Weekend Australian review

Siren Song of London Calling (James Ley)

“OH! the critics of your country will be very proud of you,/ When you're recognised in London by an editor or two/ You may write above the standard, but your work is seldom seen/ Till it's noticed and reprinted in an English magazine.”

In 1900, eight years after he published these sardonic lines in The Bulletin, Henry Lawson sailed for London. Details of the two years he spent in England are sketchy. It does not appear he was shunned by the literary establishment. He had a reputation, he had contacts and he managed to secure some respectable advances. Yet his time abroad was not happy. His wife suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalised and his behaviour became increasingly erratic. His humbling return home marked the beginning of what was to be a protracted decline.

Lawson's experience, which Peter Morton describes in the first chapter of his estimable study Lusting for London, cannot be regarded as typical. But it highlights the sense of conflict that is often felt by writers born into a colonial or post-colonial society. When the centre of cultural authority is understood to lie elsewhere, one cannot help being conscious of one's marginalisation. The gulf between national identity and cosmopolitanism can appear to be dauntingly wide. The apparent need to seek validation from an external source is apt to foster resentment that such a validation should even be necessary.

That a writer as distinctly antipodean as Lawson should feel compelled to test his mettle at the heart of the anglophone literary world is a measure of the inexorability of London's gravitational attraction. His personal defeat is not necessarily a cautionary tale, but it does suggest the seemingly intractable problem faced by talented colonial writers at the turn of the 20th century.

As Morton points out, there is a sense in which an aspiring author in Lawson’s position could not win: “If you didn‘t go, it was because you suspected you were no good; if you did go, you were a traitor; if you went and came back, you were a failure.”

Expatriation has long been recognised as a significant feature of Australian literary history. But it is rarely subjected to the kind of in-depth, historically grounded analysis that Morton undertakes in this wide-ranging and readable study. It looks back to a time when Australian literature was still an embryonic, uncertain proposition. There was a substantial creative exodus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and one of the chief virtues of Lusting for London is that it establishes the extent to which this was driven by practical considerations. The clichéd interpretation is that Australian writers departed en masse to escape the stifling effects of a cultural wasteland. Some clearly did feel this way, but rather than foreground psychological questions or emotive arguments about literary nationalism, Morton provides an even-handed account of the reality of prevailing conditions and the writers’ recorded impressions. In doing so, he encourages a nuanced understanding of his topic.

The tangible factors behind the phenomenon of expatriation are readily summarisable. Many writers had strong cultural and (relatively recent) ancestral ties to Britain. There was nothing imaginary about the problems of communication or the cultural isolation that distance engendered. There was no local publishing industry to speak of and opportunities for earning money as a freelance writer were pitiful at best.

Even the most ferocious work ethic was no guarantee of financial stability. The husband-and-wife team of D'Arcy Niland and Ruth Park, writing in Sydney at the tail-end of the period covered in Lusting for London, could produce 60,000 words a week, sell 15,000 of them and still barely scrape by. (Morton doesn‘t mention that they also had five children, a combination of circumstances that boggles the mind.)

The core of Lusting for London is Morton's reading of three classic Australian novels by expatriate writers: Christina Stead's For Love Alone, Henry Handel Richardson's The Way Home (the second volume of the Fortunes of Richard Mahony trilogy) and Martin Boyd's Lucinda Brayford. All three have an autobiographical element and, in different ways, provide personalised accounts of the experience of emigration and the complex emotions it evokes.

But perhaps the most significant feature of this book is its consideration of the experiences of many forgotten writers. Though the decision to decamp could seem to be ineluctable, the reality of life as an expatriate was often difficult. London was frequently found to be a gloomy, inhospitable place. Some hopefuls literally starved. It turned out that making it as a writer was tough in London too. As a result, many drifted into hack work or peripheral occupations and, as Morton establishes, the great variety of their experiences is a crucial part of the history of expatriation.

There were writers who survived by churning out romantic potboilers; others became journalists or publishers. Former politician and journalist William Willis made a living publishing smut on the borderlines of legality, including editions of Maupassant’s stories with added spicy bits; while noted bon vivant Norman Haire established himself as a semi-respectable sexologist, albeit one with a waggish sense of humour: when he edited an ostensibly serious Encyclopedia of Sexual Knowledge he included ‘A. Willy’ in his list of contributors.

In his conclusion, Morton stresses that there are no easy generalisations to be made about the phenomenon of expatriation. The entanglement of push and pull factors is deep and complex. Since political persecution was not a significant issue in the Australian context, writers who chose to pursue their careers elsewhere invariably did so for personal reasons. There was no archetypal experience. Some succeeded, many others failed. Some returned, some stayed. Some remained psychologically tethered to their homeland, others never looked back.

Morton proposes, reasonably enough, that much of the heat has gone out of the issue of expatriation. Certainly, many of the factors that once prompted people to leave have diminished in importance. The opportunities and support systems for local writers are immeasurably better than a century ago. Yet London is still an alluring cultural hub and it is still a long way away. Making a living as a writer in Australia remains something of a dicey proposition. Flight may no longer be necessary but we can be reasonably sure that aspiring Australian writers will continue to be drawn to the other side of the world.

Stead claimed that her departure had nothing to do with the perceived inferiority of Australian culture: it was wanderlust, pure and simple. That is one motivation, at least, we can safely regard as perennial.

Weekend Australian, May 19-20, 2012.