My Career Goes Bung

Miles Franklin

Allen & Unwin’s House of Books aims to bring Australia’s cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation’s most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers that were published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books that had fallen out of circulation.

The House of Books is an eloquent collection of Australia’s finest literary achievements.

Stella Miles Franklin was born in the Australian bush in 1879. At the age of twenty-one, she became an international publishing sensation with her first novel, My Brilliant Career. More than a century later it remains an Australian classic.

Miles’ early success gave her entrée to literary and socialist circles in Sydney and Melbourne. By 1906 she decided to travel overseas, and went to work for the women’s labour movement in Chicago. In 1915 she relocated to London and worked for various feminist and progressive causes, all the while continuing to write. A prolific author of plays as well as novels and archetypal bush stories, she often submitted work under pseudonyms that she guarded fiercely all her life. In the 1930s she returned to Australia and determined to take up the cause of Australian writing and writers. Her endowment of the Miles Franklin literary award not only surprised all who knew her, but founded an Australian literary institution that remains our most prestigious.

MILES
FRANKLIN

My Career Goes
Bung

This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012
First published in Australia by Georgian House Pty Ltd in 1946

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

TO ALL YOUNG AUSTRALIAN WRITERS GREETINGS!

Precocious effort in art is naturally imitative, but in localities remote from literary activity there is no one for the embryo writer to copy. Thus I was twelve before I wrote anything to draw attention to myself. I must have been nearly thirteen when the idea of writing novels flowered into romances which adhered to the design of the trashy novelettes reprinted in the Supplement to the Goulburn Evening Penny Post. These stories, secretly devoured, presented a world enchanting to budding adolescence. They were prinked with castles with ivied towers and hooting owls, which were inhabited by the unaccommodating guardians, thrilling seducers and more thrilling rescuers of titled maidens, as pure as angels. I used to read my versions to two or three girls, who still gaily recall the entertainment we thus manufactured for ourselves.

An Englishman, to whom some of these lucubrations were shown, directed me to the Australian scene as the natural setting for my literary efforts. The idea sprouted. Huh! I’d show just how ridiculous the life around me would be as story material, and began in sardonically humorous mood on a full-fledged novel with the jibing title My Brilliant (?) Career. I remember declaring my need of a striking name for the rampageous heroine of my ambition. An elder friend—beloved by her young neighbours for her sympathy—thereupon gave me her two Christian names Penelope and Sybylla, which she said were wasting, as she was known by a diminutive—Penny. This was an inspiring gift.

But INEXPERIENCE cannot possibly achieve any intended artistic effect. Removed as I was from anyone equipped to understand or direct my literary attempts it was inevitable that I, of all my audience, should be the most flabbergasted. The literalness with which My Brilliant Career was taken was a shock to one of any imagination.

My Career Goes Bung was planned as a corrective. I discussed with my father the absurdity of girls from all over the continent writing to tell me that I had expressed their innermost lives and emotions—confidences of fellowship in introversion, whereas I was a healthy extrovert. My father, equally with myself, lacked knowledge of practising authors, or association with people who had any conception of what authorship of fiction might entail. But he had wisdom.

“You mustn’t spoil what you have done,” he said. “You see, you have created an imaginary reality, and you must stick to it now. Something would be hurt in all those discontented little girls if they felt that your story lacked foundation. Besides, they are many, and I and you are only two.”

I felt that my father did not quite understand, and so did not show him the story. Now I know that he was a spiritual genius in a community where there was no realisation of his giftedness nor any more employment for it than for a Spanish comb in a bald head.

The pother raised by Sybylla Penelope in print so petrified me that I closed her book and have not yet reopened it. Could I bring myself to re-read it I could, perhaps, fabricate an essay to air the dubious guesses of psychoanalysis: but that would be a preface to my first printed volume while this is a foreword to its aftermath.

This was deposited in a portmanteau of MSS and finally left with someone in Chicago, U.S.A. while I went to the World War, which is now seen to have been merely practice manoeuvres for Global Armageddons. When I returned this caretaker said Mr. X had needed a bag, and, as my old grip was quite out of fashion and contained nothing but useless papers, she had known I would be glad to oblige him. I was assured Mr. X had put all the papers in the furnace: I need have no fear that they had been left about. I made no complaint, being as sure as the caretaker that my MSS were of no consequence. Nevertheless I regret the loss of stories and plays, which glowed at the time, and which will not come again. I thought My Career Goes Bung had gone with this collection, and had forgotten the copy of it which survived in an old trunk valiantly preserved all the years by my mother.

I opened the packet with trepidation and to my relief found entertainment, but that, as Sybylla Penelope Melvyn would say, may be due solely to egotism. The MS had a dedication of gratitude to someone indicated by initials, but I cannot recall who this was nor why I should have been grateful to him or her. There was also a preface by Peter McSwat, “Who kept a diary and paid his debts.” Time has cancelled this topical illusion, and it has been deleted with some matter which has been disposed of elsewhere. Otherwise I have kept faith with that girl who once was I. I have not meddled by corrections which would have resulted, probably, in no better than the sub-stitution of one set of solecisms and cliches by another, for such abound in even the greatest English novels.

The novel returned to me out of the past with the impact of a discovery. Though a work of fiction, the people in it are oddly familiar: their story has with time shed any character but that of reality. It is now an irrefutable period piece, and, in the light of EXPERIENCE, it is to be discerned that while intentionally quite as little, unintentionally it was equally as autobiographical as my first printed romance; no more, no less.

This second portrait of Sybylla Penelope was classified as delicious by the only person to whom it was submitted at the time: that it was also regarded by him as “too audacious for publication” seems quaint today, and indicates how smug behaviour must have been when it was written. It is to-day inveterately dedicated to all Australian writers who were as young, who are as young, and who each decade for ever will be forthcoming as young as I was when first I foolhardily tried to write.

MILES FRANKLIN,

AUSTRALIA.

This tale’s as true as true can be,
For what is truth or lies?

So often much that’s told by me
When seen through other eyes,

Becomes thereby unlike so much
These others tell to you,

And if things be the same as such,
What is a scribe to do?

Why, tell his tale of course, my friend,
Or hold his tongue for aye,

Or wait till fictive matters mend,
Which may be by-and-bye.

So here’s a tale of things a-near
That you may read and lend

Without a fear—you’ll need no tear—
It hasn’t any end.

CHAPTER ONE.

EXPLANATORY.

A wallaby would have done just as well as a human being to endure the nothingness of existence as it has been known to me. This, I suppose, is why I want to tell of the only two lively things that have happened in a dull, uninteresting life. You don’t know me from a basket of gooseberries, or wouldn’t if only I had kept myself to myself, but as I didn’t, I shall endure the embarrassment of bringing myself to your attention again in an explanatory postscript. In company with ninety-nine percent, of my fellows, the subject of self is full of fascination to me. There are cogent reasons for this.

One of the interesting happenings is my entanglement with Henry Beauchamp. The other is my experience in writing a new style of autobiography. Such a departure grew out of my satiation with the orthodox style. I shall deal with the autobiography first. These notes are slightly and somewhat expurgatedly compiled from my diary.

I was at that stage of chrysalism when boys dream of becoming bushrangers, engine drivers, or champion pugilists. Nothing so garishly simple relieves a girl. I yearned to make the whole world into a beautiful place where there would be no sick and starving babies, where people of advancing years could be safe from penury, where all the animals could be fat and happy, and even our little sisters, the flowers, might not be bruised or plucked against their wish. The prospect of settling down to act tame hen in a tin pot circle, and to acknowledge men as superior merely owing to the accident of gender, revolted me.

Life among boys and girls at an institution such as the Stringybark Hill Public School, ere adolescence has arrived to mess things up, is a good example of democracy. There were no wealthy within competitive reach, money did not count to any extent, and beauty and birth did not count at all. We never heard of such things. Only the merit of brains and honesty weighed in the school room, and athletic prowess coupled with fair play on the playground.

Any sort of lessons except long addition sums were a joy and sinecure to me. On the playground, though small, I was fleet of foot and exceptionally agile, could vault as high as any boy of my own age till I was twelve, and was always chosen as captain whether the game happened to be cricket, rounders or prisoners’ bar. A balance was preserved in my status by the fact that the dunces at lessons were always the best bats or runners outside, and that athletes when grown up had so much more glory than mere scholars.

I was impatient to be done with school so that I could take hold of life in the big world. I could not understand why people stayed in some lone hole with no more spunk in them than a milch cow, while the universe elsewhere teemed with adventure.

I expected to continue in enjoyment of the friendship and affection of my fellows, working for and winning a high place in all the activities that I essayed. I thought that there would be any number of activities to choose from. I was sure of winning love and acclamation because I never cheated in a game or put on airs over my ascendancy in them, and eagerly shared anything and everything within my power.

Thus came the last day under the rule of the gentle old teacher in the little slab school house among the tall trees on the stringy bark range. Old Harris, as we called him behind his back, got drunk on occasion but was condoned by the kindly settlers because he knew and loved each child individually. He could bring what there was out of the thickest skulls and I rioted unrebuked and highly encouraged within his jurisdiction. He had been educated at one of the great colleges in England. I don’t know which as he never mentioned it to the simple circle of Stringybark Hill. He was supposed to be related to big swells but that likewise he never mentioned unless he was a bit tipply and some flash intruder was putting on airs. He had the manners of an angel, a dear kind face, and wouldn’t have harmed a grasshopper. These qualifications earned him the protection of the rudest and crudest. He taught a mere handful of children the rudiments of education for less than £3 a week and boarded with a family who were industrious, honest and kind, but could offer him no congeniality of mind or companionship of knowledge.

Ma condemned his fecklessness to be stuck there, but Pa would rub the top of his head—his own head—and remark, “At Old Harris’s age life boils down to a decent bed and a good feed, and those things are his.”

At the end of my last day with him he patted me on the shoulder—an unusual liberty for this diffident soul. He never seemed to have any egotism except when he was drunk. It must have been ingrowing like squeezed toenails. He made a little speech over me, the kind which youth accepts as drivel at the time, but which comes back vividly when youth has grown towards this drivelling knowledge itself. It returns to me now in the drivellage of my twentieth year, and here it is.

“Sybylla, you are a good girl—clean and true—and a gifted one to boot. You are as game as a young lion but I fear that the opposing forces will break your heart. You are a glad young thing now, but with your ability and temperament, alas, it will take more than ordinary conditions to keep you happy. You have a quicker brain than any scholar I ever had, but that will not help you unless you use it to hide the fact of its existence and to enhance your beauty; and of beauty you have ample to secure what would satisfy most of your sex, but which will never content you, so I might as well hold my tongue. At any rate, good fortune attend you. The old school house will be dull and lonely without you.”