad, well cared for. At an early age he could swim and handle a boat. In cricket and football he took less interest; but he was a good tennis-player, and he rode a pony, as well as a bicycle of the old-fashioned pattern. He went to school till he was about seventeen—for a few months at the Sydney Grammar School, and for nearly five years with Mr. Edward Blackmore, in Hunter-street, Sydney. He displayed no unusual ability; and is described as a quiet, reserved boy, yet by no means mopish; fond of reading; noticeably honourable, generous, and constant in his affections. He was particularly attached to his grandmother, Mrs. Clarke, who took charge of the household when her daughter died; and his letters in later years of absence frequently make loving enquiry as to her welfare.
When seventeen years old young Boake was placed in the office of a Sydney land-surveyor, who taught him sufficient draughtsmanship to pass an examination for admission to the Government Survey Department. In July, 1886, after about twelve months spent in the Survey Office as temporary draughtsman, he took the place of field-assistant to Mr. E. Commins, a surveyor whose headquarters were at Rocklands farm, near Adaminaby, N.S.W.
Adaminaby is a small township in the elevated Monaro district, where in parts during winter snow sometimes covers the ground for weeks together. Here Boake spent two happy years. He was just turned twenty, and eagerly welcomed the change from city streets. His health was perfect; his surroundings novel and interesting. He lived, for the most part, the free out-door life congenial to him; and at Rosedale Station Mr. and Mrs. Alex. McKeahnie welcomed him to a home circle for whose members he cherished warm and lasting regard.
From this point there are extant occasional letters from Boake to his relatives and friends, which give more direct insight to his mode of life and thought. Writing from Rocklands to his father on 29th May, 1887, he says—
. . . I had a pleasant ride to-day in and out to Adaminaby in the pouring rain—to church. This was a woman's freak. —— would go, and asked me; and as I can’t refuse a lady as a rule I made a martyr of myself.
. . . Tennis every afternoon
. . . I will give you an extract from my diary for the last fortnight. ‘Got up just as the breakfast was going in. Rushed in just as grace was finished; ate two chops; bullied Miss M—— about the tea being too weak. After breakfast smoke in the kitchen. Did plans till eleven; another smoke; dinner at one—ate a plate of mutton. Another smoke. Mrs. C—— and I play young Boyd and Miss M——; and, strange to say, always beat them. Mrs. C—— retires about nine; I put in the time yarning in the kitchen with Jack and the cook (Chinese) till ten—then bed.’
Of course, on Saturday whole holiday; go to Adaminaby; hear the latest yarn from W——, the publican (mostly discreditable); then home. On Sunday read the papers all day; tennis in the afternoon.
This is the programme, except that we have cutlets for breakfast occasionally instead of chops. I think I have had beef once only since the spring . . .
At this time, of course, winter was approaching—the severe Monaro winter—and the surveying camp had been broken up. Boake felt the round of officework at the farm monotonous after the cheerful changes of the camp. He bore confinement ill at any time, inheriting from his father a predisposition to melancholy which could only be subdued by physical exercise and social excitement. His temperament was sluggish: he was a dreamer and procrastinator—quick to perceive, slow to act—executing task-work reluctantly and mechanically, though developing plenty of fitful energy when spurred by appropriate stimuli.
Of this dreamy habit, apart from his general delicacy of constitution, the chief cause was a weak, slow-beating heart—often met among children reared in the moist and depressing climate of Sydney. And Boake further slowed his slow heart by the excessive use of tobacco. ‘The pipe was never out of his mouth.’ In the mountain air of Monaro, and especially when walking or riding a great deal, he could throw off the tobacco lethargy and appear for the most part cheerful, even gay. But when his body went unexercised, his mind became immediately overcast. Then he smoked to drive away the blue devils, and every pipeful brought another blue devil to attack him. The troubles and disappointments which a more buoyant temperament would have brushed aside oppressed Boake permanently. He saw the anthills in his mental path as mountains. Time after time he felt himself losing his hold on life; and his craving for adventurous physical employment—in part, as he suggests, hereditary—was partly born of an instinct that this way lay salvation.
When at last he returned to depressing Sydney he came, as his father says, to ‘a house of gloom.’ He was unemployed, physically unexercised: mental troubles reacted on his body, and bodily languor on his mind. Always he smoked, smoked, and his heart beat more slowly; till he would sit for hours with his head bent down—speechless, pulseless, almost lifeless. On previous occasions he had roused himself to end a similar lethargy by change of living scene and occupation. This time the conditions were unfavourable; the disease too desperate for any but a desperate remedy. And Boake changed Life for Death.
It must be remembered that Boake received little more than a fair middle-class education (as that phrase was understood in the seventies) and left school at the age of seventeen. His parents were people of more than average intelligence, but with no exceptional culture. His father strung undistinguished rhymes: his mother had literary tastes, but no literary talents. Consequently the rough form of most of Boake's compositions is not surprising. In syntax and spelling he did not often blunder; but he was careless in punctuation, and in his letters—scribbled, of course, only for friendly eyes—the sentences run on with hardly a pause. For convenience I have punctuated the quotations which I make, and have occasionally altered the spelling in conformity with usage: otherwise the matter remains as Boake wrote it.
In 1888 Boake wrote to his father a remarkable letter giving particulars of a mock hanging by which he nearly lost his life. This incident made an indelible impression on his mind, and I have no doubt that in brooding over it he familiarised the idea of suicide by hanging. (The first paragraph is given literatim as in the original.)
Rocklands, Adaminiby,
16th July, 1888.
My Dear Father
it is some time since I let you hear how I was getting on, though I wrote to Grannie and Addie not so long since but have not heard from them for some time, as usual the weather is the all-engrossing topic, we have had one very heavy fall of snow and numerous light ones, the snow was on the ground for four days before it began to thaw, and our poor horses got a starving I can assure you we made a pair of shoes and tried our hands at snowshoeing, it must be grand sport from what I can see of it, we got some awfull spills you will be going along fine, and suddenly your feet will give a jump and shoot straight from under you leaving you on the broad of your back it is extremely amusing for the bystanders, things are very dull everywhere now, just the same old routine of work during the week and spending the Sunday at Rosedale.
Last Saturday night, though, we had high tragedy, when, through a piece of silly foolishness, I was within an ace of losing my life. It has been a bit of a lesson for me not to indulge in foolish practical jokes. Boydie and I were in the kitchen talking and fooling with Miss B—— and young Ted the rouseabout; and I forget what started it, but we said we would both hang ourselves. There was a gamble that they hung the sheep on hanging to a beam with a loose end of rope. I, like a fool, made a slip-knot in it, and, tieing a handkerchief over my face, said good-bye to them all and put the noose round my neck (Boydie was hanging himself with his handkerchief) and let the noose tighten round my throat. Miss B—— ran out of the kitchen round to her room. I was swinging, as I said, with the rope pretty tight round my neck, with my weight on my hands; and the last I remember is Miss B—— leaving.
Then I lost all consciousness of the outer world, but seemed to be dreaming. I felt no pain, but seemed to be pondering on the strangeness of this world and the people, and what a wonderful thing science was. But gradually I seemed to get a feeling of irritation and tried not to think, but I had to; thoughts seemed to crowd before my eyes like the passing of a train, so quickly that it was pain to watch them. Then, I suppose, there was a blank; and the next thing I thought I was on the Milson's Point boat. I could hear water splashing, and felt her gradually slow off as she drew alongside the wharf. Then I knew something had happened to me. I could see people all round me, and I knew at once I was on the boat and had been struck down by heart-disease (Dr. Cox told me once that I had a weak heart) and I dreamily thought, Well, I am going to die at last; and then the boat seemed to be sinking down, down, and I could feel the water rush over me and feel it wet on my cheek. There seemed to be some fearful weight crushing my chest in. It got worse and worse, and gradually I woke to the reality that I was lying on the floor with everyone round me bathing my hands and temples, while I was having a mortal struggle for breath.
Oh! it was an awful struggle—ten times worse than the hanging. I would sink back on the floor, and then suddenly be convulsed and nearly sit up in my struggle to breathe; and they told me the sounds I made were something sickening. I felt as if my chest was smashed in with a blow and would not expand—I never want to go through it again. At last I got better, and was able to swallow a little brandy, and got all right after a time—but my neck! I have a rope mark now all round it, and the next day (yesterday, that is) the muscles were swollen like great ropes, and the headache I had Saturday night and yesterday was enough to drive me mad.
After Miss B——went out of the kitchen Boydie took the handkerchief off his neck, and he and young Ted sat laughing at me. Neither of them knew I had been holding on to the rope with my hands; they both thought I had it tied round my shoulders. When they saw me my hands were stretched by my sides, the fingers just moving convulsively. It was very dark, so they could not see that I was hanging by my neck. At last Ted said, ‘Come on, we’ll cut him down,’ and was very nearly letting me down whop. They made some delay, and Miss B——came back and said, ‘This is beyond a joke, Mr. Boake,’ and still they thought I was shamming; so they cut me down, and it was not till they took the handkerchief off and found I was black in the face, and blood oozing from the mouth, that they found out it was no joke, but real earnest.
I can tell you I gave them a fright. It took nearly half-an-hour to bring me to. I think a very few seconds would have cooked me. Of course, I suppose I was a damn fool to put the rope round my neck, but still a fellow often does things without thinking, but they don’t always have such awful consequences. I am as right as the bank now, barring a red ring round my neck and a big splotch under my left ear where the knot came—so you need not be frightened; but my sensations were so curious that I wish I could explain them to you more accurately.
Give my love to Grannie and Addie, and write soon. I have not heard from you for a long time.
Your loving son,
Bartie.
It is interesting to compare this account with one which is the best example of Boake's meditated prose style. Nearly four years later, and some six weeks before his death, he paid a visit to Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney, and subsequently penned the following sketch, left among his papers, and published in The Bulletin of 28th May, 1892, a few days after his body had been found hanging to a tree on the shore of Middle Harbour.
A BAD QUARTER OF AN HOUR.
I stood on the gallows the other day and read—neatly painted on a beam—the names of those men whom a well-meaning Government has thence helped on their way to the happy hunting grounds. Unfortunately it was daylight at the time of my visit; otherwise I am convinced that I should have been vouchsafed an opportunity of comparing notes with one or more of those gentlemen who, like myself, have enjoyed the advantages of a short shrift and a long rope. .
I have had what the author of ‘Our Mutual Friend’ calls ‘a turn-up with death’ at various periods of a somewhat chequered existence; but never was the contest so prolonged, or the result so doubtful, as on the following occasion. .
Never mind the why, when, or how of the matter: let it suffice that the noose tightened around my throat and severed my connection with the outer world. I no longer possessed a body: nothing was left of me but my head; and that reposed in the centre of a vast cycloramic enclosure whose walls, inscribed with the names and signs of the various arts and sciences, spun round with a waving, snakelike motion that made my eyes throb with a violent pain—nor could I turn them away, hypnotised as I was by the giddy horror of that resistless velocity. .
As I stared at those flying columns of dancing figures I was overwhelmed by a sense of the inutility of man's existence: I perceived the absurdity of his aspirations and the poverty of his knowledge. I reviewed the progress of the centuries—not mentally, but actually—inscribed in detail upon the moving walls of that amphitheatre; and then, just as the triumphant thought came to me that I was about to be vouchsafed a peep into futurity, something snapped, the light died away, and I felt myself sinking down . . . down . . . down . . . .
****
I was on board a ferry-boat which lay near the Milson's Point wharf—the old one where, as a child, I used to watch for my father. I knew perfectly what had happened: we had crashed into one of the outstanding piers, and were sinking fast. I could hear the wash of the waves as they danced over the sponson and broke on the deck, and found myself struggling for life among a mad crowd of shrieking women and shouting men. Suddenly the clank of the engines ceased; and with a scream I leaped towards the land—just in time—for the boiler burst with a roar, scattering boat and passengers to the four winds . . . .
****
I was lying on the floor: friends were round me rubbing my hands and dashing water over my face. I knew what had happened—I was dying; the sword had fallen at last. The doctor always said my heart was affected: now I knew him to be right. Was this Death? How strange it felt to be going . . . going . . . ! ‘Oh! but I didn’t want—I wouldn’t die! I hadn’t said good-bye to Jessie. Where is she?—quick! quick! Oh! I can’t breathe! What's pressing my chest? Let me up! Oh! oh!’ . . . and I came to life. .
They had cut me down in the nick of time. It was only a matter of seconds: I was so far on my journey to the other world that it took half an hour of rubbing and pumping to recall me to earth. They tell me that my first words were singularly appropriate to the occasion: as I opened my eyes I smiled and murmured cheerfully, ‘Ain’t I a fool!’—an opinion of my conduct which I still retain. .
The foregoing account of my short excursion to the debatable land ’twixt life and death reads tamely enough on paper, and in fact has but one very questionable recommendation, that of truth.
Boake had agreed to stay with Mr. Commins for two years; and when, towards the close of 1888, the time expired, he was wholly under the spell of the Bush. At times he complained of its monotony, its hardships; but he always added that he could not again endure a city life. So, although urged to return to Sydney by his father, who wished him to qualify to obtain his license as surveyor, he preferred to take service as boundary-rider at Mullah Station, near Trangie, in the Narromine district. He was influenced by a reluctance to commit himself wholly to a surveyor's career, for though an excellent draughtsman, and fairly competent in the field, his heart was not in the work.
The parting from the friends at Rosedale was affectionate and sad. Boake promised to come back in three years, with a pocket full of money, and then——! His hopes were never to be realised. As the months passed, and one by one rosy dream-castles faded, his constitutional melancholy intensified to morbid gloom. He became more and more despondent, self-absorbed, careless of externals. And at last he ceased to struggle. 
This reproduces, on a somewhat smaller scale, a pen-and-ink drawing by Boake in a Rosedale scrap-book. I fancy that the figures are imitated from some by a more skilful hand.—Ed.
There seems some pathetic prescience in these lines, written by Boake in Miss Jean McKeahnie's scrap-book on the night before he left Rosedale.
GOOD-BYE. 12TH AUGUST, 1888.
Rosedale, my other home, to you I bid
Regretfully one lingering, sad farewell.
We two have met as on that mountain stream
Which, clearly flowing, bathes your furrowed fields,
Two leaflets meet and gently glide along
In friendly company, linked side by side,
When, lo! an eddy or a hidden rock
Remorselessly doth tear them far apart:
Perchance it leaves one stranded on the bank
To shrivel up and wither in the sun,
And bears the other on its widening stream
To fate unknown.
So, Rosedale, you remain, while I go on,
Launched on that treacherous stream that men call Life,
Which bears them helpless over spray-wrapt falls,
O'er sparkling shallows and deep, gloomy pools,
To strand them in oblivion whence they sprung.
It may be that Life's stream, by some strange freak,
May turn and bring me back to clasp again
Your hands outstretched to welcome my return;
To see once more the crossing at the stream,
The green of drooping willows and the plain
Fringed by its border of bold wooded hills;—
Once more at early morn to see the mist
Drawn from the river’s bosom by the sun
Lift up to heaven and vanish like a dream;
Or in the evening by the genial fire,
In merry cadence hear your voices rise,
Telling of pleasures past and joys to come.
But, if I come not, in some idle hour
You may with loit’ring finger turn this page,
Then pause awhile, and give one kindly thought
To him who writes at parting his last prayer—
God guard you! and—good-bye!
From Adaminaby to Trangie is roughly 300 miles; and Boake, who knew nothing of the country, had to find his road as he went. With him travelled young Boyd, who had been his associate under Mr. Commins. Each had only one horse; and a letter to a friend at Rosedale, dated from Mullah in September, 1888, gives some idea of the difficulties of the journey.
. . . We left Ann’s Vale two Sundays after we left you. It was a great ‘chuck-in’ for us stopping there: it did our horses a lot of good. In fact, if it had not been for that we would never have seen Trangie. Besides, Boydie and I were both getting full of travelling: it is not much of a lark, I can assure you.
We got on very well after we left Burrowa, till we got to Molong, where we were going to turn off to go to Dubbo. I knew there must be some shorter road, but did not know where to find it out. Just by the merest chance I went into a baker's for some bread, and happened to ask the man; and, by good luck, he told us he had been up here and knew all the country. So he directed us how to go a back road which cut off a day's journey; but the country was awfully dry—not a blade of grass—and our last day before getting to Narromine we rode the whole day and never saw a blade the whole twenty miles—nothing but the bare ground covered with leaves.
To crown all, we pushed on to get to Narromine for a camp, and got there just at dark, having to turn out at the first place we came to—and in the morning our horses were gone! Well, I sent Boydie one way to enquire if they had gone back through the town, and I went the other way. I walked from eight o’clock till eleven; came back and saw Boydie; no news. I started straight away again and walked till three o’clock, when I came home and had some dinner; and, by Jove! wasn’t I tired! Well, I had a rest till four, and started again, and did not get back till eight o’clock. It took me two hours to come the last two miles. I was never so knocked up in my life. I did not seem to care whether I ever got back. I felt I would have gladly died straight away. Besides, I felt so miserable. To get on so well till just within twenty miles of our destination, and then to meet with a knock like that! If you could have seen me crawling along, hardly able to drag one foot after another, I am sure you would have pitied me. I can assure you I pitied myself.
Well, next day I started out again, but I was so stiff it was misery to walk. Boydie went out to Trangie by rail to see if he could get the loan of a horse from C——. This was on Wednesday. I was just mooching back with some water for tea when I met Boydie with a smile all over his face, and he told me he had not been able to get a horse, but had heard of ours—they had been seen seven miles back on the road we had come, and were going straight away.
Well, we could not get a horse high or low, so the lad started after them on foot. He did not start till after dark, and got five miles on the road, and turned back. He had my heavy boots on, and they blistered his feet, so he took them off and footed it back barefoot. By George! he was about full of it when he got back.
The next day I started at daylight, and, as luck would have it, found them just where Boydie had turned back. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw them feeding up towards me. I fetched them back quick, and we packed up and shook the dust of Narromine off our feet; and I hope I never set eyes on it again . . .
In November, 1888, Boake writes from Mullah.
. . . For the last three weeks we have been camped out lamb-marking and mustering, and I have not been in at the station once during that time except one day to get a fresh horse. We are working very hard at the camp from four o’clock in the morning to dark. I shall be glad when it is over and we can settle down again.
Boydie went to Sydney last Monday. He was very glad to get out of the dust and heat. My word! it is getting hot now. Last Sunday, at four in the afternoon, it was 98° in the shade. It is a terror working in the yards now, but it is nothing to what we got putting out a bush fire the other day. We were all drafting when Will Chapman came galloping up to tell us there was a fire coming across the paddock about a mile away. We all made a rush for horses, and galloped off like mad along a swamp where the grass is four or five feet high, and as dry as a bone. There was a wall of fire coming across like the side of a house. You could not get near the front of it, so we had to start at the sides, and one would rush in with a bush and beat it out till the smoke drove him back, and then another would take his place. After about half an hour I was nearly dead. It was a boiling hot day to start with; and what with the heat of the fire, and smoke, and no water, it was worse than anything I ever experienced before. We stopped the fire by lighting another one in front, and letting it burn back . . .
I am still doing the same old ride round the paddocks. I generally take a rifle now, and shoot kangaroos when I see any . . .
Have a stiff neck from sleeping in the verandah last night. I always sleep there now, so as to get up early. One does not want bed-clothes. I just chuck a rug down and a pillow, and camp on that; and as the day breaks I saddle my horse and off. The only things that disturb me are the possums. They run up and down the verandah and squeak the whole night. One ran up and sat on the eave of the house, and incautiously let his tail dangle over the edge, and I sneaked up and caught hold of it—and if he didn’t jump! He must be going yet.
A month later (10th December, 1888), Mullah is waiting anxiously for the drought to break. Boake writes to his father—
. . . I don’t feel the heat nearly so much as I expected: in fact, I can stand it with much less inconvenience than I could the cold of Monaro. The only thing I feel is the thirst: I never seem to be satisfied.
Times are pretty easy now. Most of the work is over among the sheep, and all I have to do is to ride round about twenty miles of the boundary and see that no sheep are getting bogged at the water. I generally make a start about four in the morning, when it is cool, and get back about ten o’clock. After that, as a rule, I have nothing to do for the rest of the day except pass the time reading, unless I feel inclined to take a ride round the lagoon about sundown . . .
A characteristic letter from Boake to his father may be quoted in full.
Mullah, Trangie,
29th December, 1888.
My dear Father,—Your last letter must assuredly have miscarried, as it is two months or more since I heard from you. From the tone of your letter I should say that the world is treating you better than hitherto. It is about time too.
So there is another inhabitant added to this continent. Poor little beggar! I wonder if he will ever wish he had never been born, like most of us do. I think it is a natural consequence of being face to face with Nature so continually, but the great mystery of human nature often comes before me as I ride about. It seems to me so sad and so disheartening—to toil, with the knowledge of the vanity of it all in our hearts. Civilisation is a dead failure: it only brings these truths more forcibly before us: a savage never thinks of these things.
I have been reading a book that gives expression exactly to the ideas I have been trying to set down here. It is one of Rider Haggard's, called ‘Allan Quatermain.’ This, and the one to which it is a sequel, are really worth getting if you want a real good soul-stirring account of a battle told in most animated and picturesque language. But the best part, to my thinking, lies in two pages of the introduction, which is a sort of little philosophical essay in itself.[1]
I have very easy times now—far too easy, in fact. The less I have to do the more time I have to grumble. Good hard work—physical labour—is the best panacea imaginable for a discontented mind. When I used to be in the yards in the heat and dust all I would think of was how to do the work well and expeditiously and have done with it; but now, from eleven o’clock in the morning I have absolutely nothing to do but kill time. I am up early, and my riding is done by ten or eleven; and I find it very hard to pass the time away; but I believe this will all be over soon, as the stock out back will be in great straits for water soon, and then our joy begins.
I have read your advice, and I wish for your sake and Grannie's I could bring myself to follow it. But oh! I should smother if I were to go back to Sydney again: I should have no heart. There is a curious phenomenon in stock-breeding called ‘throwing back.’ After years and years of careful breeding, you will sometimes find a beast born with all the characteristics of the original stock. In the same way, I believe some of the wild blood of our savage Irish ancestors has been transmitted to me. At any rate, my home is in the bush; and as no good is to be done but on the confines of the settled country, that is where I hope to go within the next year.
I had just finished a letter to Grannie this afternoon just before receiving this of yours. I enclose a slip of paper for her in this. Give my love to all.—Your affectionate son, BARTIE.
(By the bye, I have dropped that, and now adopt the commoner one of Thomas.)
By April, 1889, the monotony of life at Mullah had become unendurable, and at the beginning of May Boake left on a roving expedition northwards. He was accompanied by two brothers named Boyd, one of whom has been previously mentioned as coming with him from Monaro. All three were young and strong, used to a bush life and eager for adventure; and they proposed to carry out Boake's idea of going ‘on the confines of the settled country’ where ‘good is to be done’—that is, where work was easier to obtain, and wages were higher. Moving by easy stages, on 10th May they had reached Brewarrina, some 200 miles from Mullah, on the main stock road from Queensland. Here they ‘spelled’ for a few days, proceeding then towards Barringun with an eye open for a job with travelling stock. And on 16th June Boake writes from Thylungrah, in Queensland, saying that he is going with a drover to the Diamantina to bring back a mob of cattle.
On 11th August Boake writes to his father from Currawilla, Q., reciting some of his first droving experiences—
. . . We are kept going so continually that it is with great difficulty I can snatch these few minutes to let you know I am alive. We are on the road now with eleven hundred head of cattle for Cunnamulla, from Devonport,[2] Diamantina river. We were five weeks mustering on the station.
. . . The cattle have to be watched all night . . . I am lucky, and have the first— from six to eight. Still, as we are going from before daylight of a morning, it makes the hours pretty long. Fourteen hours a day I reckon I have in the saddle, straight off.
. . . Still, this is the only life worth living that I see. No more New South Wales for me, except for a visit. This is the only place where a poor man can get a cheque together in a short time . . .
And the letter closes with ‘love to Grannie and the girls.’
To this period of his life Boake always looked back with keen pleasure. He was now 23 years old, in the prime of youth. No portrait gives a complete idea of him, but at this time he was changing from the bright lad to a thoughtful man. Boake matured slowly, and to the last there was a touch of boyishness in his nature and appearance. In figure he was slim and loosely-knit, rather tall than short. ‘He looked infinitely better on a horse than off,’ says his friend Raymond. His eyes were dark, his hair dark-brown, almost black; and his face was made remarkable by a deep scar on the right brow, the result of a fall in childhood. He has been called him ‘shy, moody, dispirited.’ Listless he seemed often in the Monaro days, and sometimes dispirited; but rather reserved than shy. The moodiness came later.
On 29th August the mob had reached. Windorah, and Boake writes—
Dear Father . . . Enclosed you will find a note in pencil. I don’t know if you will be able to decipher it. The day I wrote it I was very sick, and was bad for three days with a touch of a fever they get out here. At present I have very bad eyes from the flies and dust: everyone gets it.
. . . This is a regular dog's life. Breakfast by starlight; with the cattle till dark; then get up in the night to do two hours’ watch. Still, it has its charms. As a song of ours says—
Still his wild, roving life with its hardships is dear
To the heart of each wandering bush cavalier.
About those letters of intro. It was very good of you to go to so much trouble about me. I don’t deserve it, really. I am very sorry I never got them.
. . . Give my dear love to Grannie and the girls. I often think of you on watch. I am getting good wages; and with a bit of luck, if I get in so far this trip, will see you for a few days somewhere after Xmas.—Your affectionate son, Bartie.
About the middle of October, the cattle were delivered at Cobb and Co.'s station, Burrenbilla, near Cunnamulla (Q.); and Boake writes to his father from that address—
21st October, 1889.
. . . We let the bullocks go yesterday, and went to bed last night with the strange feeling that we had no watch to do. However, it won’t be for long; for we start tomorrow for the Yowah, another of Cobb's stations about 80 miles from here, to bring in a mob of fat cows, which will be drafted here, and then go on to Bathurst. In all probability I shall go with them, so that is four months of the future mapped out. I have a new boss now: the man I came in from the Diamantina with is not going to get any more cattle to drove—he loses too many.
2nd November.
. . . I had to leave this to go after horses, and have not had time to continue until to-day. We are out at the Yowah now, very busy mustering; and hope to be away next week some time. They had to knock off to-day to shoe horses, as they are nearly all too footsore from the stones. It is very rough country here—nothing but stones and scrub—a bit different to the Diamantina, where it is nothing but plains. The cattle here are as wild as hawks, and we are galloping all day long.
The first day we went out to camp about ten miles away. We just took pack-horses, and, as it was very hot, only a blanket apiece. In the middle of the night it started to rain hard, and I lay in two inches of water till morning. Nobody had any coats—only shirts and pants on. We were quite unprepared for any bad weather. We had a job to light a fire, and it was infernally cold; but it cleared up after breakfast. Anthony Trollope, in one of his books about Australia, says: ‘The life of the Australian bushman is one continual picnic.’ He would not have said so if he had put in that night alongside of me.
Oh, well! I suppose a man reaps as he sows. I often grumble at these sort of things, but at the same time console myself by the thought that it was my own choosing. I might have been jogging along in monotonous respectability as a civil servant; but they don’t live, these men—they only vegetate. We have a pleasure and excitement in our work that they never feel. Every day brings something new: no two are alike. There is a charm about this life always in the saddle only those can appreciate who have lived it.
I got dear Grannie's letter. This must do for her and Addie as well as you, for I have to go up to the station presently. I am afraid Grannie must be getting very feeble. Dear old lady! won’t she be glad to see her good-for-naught grandson again! I often think about my prospective trip to Sydney when between the blankets, with the mosquitoes singing a sweet lullaby round my head. I have not decided yet whether I am going to surprise you at Croydon or in town. Don’t be surprised if you see a lanky young man with a cabbage-tree hat on walk into the office and say ‘Hello, Dad!’—for that will be me. I have not altered a bit in appearance—at least, not that I can see. Some time in February we hope to be in Bathurst, when I may be able to run down for a few days.
I got a letter from Addie telling me about her little girl Doris. It is a pretty name. Fancy these two girls married and mothers! It will be right enough as long as they stop at one; but I have seen too many when I was in the Survey with big families and small salaries. Better to keep single than to drag your wife down to the level of a household drudge as many do. Well, my dear Dad, I must say Good- bye. I have a little while yet, but I must devote that to a letter to Mrs. McKeahnie, as they have not heard from me for a long time. Give my love to Grannie and Addie and the girls.
Hoping to see you all in a few months’ time.—Your affectionate son, Bartie.
The Yowah cattle were mustered and brought to Burrenbilla to rest for two or three weeks before the journey to Bathurst. Boake was paid off, with the promise of a job when the cattle started; and came into Cunnamulla to wait for them. Thence he writes to his grandmother on 18th November, 1889—
. . . I have not heard from any of my girls for a long time now; but I told them not to write, as I did not know where I might be. I am staying in this town for a fortnight until Mr. Leeds comes back to start a mob of cattle away to Bathurst. I hope to go with them. It is getting very hot and dry here now, and the sooner I turn my back on Banana-land for a few months the better I will be pleased.
. . . I am enjoying the unaccustomed luxuries of clean sheets and mosquito curtains. It seems quite strange to sleep in a bed once more; but I wish I was on the road again. Lying about doing nothing but smoke does not suit me at all.
Two days later (20th November, 1889), Boake writes to his father—
. . . I feel very lonely here—a stranger in a far land; and the time hangs very heavy.
He proceeds—
It is strange how easily the current of our life is turned. I don’t think in Sydney I could have found the pleasure in life that exists for me here—that is, at times: oftener I feel sick of the whole thing and long for some other country and a more stirring life.
There is a pleasure in a mad gallop; or in watching the dawn of day on a cattle camp—to see the beasts take shape, and change from an indistinguishable mass of white and black into their natural colours; in the dead of night to find yourself alone with the cattle—all the camp asleep, perhaps only a red spark betokening the camp. I always, when I think of it, find something unearthly in this assemblage of huge animals ready at any moment to burst forth like a pent-up torrent, and equally irresistible in their force. When every beast is down, asleep or resting, just pull up and listen. You will hear a low moaning sound rising to a roar, then subsiding to a murmur like distant surf—or, as I fancy, the cry of the damned in Dante's ‘Inferno.’ When the cattle are like that it is a good sign. But in the moonlight this strange noise, the dark mass of cattle with the occasional flash of an eye or a polished horn catching the light—it always conjures up strange fancies in me: I seem to be in some other world.
If I could only write it, there is a poem to be made out of the back country. Some man will come yet who will be able to grasp the romance of Western Queensland and all that equally mysterious country in Central and Northern Australia. For there is a romance, though a grim one—a story of drought and flood, fever and famine, murder and suicide, courage and endurance.
And who reaps the benefit? Not the poor bushman; but Messrs. So-and-So, merchants, of Sydney or Melbourne—or the Mutual Consolidated Cut-down-the-drovers’-wages Company, Limited—or some other capitalist. If you showed them the map half of them could not point out the position of their runs. All they know is that their cheques come in regularly from the buyers; and if the expenses pass the limit they in their ignorance place, they sack the manager and get another easy enough.
I often wonder if a day will come when these men will rise up—when the wealthy man, perhaps renowned inside[3] for his benevolence, shall see pass before him a band of men—all of whom died in his service, and whose unhallowed graves dot his run—the greater portion hollow, shrunken, burning with the pangs of thirst—others covered with the evil slime of the Diamantina, Cooper, and those far western rivers—burnt unrecognisably in bush fires, struck down by sunstroke, ripped up by cattle, dashed against some tree by their horses, killed in a dozen different ways—and what for? A few shillings a week; and these are begrudged them. While their employer travels the Continent, and lives in all the luxury his wealth can command, they are sweating out their lives under a tropic sun on damper and beef.
This is no exaggerated picture, I can assure you. Marcus Clarke has grasped the meaning of Australia's mountains and forests in his eloquent preface to Gordon's poems; but neither he nor Gordon has written about the plains and sandhills of the far west—it remains for some future poet to do that.
I got a volume of Gordon here the other day, and at length had an opportunity of studying his writings in their entirety. I have long been familiar with his most well-known poems. There is no man within the last century who has achieved such lasting fame as he has. His poems appeal not only to one class of cultured minds, as Tennyson or Browning and that lot; but there is not a bushman or drover who does not know a verse or two of ‘How We Beat the Favourite’ or ‘The Sick Stock-rider.’ I call this fame.
Gordon is the favourite—I may say only poet of the back-blocker; and I am sorry to say Emile Zola is his favourite prose writer. His books are published now in very cheap form, and have a tremendous circulation. A strange partnership indeed, for these two men so different in their tone to share popularity! I am afraid after all the bushman is not a very fine animal; but at any rate, even in his most vicious moments, he is far above many of the so-called respectable dwellers in towns.
Shortly after the date of the letter last quoted, Boake was employed, as he anticipated, to travel with cattle from Cunnamulla to Bathurst, N.S.W. He reached Bathurst in March, 1890: the cattle were delivered; and Boake engaged with the drover in charge to take a fresh job. Coming to Sydney, he spent a week with his family at Croydon, and returned—as arranged—to find that the drover had knocked down his cheque in a roaring spree, and had left Bathurst the day before, after selling some of his horses in order to get away.
Boake was disgusted and indignant; and his father pointed the moral of his situation with such effect that he agreed to turn once more to surveying, and in May, 1890, took service with Mr. W. A. Lipscomb, a surveyor employed in the Riverina territory of New South Wales. With Mr. Lipscomb he remained till the end of 1891, cutting up Government land into portions for lease or sale, and preparing plans of the country dealt with—chiefly in the districts of Wagga Wagga, Urana, Tarcutta, and Tumbarumba.
This was the period of Boake's greatest poetic activity. In boyhood he had been used to cap rhymes with his father; and in later days he had composed verses at seasons of special emotion, but without taking his talent seriously. Although a facile rhymer, he always preferred dreaming to creating. Now, however, he was excited by the flattery of Riverina society; and when he found that a newspaper with the literary reputation of The Bulletin would print and pay for his impressions and fancies, he took more pains to rightly embody them. In the pleasure of composition Boake was at times able to banish gloom and anxiety, and even fitfully to nourish the bright hopes of his Monaro days.
Of Boake at this time Mr. Lipscomb says—
He was a good horseman, and a first-class bushman. When he left me and came to Sydney he intended passing the examination for a license as surveyor, and he was thoroughly qualified to do so. In the field he was sufficiently capable, and he was a particularly good draughtsman. His work in the field-books (outlining the topography of the country) was the best I ever saw. He was very temperate—except in the use of tobacco: his pipe was hardly ever out of his mouth. He was fond of reading, whenever he had the chance: a surveyor's life gives little opportunity for study. I remember his devotion to Shakespeare and The Bulletin. His health seemed good; but his habits were solitary, his disposition melancholy—even morose. He made few friends: indeed, the only people I knew him to be friendly with (besides Raymond, my other assistant) were Dr. and Mrs. O’Connor and their daughters, of Connorton, Wagga Wagga.
Mr. L. C. Raymond writes—
I first met Boake when I joined Mr. Lipscomb's survey camp at Terong Creek, N.S.W., in August, 1890; and for sixteen months thereafter we lived and worked together, and slept for the most part within the same 12′ x 15′ calico walls. My first impression of him was also my final opinion. I thought he was one of the most reserved (even grumpy) individuals I had ever met. Not that I think he was selfish, but he was entirely self-absorbed, and brooding continually. On two subjects he would chat willingly—his pleasant memories of Rosedale station and his joyous days as a drover. When the talk led up to life among the cattle, overlanding, cutting out on the camp and so on, he was all right. There he had been happy in his work (he hated surveying); there he was again in a moment happy when his thoughts flew back to old times; and there, perhaps, he once more would have had happiness had he again handled his stockwhip, not as a means of ending his life, but for the purpose of sustaining and enjoying it.
Boake was brimming over with Adam Lindsay Gordon; and I have no hesitation in saying that Gordon was the father of his poetry. We used to chaffingly call him ‘the modern Gordon.’ He usually wrote his verses on any odd scraps of paper and copied them carefully into a MS. book, after which they were generally re-written and handed to me to punctuate before being sent for publication. When he wrote ‘Jack's Last Muster,’ in the metre of ‘How We Beat the Favourite,’ several remarks passed between us comparing the two poems. I laughingly said: ‘You know, if you want to be a second Gordon, you must complete the business properly, and finish up by committing suicide.’ He laughed quietly in reply, and I thought no more of it until some fifteen months afterwards, when I read in The Sydney Morning Herald first a request for information concerning Boake's whereabouts, as he had been missing some days from his home, and next, a few days later, a paragraph saying that his body had been found hanging by that stockwhip which I know he loved right well. Then I remembered my careless words.
The letters written by Boake at this time show how rapidly he was gathering and associating ideas, how his literary faculty was stimulated by recognition and praise, and how strongly he vibrated to pathetic or tragic impulses. On 11th January, 1891, Boake writes telling how Wagga society appreciated some satirical lines he had composed concerning certain of its members. On 16th February, 1891, Boake writes to a sister from the survey camp at Carabosh, near Germanton—
Dear Addie,—To-night is the proudest moment of my life. I feel that at last I have my foot on the first rung of the ladder that leads to fame. I have just got a letter from the editor of The Bulletin, acknowledging some verses. This is what he says: it is short, but very sweet—
Dr. Sir,—Shall be glad to publish your pretty and melodious verses: they may be kept for Xmas and illustrated. Cheque will follow in due course. Hoping to hear from you shortly. Yrs., &c., J. F. Archibald.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I got it—I was so surprised . . . This letter is rather egotistical; but I felt I must write to some one or die.—Your loving Bartie.
Yet there is preserved from about this period a fragment of a letter containing the statement: ‘I myself believe with Tolstoi that the sooner the race dies out the better for all concerned.’ Boake's physical tendency to melancholy was too strong to be permanently overpowered by any mental reaction.
On 25th July, 1891, Boake writes to his father from the survey camp at Mundawaddery, recording an incident which impressed him deeply—
. . . I suppose you saw by the paper that the floods in this part of the country have been without precedent in the recollection of the oldest settlers. We arrived at Brookong and camped there on the Thursday before the memorable 12th July. It began to rain on Friday, and that night 120 points fell. All day Saturday it poured, and the lamb-markers were working all through it. On Saturday night Mr. Dixon, the sheep-overseer, came in from the camp at Green's Gunyah, and told us that they had been up to the waist in water all that day crossing sheep, and that the creek was rising very fast.
The buildings at Brookong are scattered all over the place; the manager's house, bachelors’ quarters, men's huts, and kitchens being down near the creek, while Mr. Halliday's house and garden, the stables, and the office and store, are a couple of hundred yards away. Raymond and I were installed in the old schoolroom, which stands away by itself from the store. We used it for an office, and slept in the bedroom adjoining. Mr. L. had a room in the big house across the garden from us. He used to walk over to Mr. Grierson's (the manager's) house for meals, while we used to go to the barracks.
On Saturday night the water was up in Grierson's back yard; but we never expected to see it as it was on Sunday morning. Staines, the storekeeper, whose room was just opposite the schoolroom, accompanied us down to look for breakfast. In order to get to the barracks we had a hundred yards of water up to our knees. When we got down, there was six inches of water on the kitchen floor, and it was just commencing to ooze into the dining-room. It was running like a mill-race in the passage between the two houses.
After breakfast Syd. Welman, Staines, and I got the boat out and started to take the letters out to the mail. The mail change is about a mile away, but the water was right over the plain. Syd. and I took the oars, and away we went. All the time it was pouring in torrents and blowing half a gale. It was great fun pulling over the tops of fences and dams in and out among the trees, but we could not get right over to the road. We got the boat stuck, and had to get out and pull her along. Now and again we’d come to a deep gutter, and down one of us would go over his head. It was beginning to get rather chilly by the time the coach came along. It would have made a striking picture: the boat in foreground and the scarlet coach with its four horses coming towards us—sometimes with the water over the wheels and horses almost swimming—and then, as far as the eye could reach, the plain one sheet of water. We were wishing we could have had a photo of the scene.
I tell you, when we got back to Brookong we were glad to get dry things on. We three started a fire in the school-room and stayed there. The water rose all day, and at night they were rowing the boat between Grierson's house and our residence. At eight o’clock Sunday night it was into the store, and we had to turn to and shift two tons of flour and one of sugar into a place of safety. The lamb-markers had all come into the station, and everything seemed pretty safe as far as the men were concerned.
. . . We went to bed on Sunday night with three inches of water in our rooms. It never rose any higher, and on Monday was beginning to fall. Then the bad news came. A man coming in from Green's Gunyah hotel, where the lamb-markers had been camped, reported finding two of them dead on the main road about two miles from Brookong. Some of them had left the public-house to come in on Sunday in a waggonette. They were all drunk, and these two unfortunates had dropped out of the cart and lain there and perished—how, can never be ascertained. The coroner would not come out: he was afraid of the creek. He wired out to bury them, and held an enquiry a week afterwards; but their comrades swore that they were all so drunk they remembered nothing. Yet they were able to drive ten miles in that fearful storm, and never hit a tree or miss a gate.
On Monday night news came in from the out-station that a young fellow named Arthur Biscay was missing They had been scouring the country, but it was not until Tuesday that they found him, also lying dead in the bush. They had all left the Gunyah together, but Arthur had slipped away from them and was never missed. He was riding a young thing, and the general opinion is that he got off and it pulled away from him; for they found a lot of hoof-marks of a struggling horse, and also Arthur's hat. When it got away he walked on and on until he got exhausted and fell down. He then dragged himself along on his stomach for about a hundred yards, and then, burying his face in his hands, lay to sleep—and never woke. He was a fine young fellow, a great horseman, and the most popular man on the station.
They would not bury him until the parson could come out, which was on Wednesday. Every man on the station was at the funeral. Including visitors, there were ninety men followed his body to its grave at the wool-wash. We drove; but all who had no horses had to wade through mud and water up to their knees. It was a most impressive ceremony, rendered so by the earnestness of Arthur's comrades, who had worked with him, played with him, and whose rough hands had fashioned his coffin and dug his grave, and who now followed him to it in the silence of the brilliant morning, broken only by the shrill tolling of the bell which had rung him and them out to work so many times. They put the coffin in a low waggonette: one of them perched himself on the side and drove the horses. Two poor little wreaths of jonquils and geraniums, twined with the lustrous leaves of the kurrajong—all the flowers afforded by the garden—reposed on the shell. The buggies fell into line, the horsemen and footmen four deep, and the cortège moved off down the creek. The most pathetic touch in the whole thing was that one of the boundary-riders led Arthur's horse immediately behind the remains of its master, saddled, with the stirrups crossed dejectedly over its back. Its presence brought so sharply home the fact of its one-time rider's absence. We take Death as a matter of course, and a slight thing such as that serves to remind us of its awful reality.
Everybody was very much affected at the grave. I saw one young fellow crying manfully: I, for one, was not very far off it. The three victims of that awful night lie side by side in the little knot of graves on Brookong Creek; but I think it will be many a long day before the recollection of the 12th July, 1891, fades from the minds of the dwellers in Riverina. I have only spoken of what came within my own experience; but every station was flooded, and lives lost besides those at Brookong.
. . . I was very pleased to hear of Evie's success. I suppose the scholarship entitles her to go to the High School for a certain period, and prepare for the University. I wish to God I could change places with her . . . I have very little time at present for writing—I do long sometimes to be able to sit down quietly and write, but everything I do is done in snatches. To have a quite room with an easy chair and a desk, and no one to disturb me, is the height of my never-to-be-gratified ambition.
I ought to have written to dear Grannie, but I have spun this out so long that there is no time. You must give this to her to read instead . . . Give my love to Addie and the girls.—Yours affectionately, Bartie.
Boake wrote some unremarkable verses ‘In Memoriam, Arthur Biscay,’ and sent them to The Albury Banner, which had published a short time previously a metrical address ‘To “Rolf Boldrewood”’—Boake's first printed composition. The latter to some extent echoes Gordon's dedication to ‘Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes’—itself an echo of Swinburne's dedication to ‘Poems and Ballads’—and commences:
I cannot climb Fame's tower and ring
An ever-sounding chime;
I only have the art to string
Poor phrases into rhyme:
Nor can I strike that subtle chord
Of melody flung heavenward,
Like those whose names are deeply scored
Upon the walls of time.
However faint, I yet may catch
A gentle undertone;
However humble, yet a snatch
Of song to call my own—
An echo from that Alpine height
Too steep for me, yet still in sight,
Where, emulating swallow flight,
The songs of these have flown.
Ten verses follow referring to scenes in ‘Rolf Boldrewood's’ novels, and the address closes—
Chieftain! whose banner is unfurled
Upon the Murray's banks;
You who throughout the lettered world
Have won undying thanks—
A veteran's honours on your breast:
Deal gently by these lines addressed
By one who must remain at best
A private in the ranks.
My Dear Father,—Did you ever lie on your back in the sun and have beautiful thoughts, that you can’t put into words, come to you? That is what I was doing this evening. You just lie down and fix your eyes on the red crest of the old rock, and wait. Presently you feel yourself melting away, and then the body stops behind and away you go—somewhere—I don’t know where—fairy-land, I suppose—that's where all the lovely things come from. Some men go and bring back beautiful stories; others, poetry: some only wake up with a sigh and have the recollection. I was thinking how nice it would be if one could always stay young, and not have too much work to do, and just lie in the sun. But then the sun doesn’t always shine: besides, it would get monotonous. This is apropos of nothing at all; only I have just been musing under the stars while I waited for one gentleman named Achenar to come to his E. elongation. We are having the most perfect weather possible: it is simply joy to be alive. If it would only always be spring!
In December, 1891, Boake's engagement with Mr. Lipscomb ended, and he came to stay with his father and sisters at Croydon, Sydney: walking in unexpectedly one morning with a light portmanteau, and a ’possum-rug swag strapping up a few small articles—amongst them the lash of a stockwhip. His father continues the story—
When Bartie wrote to say that Mr. Lipscomb was breaking up camp, and he intended coming to Sydney, my heart sank within me, and I wished something might happen to deter him. The presentiment of evil was not without cause. I felt that he was coming full of spirits to a house of gloom, and feared the effect of my own despondency upon his sensitive nature. For my business had failed and left me embarrassed with debt, and I saw no prospect of re-establishing myself. So my welcome to him was dashed with bitterness; and, though I strove to conceal it, my depression must have made itself apparent.
One evening, shortly after his arrival, he came out to me on the verandah with his pipe, and said: ‘Addie tells me things are not very blooming with you, Dad. Well, I’ve got £50, and that will square off the household debts, at all events.’ I accepted the money after a faint struggle, being vaguely conscious that I was wrong to do so; and he paid it into my bank account next day.
<He was for a few days alert, cheerful, and happy; and he had what in one of his letters he expresses a wish for—‘a quiet room and an easy chair’ to sit at work in; but gradually I could see that the oppression of the surroundings made itself felt. He thought he could get some small employment sufficient to keep him going; but he was so wanting in ‘push’ and pretension that he soon saw this was next to impossible His grandmother was invalided and confined to her bed; and family troubles helped to weigh us down. I myself was hopeless about everything, and quite unfit to cope with the melancholia that I plainly saw oppressed him. I have sat in a room with him for perhaps hours at a time, silent, and enraged with myself that I could not say something cheerful. I have made efforts to rouse him, but their stilted artificiality only sickened me the more, and produced no effect upon Bartie Once I suggested that he should join me in business somewhere in the country. He just raised his head, but answered never a word.
He remained with us from December till May, his only earnings being a few guineas received for odd contributions to The Bulletin. His last composition was ‘An Easter Rhyme,’ published in that journal on 7th May, 1892.
AN EASTER RHYME.
Easter Monday in the city—
Rattle, rattle, rumble, rush!
Tom and Jerry, Nell and Kitty,
All the down-the-harbour ‘push'—
Little thought have they, or pity,
For a wanderer from the bush.
Shuffle, feet, a merry measure!
Hurry, Jack, and find your Jill!
Let her—if it give her pleasure—
Flaunt her furbelow and frill!
Kiss her while you have the leisure;
For to-morrow brings the mill.
Go ye down the harbour winding
'Mid the eucalypts and fern,
Respite from your troubles finding:
Kiss her till her pale cheeks burn;
For to-morrow will the grinding
Millstones of the city turn.
Stunted figures, sallow faces,
Sad girls striving to be gay
In their cheap sateens and laces . . .
Ah! how different 'tis to-day
Where they're going to the races
Yonder—up Monaro way!
Light mist flecks the Murrumbidgee's
Bosom with a silver stain:
On the trembling wire bridge is
Perched a single long-legged crane;
While the yellow, slaty ridges
Sweep up proudly from the plain.
Somebody is after horses—
Donald, Charlie, or young Mac—
Suddenly his arm he tosses;
Presently you'll hear the crack,
As the symbol of the cross is
Made on Possum's steaming back.
Stirling first! the Masher follows—
Ly-ee-moon and old Trump Card;
Helter-skelter through the shallows
Of the willow-shaded ford:
Up the lane and past the gallows.
Driven panting to the yard.
In the homestead, what a clatter!
Habits black and habits blue.
Full a dozen red lips patter:
‘Who is going to ride with who?'
Mixing sandwiches and chatter;
Gloves to button, hair to do.
Horses stamp and stirrups jingle,
‘Dash the filly! won't she wait?'
Voices, bass and treble, mingle.
‘Look sharp, May, or we'll be late!'
How the pulses leap and tingle
As you lift her featherweight!
At the thought the heart beats quicker
Than an old Bohemian's should—
Beating like my battered ticker
(Pawned this time, I fear, for good).
Bah! I'll go and have a liquor
With the genial Jimmy Wood.
The comparison between city and country indicates whither his thoughts were turning. It was his habit to show me his verses before sending them for publication, but he never showed me this piece.
About this time he received a letter from the country, and in reference to it said to one of his sisters: ‘I have had rather a knock to-day. I hear that my best girl is going to be married.’ He said no more than this, and this much was unusual; for, beyond general impressions, he never confided his loves or friendships to any of us.
Things had gone from bad to worse, till I had given up making any effort to rouse him. In his state of mind at that time he could not have had a worse companion than myself. The sight of him was a pain to me, and probably to see me pained him; and our deep mutual affection made matters worse. For the last fortnight in April he used to come into my office daily to assist me in any small way; but I had really nothing for him to do
The last time I saw him in life was at breakfast on 2nd May, 1892. As usual, I was moodily and silently leaving the room, and I glanced furtively at him (as I often did—I suppose in the hope of seeing some improvement). He raised his head, and our eyes met. This was so rare that I remarked it; and the effect remained with me for some few moments after leaving the room. Had I been a woman I should have returned and by some means or other extorted his confidence; for there was meaning in his glance, though he himself may not have intended it. I now know it was his farewell.
The next eight days passed in enquiries as to his where-abouts, but I soon felt sure that the discovery would only be a miserable one. His grandmother and I used to discuss his absence, only disagreeing as to the ‘how.’ She said his body would be found in the harbour. I said No, for he was a swimmer, and swimmers do not usually drown themselves. Yet my revolver was in its place; and I knew Bartie had none. On 10th May, as I came to my office, I saw one of the Water Police at the door, and realised that the end had come. My mind naturally turned to drowning, and it was some time before the man made the mode of death clear to me. The place Bartie chose was on the shore of Long Bay, one of the arms of Middle Harbour. His body was found, suspended by the lash of his stockwhip from the limb of a tree, by a man engaged in clearing the bush for a proposed sewer. So secluded was the spot that he might otherwise have hung there for months.
At the coroner's inquest a verdict of suicide was returned. I was required to identify the body, which I could only do by the letters ‘F.E.B.’ (his mother's initials) tattooed on the left arm by Assimul, a black-boy from Noumea. The police handed me two library tickets found in a pocket. On the backs was written in pencil:—
Dear Father,—Write to Miss McKeahnie.—Your loving son, BARTIE.
Give ‘Jack Corrigan’ and ‘Featherstonhaugh’ to Mr. Archibald; he will pay you for them.
I did as desired, and had the body conveyed to the North Sydney cemetery, where it was buried.
Boake's suicide was an appeal to Death to end his hopelessness as Life had ended hope. For him, of course, the wisdom of the act was conditioned by the circumstances: he could no other than he did. I have already indicated what those circumstances were. A weak heart and sensitive brain brought him into the Debatable Land: tobacco led him to the edge of the precipice. The memory of the mock hanging at Rocklands was always tempting him to look down the dizzy depths. He looked and drew back; looked and drew back;—then, to aid the pressure of daily worries and the prepossessions of a lifetime came the blow to his lover's dreams, and, looking, he leaped.
The burial-ground where Boake lies is situated in an elevated part of North Sydney, some half-hour's journey from the city proper. It is a small enclosure, thickly studded with the grotesque monuments conventionally associated with grief. Here and there a poorer grave, adorned with shells and coloured pebbles, more impresses the stranger: it is like the rudimentary art of a bower-bird, yet so pitifully earnest. Near the western boundary lies a narrow plot with plain stone kerbing, and this inscription on a marble slab—
26TH MARCH, 1866
BARCROFT HENRY BOAKE
2ND MAY, 1892
And one reflects on the world of impotent potentialities that died with the baffled idealist beneath.
It is no wonder that the Earth
Heaps shining Spring on Spring;
That flowers bud in tender birth,
And ever new birds sing:
This is the harvest-home of woe
From buried ecstasies below.
A mother's hands let flowers fall
On little graves she loved:
The Earth, who loves and mothers all,
With the same impulse moved,
Doth sorrowfully every year
Strew flowers above her children dear.
A nation chants a threnody
For heroes laid to rest:
’T is echoed back eternally
From Earth's sob-swelling breast.
Listen! the birds repeat a dirge
For great souls passed beyond the verge.
When youth and maid in blither times,
When Thoughts were less than Things,
Brought in the May with joyous rhymes,
Dances and carollings,
The merry month seemed full of cheer;
But, ah! ’t was borne upon a bier.
And so, to minds attuned with it,
The eternal rhythm doth sound
Lament for graces infinite
Hid in the hollow ground:
The most delicious draught of joy
The World-Grief will with tears alloy.
Thus every hope destroyed in life
In death has left its sign:
The All hath conquered in the strife
Though Each for ever pine:
A moment means eternity,
A sand-speck all infinity,
And from this poor humanity
We argue the Divine
- ↑ I quote a few sentences to show the drift of this:—‘Ah! this civilisation, what does it all come to? . . . It is a depressing conclusion, but in all essentials the savage and the child of civilisation are identical . . . Civilisation is only savagery silver-gilt . . . So, when the heart is stricken, and the head is humbled in the dust, civilisation fails us utterly. Back, back, we creep, and lay us like little children on the great breast of Nature, that she perchance may soothe us and make us forget, or at least rid remembrance of its sting. Who has not in his great grief felt a longing to look upon the outward features of the universal Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across the sky, and hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore; to let his poor struggling life mingle for awhile in her life; to feel the slow beat of her eternal heart, and to forget his woes, and let his identity be swallowed in the vast imperceptibly, moving energy of her of whom we are,’ etc.—Ed.
- ↑ Apparently Davenport Downs.
- ↑ I.e., in the coastal district ; as opposed to outside, or out back—in the interior.