Marcus Clarke is famous for being the author of “For the Term of His Natural Life” which some critics say is Australia’s most outstanding nineteenth century novel. Mark Twain when he visited Australia in 1895 referred to Clarke as our “only literary genius and the likes of which we will not see again for many a year.” I disagree. I first met Clarke in 1872. We had both been to Highgate Grammar School (I might vaguely remember him from there), we were both bilingual in English and French, and we both had arrived here hoping to farm the land; but despite these similarities there was little else we had in common. At times he could be quite amusing in company but I could never bring myself to like him. This was because I was Jewish and he was a patronising anti-Semite.
In an article for the Argus on the 1867 Melbourne Cup Clarke had written, “Young ladies, oily as to their hair, pulpy as to their lips, and heavy as to their noses, were alternatively watching the course and casting stolen glances at the magnificent attire of Anonyma”. Anonyma, Synonyma and Abomyna were names that he had given to ladies whose dresses were fresher than their jaded, painted faces. He then went on to add, “Round the judge’s corner the ladies mustered and the air was darkened with the shadows of the noses of the daughters of Judah”.
On the building of the Jewish alms-houses he commented, “When the Jewish community undertook the erection of Jewish alms-houses, the game was one I could not understand. The idea of an impoverished and really necessitous Jew in Melbourne was a thing I could not realise. The Jews are far too clever to be poor. They can’t afford the luxury of woe. They leave simple pleasures of that kind to their Christian brethren. However they built three alms-houses- that is, three highly ornamental cottages in coloured brick; and though completed a year, after superhuman exertions, they have only been able to discover one Jew in Victoria poor enough to occupy a cottage. There may be others but they won’t own up. They are afraid of injuring their credit. Even the one Jew referred to is reported to have a banking account and to be in receipt of a small income”.
Marcus Clarke wrote bitingly of a dispute that H. J. Hart, a Jewish member of the board of the Melbourne Hospital, had with the medical officer Hinchcliffe. In a letter to the “Warrnambool Examiner”, Clarke commended the newspaper for having “morally pulled the nose of the impertinent little Hebrew. Does the length of the Jewish nose result from the frequent pulling which the organ has received from Christians? Only if the Red Sea had rolled the other way”. The Herald, the Advocate and the Age unanimously attacked Clarke for this article. Like the true foolish anti-Semite that he was, he defended himself by saying, “Some poor Melbourne Jews think that I hate their race, whereas it is only the scum of Van Dieman’s Land Jail, the money-lending, usurious, ignorant portion of it, to which they belong, that I dislike.”
In one of his major short stories Clarke articulated the essence of his hostility towards Jews through its principal character, a Jewish moneylender. “Do you ever see a Jew dig, or beg, or do menial service? Did you ever have a Jew servant? Did you ever know a Jew, however poor, who hadn’t a sovereign to lend at interest?….we Jews rule the world….when we were turned out of…. Jerusalem, we made a vow to take possession of the Universe - and we’ve done it too….By sticking together….All Jewry….is one great firm - a huge bank-which keeps the table against all Christendom”.
Like many anti-semites Clarke adhered to the euphemism, “some of my best friends are Jewish”. He wrote kindly of Joseph Aarons, the owner of the Bijou Theatre, and of “poor Moten Moss,” a businessman, in obituaries in the Leader. Perhaps he thought a dead Jew was a good Jew. On one occasion he even wrote favourably of the Jewish Bazaar. “It is remarkable that whenever any charitable call is made by Christians the Hebrew population of this city are the first to respond.”
Marcus Clarke’s anti-semitism had as its basis a flame that was his own inferiority complex and this was further fuelled when, as a hopeless manager, he was forced to borrow funds from the Jewish moneylender, businessman and financier, Aaron Waxman. It must be pointed out in fairness to Waxman that he was good-natured, extremely proud to have the clever literary man as his client, and always tried his best to be patient and lenient with Clarke in request of a favour. Clarke’s inferiority complex arose out of a defective left arm and a stutter. The arm had been operated on, apparently for anchylosis, when Marcus was a small child, but never grew properly and remained shrunken. I discovered the cause of his stutter when I bought a book at the sale of Dr. Patrick Maloney’s library. In it I found a note in pencil in the doctor’s handwriting. It read, “Marcus Clarke stuttered. In his youth a horse kicked him on the head.” Above all Clarke loved to shine in intellectual company and at times this impediment in his speech was detrimental to his conversation and very painful for his friends. On occasions he became so unintelligible as to be incapable of carrying on a consecutive argument. He carried the same fault into his writings. He had very little imagination and was unable to construct on a preconceived plan. He never impressed me either as a serious student of literature or as a man in love with his art. Rather he loved the so-called good things of life, namely fine clothes, an elegant home and plenty of leisure time. Clarke always broke down in the midst of his work. In his novel “Long Odds,” his friend George Arthur Walstab wrote the best two chapters. This was no secret at the time. If you get a copy of the first edition published by Clarson, Massina & Co., printers and publishers of 72 Little Collins Street, Melbourne in 1869, you will find a dedication that says, “To G.A.W. in grateful remembrance of the months of July and August 1868.”
Walstab, the first editor of the “Australian Journal,” was far more interesting a man than Clarke. He was a striking, swashbuckling figure in Melbourne’s bohemian circles. Born in Demerara, Trinidad, in 1834, the son of a planter, he received his education in London at the famous Merchant Taylor’s School, graduating as dux in 1850. At eighteen he was already a veteran of the coup-d’etat of December 1851, which instated Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the President of the French Republic, as Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. He arrived in Melbourne at the height of the gold rush, became a police cadet, and served on many escorts that guarded consignments of gold from the diggings. Later he went to India and served as a cavalryman throughout the Mutiny. A leg wound ended his soldiering days and he was forced to exchange his skilful sword for a pen. He joined the Calcutta Englishman and by his mid-twenties was editor of the paper. He then returned to Melbourne. He wrote “Harcourt Darrell,” a historical novel, which he serialised in the “Australian Journal,” and also translated a number of French works to high praise from contemporary critics. Together with Clarke he was one of the foundation members of the Yorick Club. He also worked at various times for the Lands Department, the Castlemaine Reporter and as an older man, before his death in 1908, in several capacities for the Melbourne Herald.
It has been suggested that Walstab wrote a portion of “For the Term of His Natural Life”, but I have it from his own mouth that this is not so. I do believe that Richard Birnie wrote several chapters of “For the Term of His Natural Life”. He told me he did and I have no reason to doubt him. What makes Birnie’s claim possible is that Clarke’s works were written as installments for the “Australian Journal” and not as a completed novel. A. H. Massina, the journal’s proprietor, often complained of Clarke’s inability to meet a deadline. On one occasion he went to press with an apology for a missed installment and on another he substituted a short story. He even locked Clarke up in a room to try to force him to write. It is very conceivable that Clarke, disorganised and