Australian Writers: Men’s Week, Gens 1-3, Jan 12 to 19, 2025
Marcus Clarke (1846-1881) was born in London. His mother died when he was 4 and his father when he was 16, leaving young Marcus unable to live the life of idle well-off-ness he had planned. Instead, he emigrated to Victoria, initially finding work as a clerk for which he was unsuited, until an uncle, a county court judge based in Ararat, gave him farming work on his property west of Stawell.
He began having stories published in news magazines and in 1867, aged 21, he joined the staff of The Argus and The Australasian in Melbourne where he ‘was noted for his vivid descriptions of Melbourne’s street scenes and city types, including the “low life” of opium dens, brothels and gambling houses’ (wiki). He married an actress, writing two comedies for her; put out short-lived satirical magazine Humbug with poet Henry Kendall; and was in a circle of writers including Adam Lindsay Gordon and GG McCrae (poet, son of Georgiana, father of Hugh (who wrote the memoir My Father and My Father’s Friends about this circle)).
A more detailed account of the rise and falls of his short life, in the ADB, may be summed up by “but levity pursued him”.
In 1870 Clarke was sent by his employers on a short visit to Tasmania to research a series of pieces he was writing for them on the convict period, Old Stories Retold (eg. ‘The Rum Puncheon Rebellion’), and shortly thereafter the novel His Natural Life commenced serialization in The Australian Journal which Clarke was then editing – which implies both that Clarke had a side hustle and that his novel was written ‘on the run’.
A search in Trove for the beginnings of the serialized novel brings up a nonsense article in Punch (LL Smith, His Natural Life, not by Marcus Clarke), and mentions of the serial in other newspapers (eg. “His Natural Life, by Marcus Clarke, continues to enfold hideous pictures of convict life, and the unhappy hero finds still lower deeps of degradation.”), but not the novel itself. I guess The Australian Journal has not been digitized.
In comments I made a couple of weeks ago I situated His Natural Life in the tradition of Scott’s Waverley (1814), a novel in which the gothic tradition of the previous century has been if not replaced then at least complemented by Historical Fiction. Henry Savery and Caroline Leakey had both written earlier novels of Hobart and convict life, but I don’t know enough to suggest what other English authors Clarke may have followed.
The premise of the novel is that a young gentleman who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time, is convicted – of theft from the body – following a murder; is sentenced to transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) for life, attracting more and more punishment along the way; and finally receives some form of redemption.
The storyline, set in the 1830s, revolves around a series of improbable coincidences – de rigueur for Victorian romances probably – the young gentleman, Richard Devine, is the son and heir of a rich shipbuilder but his mother announces that his father is really (her cousin) Lord Bellasis. Devine senior says he will disinherit Devine Jr immediately; Devine Jr leaves home and books passage on the Hesperus; Devine Sr dies that night without having time to change his will.
Devine Jr comes upon the body of Lord Bellasis, and on being arrested, gives his name as Rufus Dawes.
On the convict transport Malabar, are the captain, Blunt; Lieutenant Maurice Frere, the soldier in charge of the convicts; Captain Vickers en route to Macquarie Harbour where he will be Commandant, his wife and daughter, Sophie; convicts including Dawes, John Rex and a giant, Gabbett, who later earns a reputation for eating his fellows.
Frere is (the late) Devine Sr’s nephew (and heir, if only he knew it) and therefore Dawes’ cousin; Rex is another bastard son of Bellasis, and therefore Dawes’ half-brother. None of them ever realises their relationship to the other, well not till years later. Rex leads an unsuccessful mutiny, for which Dawes is blamed. A ship is sighted, on fire, all on board lost. It is the Hesperus, so Devine Jr is forever believed dead.
At remote Macquarie Harbour Dawes is further punished and is eventually isolated, in irons on a rock out in the bay. A ship arrives, carrying Frere, with instructions to close the prison camp at Macquarie Harbour and to transport the convicts to Port Arthur (nearer to Hobart). Frere stays behind with some convicts and seamen, to follow them in the convict built Osprey. But Rex and his mates seize the Osprey and sail off, leaving behind Frere, Mrs Vickers, Sophie then aged maybe 11. Dawes escapes from his rock and eventually saves them all, building a coracle in which they set sail and are eventually rescued by a whaler.
Sophie loses all memory of Dawes and of his rescuing them, Frere takes all the credit and eventually takes Sophie as his fiancee and then bride. Dawes is imprisoned at Port Arthur, as is eventually, John Rex. There’s another escape, Gabbett eats more people, Dawes is recaptured and sent to Norfolk Island, where Frere is appointed commandant and whence he takes his new wife.
Sophie is unhappy and decides to leave. The chaplain, who is in love with her, decides to leave with her. There’s a big finale. And I haven’t mentioned Rex’s wife, Sarah, who came out on the Malabar as Sophie’s nurse, becomes an independently wealthy property and ship owner employing the same Capt Blunt we saw above, helps Rex escape, is betrayed by him and so on …
For The Term of his Natural Life is a big Victorian melodrama, unrelentingly unhappy, and if it has a moral at all then I can’t see it.
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Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, first pub. 1874 (serialized in The Australian Journal as ‘His Natural Life’ between 1870-1872). Seal Australian Classics ed. (pictured), 1978. 436pp