24 June: Boreham on Adam Lindsay Gordon

Syllables of Fire
The picturesque figure of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the anniversary of whose death we mark today, is one of the outstanding adornments of Australian history. His name is a name to conjure with; the lustre of his fame is one of our national traditions; and his monument stands in Westminster Abbey. We seem to see him still, "looking like a Viking and riding like an Assyrian of old." The thought of him, dressed in his slouch hat, his blue jumper and his Wellington boots, is part of our Australian heritage. Will Gordon take a permanent and conspicuous place in the broad republic of English letters? And, if so, what is that place to be? Reluctant as we may be to confess it, it is a moot point as to whether we are entitled to regard Gordon as an Australian poet at all. Southey used to say that, no matter how old a man may live to be, the first 20 years make up the biggest part of his life. Gordon lived but few years; his tragic and selfsought end came to hiin at the age of 37, and the first 20 of those years were spent under northern stars. Born in the Azores, he was educated in England, and there his first poems were written. It is intriguing, indeed, to speculate as to what would have become of Gordon had he remained on the other side of the world.

In some ways he was unsuited temperamentally for the kind of life that awaited him in these new lands. He came to Australia, as one of his biographers has pointed out, at a plastic and impressionable period in his own life, and he spent here the formative years of his brief career. "The whole land was then one huge inspiration, for it was Australia in the heyday of its romance; its El Dorados thrilling men to the heart of them with unparalleled excitement; brimful of adventure, brimful of sport; a veritable Land of the Golden Fleece and invaded by a band of Argonauts." This sounds well; but the stern fact remains that, although Gordon threw himself with a will into every phase of Australian life, he was dogged by failure at every step.

Found Small Inspiration In Environment
When his body was found in the scrub that June morning, his slouch hat was on the grass within reach, and, on the hat, a shilling. Whether the poet intended that single coin to be symbolic, we shall never know. But the truth is that Gordon, who longed passionately for wealth, not only failed to make money in Australia, but lost here the thousands of pounds that came to him from England. His sensitive spirit was stung to the quick. If he had studiously cultivated the congenial company of a number of understanding friends, he might have learned to laugh at the malignity of his fate. But he spent much of his time in solitude; he dwelt in the recesses of the bush; the bush, as Marcus Clark has pointed out, can be not only depressing, but funereal, sullen, stern. Gordon should have had a companion within reach who could talk with him, laugh with him, sing with him. But he lived very much alone and the loneliness induced a weird and unhealthy melancholy.

It may be said that, in a critical sense, he was no great poet. He never took the muse seriously. He was lamentably careless; would never take the trouble to revise his verses; and, even when he detected their blemishes or when obvious improvements were suggested to him, he declined to amend them. In his introduction to the Oxford edition of the poems, Mr. Maldon Robb is content to classify Gordon as "a star, not of the first, nor even of the third, magnitude, but, for all that, a star which has opened its soul to us, and which, therefore, we love." And another critic, after admitting that much of what Gordon wrote is not in the strictest sense poetry at all, adds regretfully that, had his later years been more free from grinding toil and nerve racking worry, several of his perfectly-finished pieces indicate that he might have produced work powerful enough to place him among the foremost of the world's great poets. But this, it will be observed, is an airy might-have-been. It may be true; it is impossible to say. On the other hand, it is extremely easy to abandon ourselves to futile lamentations. If such vain regrets are to be made the order of the day, there is yet another which many of us will be tempted to indulge.

Was Gordon More Skilled In Prose?
For is it not a thousand pities that Gordon never seriously gave himself to writing prose? The handful of sketches which his clever pen has bequeathed to us, and the reports of his parliamentary speeches, prove indubitably that he possessed a singular mastery of good, honest, nervous Saxon speech. Moreover, he had studied the science and technique of fiction as he had never studied the science and technique of poetry. He cherished clear-cut and definite convictions as to how a novel ought to be written. His criticisms were illuminative and confident. On this theme he spoke with the accent of a man who is very sure of himself. Mr. Howlett Ross tells us that Gordon considered Dickens to be deficient in thought and without any sensible view as to the principles of life and conduct. He detested Fielding and Smollett, and regretted that Thackeray had shown such contempt for menials. This, he held, was a blot upon the fine tone of that writer's work. Competent judges affirm, Mr. Ross adds, that, had Gordon written sporting novels, he would have made fortune as well as fame.

But, here again, we are in the realm of the might-have-beens. In a work-a-day world like this, we must take things as they are. Now that the magnetic personality of Gordon is fading into the dim perspective of history, it is possible to assess his work with judicial calm. One need have no hesitation in acclaiming him as a poet of singular vivacity, audacity and charm, whose work, despite all its defects, will always be cherished in Australia, and whose influence will afford inspiration and guidance to poets yet unborn. He was, as Henry Kendall finely said, "a shining soul with syllables of fire, who sang the first great songs these lands can claim." He won for himself the affectionate devotion of his contemporaries; he has placed posterity under a heavy obligation; and, all the world over, every reference to his life and work will be accompanied by expressions of gratitude that are as sincere as they are universal.

F W Boreham

Image: Adam Lindsay Gordon