Alfred Buchanan

“ The proprietor’s virtue, the editor’s virtue, the writer’s virtue, are synonymous, among members of the profession, with the ability to produce a readable, a saleable, and an otherwise valuable article. No one blames a lawyer for advocating a cause in which he does not believe; no one censures a grocer for selling a brand of tea which he does not personally like; no one objects to a carpenter putting up houses in which he would not care to dwell. Why should the newspaper be accused of unfairness when it does what is best for itself? Like every private individual, it must keep within bounds. ”

“ For him it is dead; its embers lie strewn about the pavement that runs past London newspaper offices, and are trampled under foot by the indifferent millions on their passage to and fro. The thoughtful and clever Australian, looking to the prevailing signs of the times, looking to the attitude of Downing Street, of Fleet Street, and of Belgravia, begins to pin his faith to a future that is not the future of the old world, but of the new. ”

“ The political Imperialist reduces everything to a formula. He may deal in high-sounding phrases, but he does not mean them. He may not tell his audience, but he tells himself that a certain course of action pays best. He has no illusions. He is not an idealist. He does not pretend to be heroic. His eye is ever upon the main chance. So far from being a buttress of Imperialism he is in reality its chief danger—the [Pg 288] chief danger, that is to say, to its existence as a permanent factor in the life of the world. ”

“ One of the merits of Gordon, and one that must tend to make the memory of the man loved, even more than his poetry is admired, is the habit of thought which reflects a fine and clear and elevated temperament; a temperament, that does not lend itself to vice; a temperament, in other words, that is refined. To say that Gordon was so constituted is not to say that he lacked emotional strength or force. He had abundance of either. He had also passion, though it was a passion that ran to self-restraint, to fatalism, and to sombre thought. It never brought him to realism, or even to the verge of it. ”

“ The men of Melbourne live in starched shirts and expensive broadcloth. They cling tenaciously to that fading relic of an earlier civilisation—the bell-topper hat. Social life in the city would be impossible without one. The Universities keep up their quota of students, whether the parents can afford to pay or not. The theatres can attract audiences even for a performance of Wagner, or a revival of Shakespeare. The city fathers set an example of dignity to the rest of Australia. The politicians rarely call each other bad names, and never indulge in free fights on the floor of Parliament. ”

“ The Imperialist plays an important part in the life of Australia. His influence is to be detected everywhere. It is not always proclaimed in words or manifested in deeds; but, like a subtle essence, it runs through every political and social institution of the country. No one can pretend to understand what goes on in this part of the world unless he makes allowance for the curious blending of the Imperialistic with the local point of view. The two currents do not always flow in unison; but if it were a question of opposing forces, the Imperialist would always carry the day. ”

“ The idea, if it exists, is amusingly erroneous. How do the attendances at Club cricket compare with the attendances at local race meetings? How does the sprinkling of enthusiasts at the one fixture look beside the tens of thousands, who, week in and week out, follow the racing game in every centre of population in the Commonwealth? An international cricket match will always draw a crowd; but international cricket matches are few and far between. The truth is that the speculation fever, the gambling fever, the fever to which the horse acts as the main irritant, runs in the blood of the people. ”

“ The celebrated English actor of the play-bills is, as often as not, celebrated only in the lively imagination of the entrepreneur who brings him out. He comes, however, with a certain flourish of trumpets and glamour of romance. The very fact that he hails from a distance of 12,000 miles is an aureole round his head. He can be sure of a good reception, of an interested, expectant audience. If he has any colourable qualities, they will be loudly, even rapturously, applauded. If he is very indifferent, or if he is unspeakably bad, he will scarcely be told so—at least not at first. ”

“ Sydney by day is the real Sydney, the working Sydney, and like every other place in which men work and congregate, it has its dull and drab and depressing features. But the strangely marked personal characteristics are there still. They have taken on new phases, and they make a different kind of appeal. Your mistress has no longer the sparkle in her eyes and the diamonds on her brow; she no longer scintillates to dazzle you, and no longer challenges you to admiration by her life and movement. ”

“ Miss Mack’s verses to Sydney are the kind of tribute one would wish to pay to a lover of happier days. For that reason they may awake some kind of echo in the breasts of many hundreds of persons who will confess to a fondness for Sydney, but who are indifferent to the ways and methods of the lofty rhyme. For the place has a strong personality. One never thinks of it as merely so many houses and so many people. ”

“ But there are people—anxious, untiring, well-meaning people—who are not satisfied. It is not enough that Australia should have shewn its feelings in the only way in which they can be shewn. It is not enough that the country should have sent soldiers to the war, should have yelled itself hoarse for the cause in which they went, and should have rioted with frantic enthusiasm when they came back. It is not enough that the streets of Melbourne and Sydney should have been converted into Pandemonium. ”

“ The reason why Mr Reid came to take up the rôle of jester is easy to understand. If he followed out his own inclinations, he would be either a transcendental philosopher, or a poet of the mystic school. He would never speak a word about politics, and he would never make a joke. He is too clever not to recognise the essential meanness of politics; he is too sombre in disposition not to revolt from the tinkling merriment of a crowd. But he has never got quite free from the idea that success is a desirable thing to obtain. ”

“ A man will only die for something that has a history, for something that calls forth an emotion, for something that appeals to his individual or his national pride. He will not die for the Meridian of Greenwich, any more than he will die for the peak of Kosciusko, or for the Sydney Town Hall, or for the Melbourne Parliamentary buildings, or for the Federal tariff. Of what avail is it for a poet to write about the star of Australia? ”

“ Henceforth, you may add, all personal attachments, all private longings, all political amenities, are to you as nought; all the friendships of a lifetime have been laid on the altar; for the future you live only in the endeavour humbly but unswervingly to give effect to those eternal principles in comparison with the majesty of which, the life and aspirations of the individual are as the small dust in the balance, are a not worth naming sacrifice.
Once in opposition it will be found that your sphere has extended, your reputation increased. ”

“ If it could only get away from old-world traditions, if it were willing to stand upon its feet, if it would leave its absurd mannerisms to the people who first invented them, this Australian society, with all its health and youth and unimpaired vitality, with all its magnificent opportunities furnished by variety of scene and splendour of climate, might set an example of living which other countries would have reason to envy, if they had not the power to imitate. ”

“ It is never easy to estimate a man’s place in the domain of poetry. It is practically impossible in his lifetime, and it is difficult after he is dead. There is not merely the metrical, formal quality, not merely the imaginative power, not merely the originality of treatment that have to be considered. The whole question of individual taste and temperament, whether of the writer or the reader, is at work upon the scales. It may be impossible to prove on mathematical lines that Gordon was a great poet. ”

“ He dealt in brains, in sentiment, in imagination, in the beauty of life and the romance of life. He was not outwardly successful, because that kind of success belongs principally to the coarse-grained men, to the rough-fibred men, to the unimaginative and the uncreative or the essentially lucky man of the world. But it does not greatly matter. He has his audience, and it is a growing one. It is the only kind of audience whose good opinion is really desirable. ”

“ Commercially, Melbourne is not what it used to be. It has lost the sparkle, the animation of other days. Yet, whatever else it has lost, it has retained its consciousness of former prosperity. It is as proud as ever; in fact more proud than in the days when people were pouring into it by thousands, and when fortunes were being made every five minutes in its principal streets. Diminished prosperity has caused it to hold its head higher. ”

“ Mr Reid owes it to himself, and to his reputation as a man of broad views, to give Protection a turn, and in that direction, beyond doubt, his desire lies. There is a foolish idea, fatuously and blatantly insisted upon by newspaper writers, that, because a man has been harnessed to a party at one stage of his career he should remain harnessed to it for ever. The only universal genius is he who has come to recognise the essential quackery and futility of all political faiths now being foisted upon the community. ”

“ There was a time when the average member of an English Parliament was both. The Australian politician is usually a good sportsman: he can take his winnings without boasting, and he can take his failures like a man. He is under no illusions as to his own aims, or his own qualities. He knows that it is to his interest to be considered as a patriot, and he knows also, in his heart of hearts he knows, that he is only a player. Let us quote Browning, and thank God that the meanest politician boasts two soul-sides, one to face his constituents with, one to show to the man or woman who knows him. ”

“ The Australian child of the Muses is willing enough to clasp his Amaryllis to his palpitating breast, and to tell every one who likes to listen about the subtle and permeating sweetness of her eyes and lips and hair; but at the next moment, or in the very same breath, he is inviting us to contemplate a desolated life, a dead body, a tombstone, or a grave. ”

“ A great deal of skill in the use of sentences, some vivid delineations of men and places, much artistic discernment, undoubted eye for effect, literary or dramatic criticism of a bright and illuminative character—all these, and more, can be found now and then in the columns of the metropolitan press. Talent is going to waste for the reason that the authors are usually unrecognised, the work is underpaid, the public take all for granted, and the writers, when their brilliancy begins to wane, are expected to remove themselves and their fading fortunes to another arena. ”

“ If a writer were always able to put down on canvas his earlier and more enthusiastic impressions, he might draw a pretty picture of the Australian woman. She should be the crown and glory of every Southern landscape; she should have the dawn in her eyes, and the sun upon her hair. In a street along which the heat waves were dancing with a joyous and unrestrained fervour ”

“ The ingenious Mr Crosland tells us that a man has no business with a figure; that it is his duty to look like a clothes-prop in youth, and like a balloon in middle life. Mr Reid and Mr Crosland are at one in this matter, with the difference that the Premier has put into practice what the mentally and physically smaller person merely suggested. Certain well-meaning but bat-eyed individuals have accused the ex-Prime Minister of being inconsistent; they point out—good, worthy souls!—that he is found talking in favour of a project at one time, and talking against it at another. ”

“ It is Imperialist because it is susceptible to the breath of impulse, and of memory, and of something finer and more intangible still. It is loyal not so much to a dynasty, or to an individual, or to a parchment [Pg 291] bond, as to the tie of race, the idea of kinship, the value of tradition, the glamour of history, the pride that springs from the knowledge of certain achievements—achievements that have helped to make the country and its people what they are. ”

“ The atrocious crime of being a young nation, with much of what the word youth implies, is still to be laid at their door.
A certain warmth, a certain generous instinct, a certain spontaneity of thought and action, a certain buoyancy of temper, must be placed to the credit side of the ledger. A certain fairness to opponents must also be conceded, despite the remarks of a noted English cricketer to the contrary. This fairness becomes all the more praiseworthy when it is remembered that the only topic on which the Australians, as a people, hold any definite opinions is that of sport. ”

“ Vice itself has become a term of obscure meaning. What with our logicians and metaphysicians, our up-to-date moralists, and our new hedonists—what with our emancipated lady novelists, our reforming social philosophers, and our revolting sisters and brethren—what with all these, we have no arbitrary rules of conduct, and no definitions that can for a moment be relied upon. Even so correct and comparatively orthodox a writer as Edmund Burke has made a statement implying that vice practically ceases to exist when it is sufficiently embroidered and set among sufficiently magnificent surroundings. ”

“ You will be allowed to tread the primrose path to the music of lutes, to the sound of soft voices, to the rustle of silk and satin embroideries, to the rhythm of Government House waltzes, to the popping of Vice-regal champagne. The possession of wealth is an advantage, but it is not indispensable. The Sydney creditor is as accommodating as most creditors. Even this class is not absolutely proof against the influence of climate and surroundings. ”

“ From the ranks of any profession, or from all the professions together, it would be difficult to pick in Australia four men who could boast in the aggregate a greater measure of natural or of practised ability. Each of these four has, time after time, charmed, interested, and amused, hundreds of thousands of perceptive and critical readers. Had they given half the same talent to law or medicine, to science or politics, each of the four would beyond doubt have become rich and famous. ”

“ If the day happens to be a Saturday, or a public holiday, the outlook is rendered ten times more dismal by the deathly appearance of the streets, from which all but an unreal semblance of life and movement has departed. A wilderness of grim-looking window shutters, and a Sahara of pavement—that is all. The wind drives the dust in front of it, then follows on shriekingly. ”

“ It is no wonder that outsiders call us parochial. It is no wonder that they say we are lacking in perspective. It is no wonder that, when we go to London, they judge us by our odd pieces of genre-painting, and tell us that there is no market for that sort of thing in the metropolis—that we had better have stayed at home.
It is astonishing how few people, even of those who have lived in Australia all their lives, have succeeded in discovering Australia. ”