John Shaw Neilson: A life in letters

By Hewson, Helen

The selection begins in 1906 when A. G. Stephens started up The Bookfellow. From this crucial point, and throughout the ensuing thirty-five years, we follow Neilson the man—farming and working in the bush, maintaining caring relationships with his scattered family, and finally moving in 1928 to Melbourne and a job as an interdepartmental messenger with the Country Roads Board in Carlton.

Helen Hewson has chosen and edited her material from more than a thousand existing letters, most of which have not been published previously. They cover family, social and publishing correspondence, in addition to the detailed letters about writing poetry which passed between Neilson and his three very different editorial advisers, A. G. Stephens, Robert H. Croll and James Devaney, his first biographer.

Other writers of the period who corresponded with Neilson included Robert Bridges, Mary Gilmore, Christopher Brennan, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Hubert Church, Percival Serle and Frank Wilmot. The letters are full of revealing details about his association with many institutions and personalities—the Australian Literature Association, the Bread and Cheese Club, Coles Book Arcade, the Hill of Content, the Hawthorn Press, Blamire Young, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Mary Gilmore, Bernard O’Dowd, Frank Wilmot, Victor Kennedy and others.

John Shaw Neilson: A Life in Letters establishes a social background and a literary context which ends any suggestion that Neilson is merely a ‘bush poet’ or ‘a simple singer’. This complex poet participated in an intricate network of literary relationships and literary production, and it is only through reading the letters that one realises the degree to which he reflected on his own and other people’s poetry and writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 11, 1997
• ISBN: 9780522874242

Book preview

The Miegunyah Press

at

Melbourne University Press

The General Series

of the Miegunyah Volumes

was made possible by the

Miegunyah Fund

established by bequests

under the wills of

Sir Russell and Lady Grimwade

‘Miegunyah’ was the home of

Mab and Russell Grimwade

from 1911 to 1955

JOHN SHAW NEILSON

JOHN SHAW NEILSON

A Life in Letters

HELEN HEWSON

THE MIEGUNYAH PRESS

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PO Box 278, Carlton South, Victoria 3053, Australia

[e-mail]

www.mup.com.au

First published 2001

Introduction, annotations and appendices copyright © Helen Hewson 2001

Design and typography © Melbourne University Press 2001

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Designed by Sandra Nobes

Typeset by Syarikat Seng Teik Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia,

in 10.5 point R Stempel Garamond

Printed in Australia by Brown Prior Anderson, Burwood

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Neilson, John Shaw, 1872–1942.

John Shaw Neilson: a life in letters.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

ISBN 0 522 84920 2.

1. Neilson, John Shaw, 1872–1942—Correspondence. 2. Poets, Australian—Correspondence. I. Hewson, Helen. II. Title.

A821.2

For Rebecca, James and Eve

Rhymers get too many absurd lies told about them.

SHAW NEILSON

... the true life of a man is in his letters... for arriving at the inside of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they conjecture feeling, but contemporary letters are facts.

CARDINAL NEWMAN

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Editorial Practice

Abbreviations

Introduction

Early Chronology

The Letters

Critical Writings

Biographical Notes

Bibliography

Index

Index to Neilson’s Poems

ILLUSTRATIONS

John Shaw Neilson, c. 1911

John Shaw Neilson, c. 1909

A. G. Stephens, ink drawing by Norman Lindsay

On Death 1: Dead Mother, an engraving by Max Klinger, 1889 104 On Death 1: Farmer 1889, an etching and aquatint by

Max Klinger, 1889

Bernard O’Dowd, an etching by John Shirlow, 1924

Christopher Brennan, pencil drawing by Mahdi McCrae

Hugh McCrae, pencil drawing by Herr W. Anderson, 1910

Mary Gilmore

Louise Dyer, oil on canvas by W. B. McInnes, 1927

Nettie Palmer 169 Margaret Sutherland, photograph from concert programme, 29 March 1938

Robert Henderson Croll, photograph by Julian Smith

Blamire Young, photograph by Jack Cato

Kate Baker, OBE

Beatrice Fowler

Vance Palmer

Percival Serle

James Devaney

Vivienne Montgomery

Frank Wilmot

John Shaw Neilson, photograph by Mrs Stanley Gibson

John Shaw Neilson, oil on canvas by E. J. Turner [1937]

John Shaw Neilson, charcoal drawing by Will Dyson, 1928

John Shaw Neilson, photograph by Julian Smith, 1934

John Shaw Neilson, bronze head by Wallace Anderson, 1936

TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

‘With the Commissioner in the Wimmera’

‘The Orange Tree’, wood engraving by Barbara Hanrahan

‘nee tamen eonsumebatur’, engraving by ‘w. M.’ from The Presbyterian Magazine, ed. Rev. Robert Steel, Sheriff and Downing, Sydney, 1863 (Ferguson Library, Presbyterian Church of Australia, Sydney)

Mr A. G. Stephens—Evenings with Australian Authors, 1914.

‘The Gentle Water Bird’

Letter from J. S. Neilson to Percival Serle

‘Echo’, pen and ink drawing by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have benefited from the generosity of many people in the course of making this selection of letters and documents. My thanks in the first instance must go to Mrs Mary McKimm who gave her permission to publish material written by Shaw Neilson for inclusion in this book. When I was working on my doctoral thesis—a three-volume collection of letters relating to Neilson—I was grateful also for the help given by Mary’s late husband R. Jack McKimm (Neilson’s nephew and executor) as well as her brother-in-law, Alan. Neilson’s half-sister, Mrs Lisette Noblett, has shared knowledge of her parents, John and Elizabeth Neilson, and the wider family, and allowed me to draw on her unpublished memoirs and reprint her charming letter to Frank Neilson.

Permission for access to papers and collections and to publish letters was essential to the completion of this book. I gladly acknowledge the kind assistance of Vivienne Alcaine, Hugh Anderson, Joy Bleakley, Claire Blichfeldt, Anthony Bunney, John Cato, Margot Ludowici, Geoffrey Cains, Robert D. Croll, Frank Davidson, Beatrice Mary Everard, H. C. and A. Glad, Mme Margarita Hanson—Oiseau Lyre Archives, The Lyrebird Trust—University of Melbourne, Janet Hay, Geoffrey Howarth, C. V. Kennedy, Magnolia Gee of Lothian Books, Lady Wendy Martin, Nan McCulloch, Irene Roche, the late Geoffrey Serle, George Smith, Maureen Stewart, Jim Biggs and Valda Willsteed.

Most of the letters and many of the illustrations are held in public institutions and over the years I have appreciated the willing assistance of Jock Murphy and Gerard Hayes at the State Library of Victoria; Jennifer Broomhead, Arthur Easton and Warwick Hurst at the State Library of New South Wales; Sylvia Carr, Valerie Helson and Graeme Powell at the National Library of Australia; Sue Lewis at the Mortlock Library of South Australiana, State Library of South Australia; Ros Follett at the University of Queensland Library; Mark Armstrong-Roper at the Victoria University of Technology; Neil Boness at the Fisher Library, University of Sydney; David Retter at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand; Antoinette Buchanan at the Ferguson Library, Presbyterian Church of Australia, Sydney; George Ellis, Territorial Archivist, Salvation Army, Victoria; Lesley Grant, Archivist at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Burwood; Irena Zdanowicz, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria; Gay Sutton and Lloyd Brady at the Footscray Library and Peter Whitehead, Deputy Public Trustee.

The following people and presses have allowed me to quote extracts from published material: Mrs Peggy Cotton for James Devaney’s Shaw Neilson (1944), Margot Ludowici for A. G. Stephens’ The Red Pagan (1904); Equity Trustees Ltd for Nettie Palmer’s Fourteen Years (1948), Annette Renshaw representing Harper Collins/Angus and Robertson for A. H. Spencer’s The Hill of Content (1959); and Robert D. Fitz-Gerald’s Letters of Hugh McCrae (1970) as well as Robertson and Mullen for R. H. Croll’s I Recall (1939), and T. Inglis Moore’s Six Australian Poets (1942); Melbourne University Press for W. H. Wilde’s Courage a grace; and Dinah Johnson of the University of Queensland Press for Hal Porter’s The Extra.

I am indebted to Jenny Blain who thoughtfully suggested improvements and refinements to the introductory essay, and assisted with proof-reading, Noel Rowe for his encouragement and to the poet, Vivian Smith, whose reading of Neilson’s poetry first alerted me to its musical qualities. As an Honorary Research Associate I have been able to draw on the support of the Department of English at the University of Sydney. For all kinds of help I thank Margaret Roberts, Laurel Clark, Glen Clifford, Margaret Clunies-Ross, Lucy Davey, Jim Davidson, Darryl Emmerson, Margaret Harris, Tony Harvey, Ruth Harrison, Robert Holden, Dudley Hoyle, Judith Johnston, Annette Krausmann, Barry McKimm, Jennifer Moore, Ross McMullin, Pat Ricketts, Alistair Roper, Alison Rowlands, Elizabeth Webby, Michael Zifcak and the generous-hearted Alan Hewson. Susan Bee kindly assisted with the Index.

My thanks are due also to the Australian Academy of the Humanities which has awarded a grant to assist with the publication of the book and to the staff of Melbourne University Press for their enthusiasm and patience.

EDITORIAL PRACTICE

The selected letters have been transcribed literally from the original MSS or photocopies provided by individual owners or institutions. In this way Neilson’s style and presentation may be distinguished from those of his amanuenses and the various writing practices of the regular correspondents in this collection.

The numbered letters, together with extracts from primary documents, are presented chronologically. Narrative information linking the letters is given in italics. Please consult the Biographical Notes for information about many of the people mentioned in the letters and their relevance to Neilson; the Critical Writings for examples of out-of-print material and the Bibliography for citations of books and articles referred to in the text. They are provided to reduce the need for extensive footnotes.

Where letters have been edited for reasons of length or repetition, ellipses are used. Mis-spellings, grammatical errors and dictation errors have been reproduced, sometimes aided by the use of [sic] or corrected within square brackets because frequently they highlight problems Neilson had with dictating his poems and letters. Punctuation follows the MSS as closely as possible, but full stops have been added at the end of sentences where required.

The names of the amanuenses, where known, and any words or dates supplied editorially, appear in square brackets as do conjectural readings of illegible or missing words preceded by a question mark. Cancellations of text by the letter writer are given in angle brackets.

Full citations are included at the end of each letter to assist the reader in locating material. When referring in a footnote to a letter included in this book, only the correspondents’ names and letter date are included. Letters beyond the scope of the selection are provided with a source.

Neilson always wrote "Dear Mr Stephens’. In many of the letters standard salutations and signing off have been dispensed with, and where familiarity between correspondents has been established. The presence of ever-changing addresses before the final move to Melbourne is a reminder of Neilson’s endless search for work.

A. G. Stephens, who is often referred to as A. G. S. or in the contracted form A. G., wrote to an anthologist stating that ‘We prefer the author’s name to be printed/Shaw Neilson’. Neilson’s signature varies in his correspondence, appearing as Shaw Neilson, J. Shaw Neilson, J. S. Neilson, J. S. N. and S. N. He chose to sign in this way to avoid confusion with John Neilson, his father. Also he observed when visiting Stephens in 1926, ‘the mountain of stuff from different writers all very much mixed up’.

ABBREVATIONS

LIBRARIES, COLLECTIONS AND PRIVATE SOURCES

ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, NATIONAL LIBRARY OF NEW ZEALAND

THE LA TROBE LIBRARY, STATE LI BRARY OF VICTORIA

THE MITCHELL LIBRARY, STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

THE STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, CANBERRA

INTRODUCTION

John Shaw Neilson’s poetic strengths are evident in this collection of primary documents as are the difficulties and problems of the times in which he worked and wrote. The information contained in the many-sided correspondence, memoirs, journal entries and critical writings provide insights into the subtle complexities of this, for the most part, unassuming but potent lyricist. Drawn from over a thousand letters scattered throughout public and private collections, they locate Neilson’s writing in a literary context which is local and particularized but which also draws sensitively and selectively on the wider concerns of lyric poetry. It is only through reading his letters that one realizes the degree to which he reflected on his poetry and the writing of others. Throughout his adult life Neilson participated in, and benefited from, an intricate network of literary and artistic relationships which included, among others, his three very different editors, A. G. Stephens, R. H. Croll and James Devaney. Other correspondents were Bertram Stevens, Louise Dyer, Hubert Church, Mary Gilmore, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Hugh McCrae, Bernard O’Dowd, Kate Baker, Victor Kennedy, Frank Wilmot, J. K. Moir, Christopher Brennan, John Le Gay Brereton, Margaret Sutherland and Blamire Young.

The chronological presentation of material assists our understanding of the publication history and circulation of Neilson’s books. We notice an immediacy and urgency conveyed in much of Neilson’s thoughts on paper, probably because they were largely unmediated by considerations of self-consciousness and the need to write for posterity. We are also constantly surprised by revelations of the toughmindedness and persistence of this ‘meek’ poet.

Neilson was a man of deep conviction, and totally dedicated to his craft. Practising it involved not only reading other poets extensively but copying and parodying them. Reading the letters, we are afforded an insight into the fact that he needed reassurance about his versifying which translated into his seeking expert editorial direction throughout his adult life. He was dogged in his efforts to produce the bulk of work Stephens demanded for book publication and in the pursuit of a mutually beneficial contract which would not jeopardise his reputation. Yet he is strangely reticent about unacknowledged corrections and shortsighted editorial decisions. Their complicated contractual hassles would in turn influence Neilson’s unrealistic quibbling over print runs and royalties with the Lothian Publishing Co. and Stephens’ daughter, Connie Robertson. The tone and the disclosures in the selected letters reveal much about his relationships with people and how others saw him. This becomes an important reason for the inclusion of extracts from first-hand accounts by his half-sister Lisette, R. H. Croll, Edward Harrington, Beatrice Fowler and Hal Porter as well as those from Nettie Palmer’s journal entries. These jottings are critical, recording as they do Palmer’s own reflections on Neilson’s poetry and their discussions together on a wide range of subjects. Similarly Beatrice Fowler’s enthusiastic account of Neilson’s introduction to Melbourne’s ‘ilhiminati’,¹ when backed up by Nettie Palmer’s reminder to Gilmore of this occasion when Neilson ‘seemed such a man about town, to all intents and purposes’² adds considerably to the somewhat self-deprecating version Neilson paints of himself in his carefully constructed Autobiography. There he recalls: ‘It was rather a trying affair for me ... I get on alright with two or three people, but thirty or forty make me very nervous. I find out I have nothing to say and besides my English is always deplorable, and most of these people were pretty well educated’.³ Neilson’s Autobiography forms an invaluable record and represents an extraordinary feat of memory and dictation despite the fact that he tends to skim through the first six years of Melbourne city life, to conclude the account at the end of 1934. Unfortunately the first two sections disappeared when in the care of James Devaney, therefore a comparison of the incomplete manuscript with the present collection serves to highlight its memory gaps and omissions, deliberate or otherwise; it also suggests a certain unawareness on Neilson’s part of the extent of the activities of those working on his behalf behind the scenes. I have included extracts from the Autobiography as well as an article—‘Free Verse Old and New’—dictated to Victor Kennedy in 1941, as examples of his prose writing.

The response to Stephens’ claim for Neilson—‘First of Australian poets’, the perception of Neilson as a simple rhymer and the changing critical practice apparent in the reception of his work over twenty years can all be assessed in the critical writings, long out of print. Evident in the selected reviews is the self-conscious promotion of an Australian literature by many writers and critics including A. G. Stephens, David McKee Wright, Hugh McCrae, Pat O’Leary, Nettie Palmer, Irene Foster, Walter Murdoch, C. Hartley Grattan and T. Inglis Moore. Australian literary criticism did not begin in the 1940s nor the 1960s but was deliberate, lively and effective from the early nineteenth century and an influential force in the 1890s and early twentieth century.

Neilson’s reactions to criticism of his poetry are aired in the letters but even more important are the clues which can lead to a greater understanding of his poetry. When writing to his peers Neilson shows himself as informed on current affairs and able to express opinions freely. Often in the briefest statements we glimpse his subtle mind at work—criticizing Tennyson’s poetry; comparing the beauty of Botticelli’s women with the artistic merits of a painting attributed to Van Eyck;⁴ examining the capacity of the narrow-minded Established church to destroy creativity and freedom of expression (as was the experience for the Ormond Professor of Music, G. W. L. Marshall-Hall); or consistently foregrounding the importance of music in poetry. Because the coverage of people, ideas and issues is so wide-ranging, if at times fleeting or barely alluded to, I have included a biographical index with notes which should serve as a useful complement to the footnotes.

The letters unequivocally place Neilson’s life and work in a context which dispels entrenched romantic ideas of a naive bush poet plucking rhymes from the sky⁵ who is taken up by Melbourne’s educated society in a pitying or patronizing fashion. The wealth of available material points to a larger and more significant picture of the poet and his life among all manner of people in the bush and city, as well as his preoccupations, friendships and approach to ‘rhyming’. There is evidence confirming my intuitions and suppositions which have developed about his work over the past years, particularly in relation to the likely origins for sources and influences which surface in the poems. In spite of protestations of ignorance, troublesome eyesight and tiredness, the cautious and canny Neilson emerges as far more widely read and informed about English, American and European literature than is suggested by James Devaney in his biography.⁶

It was not enough that Neilson’s itinerant lifestyle should make it difficult to preserve letters, photographs, notebooks and galleys. Natural forces also contributed when the earliest correspondence, magazines and books sent by Stephens and Mary Gilmore to nourish the mind of the poet were eaten by mice at Chinkapook during the plague of 1917. The implications of this disaster were not lost on Nettie Palmer whose journal entry for 9 December 1929 reads:

But through the years the bulk of his reading has undoubtedly been the letters pouring in from A. G. S. Blessing and cursing, admonishing, praising—and sometimes bringing models to his notice, so that he knew what Heine had written, and Victor Hugo, and something of other poets whose names meant nothing to him.⁷

Other letters have been lost or deliberately destroyed, and we must be grateful for the writers, supporters and collectors who, believing in him, corresponded over the years and carefully set aside his replies together with their marginalia, critical reviews and autographed copies of the published works he sent.

Years later, the presence of only a few letters from James Devaney, Kate Baker, Mary Gilmore and Vance and Nettie Palmer is inevitably disappointing, but a high level of literary discussion and their interest in his working relationship with Stephens is indicated from Neilson’s replies. Rarely does Neilson write of the daily grind except as part of his news to the family. The precious letters between his father and brothers provide glimpses of the never-ending hardship and frustration associated with scratching a living from the land, which nineteenth-century art and literature has tended to romanticise and contain with terms like the ‘bush navvy’, and ‘rural worker’. Even so, the picture that emerges alongside that of a closely-knit if scattered family, is one of all members perpetually seeking work. And the itinerant nature of the labour was intensive: driving teams of horses, threshing wheat, fencing, cooking, fruitpicking, haymaking, labouring on the roads and in the mines. There is no doubt they contributed, with little reward, to the opening up of the Mallee and other major areas of economic development in Victoria.

Neilson’s total commitment to writing poetry and almost obsessive drive to see it in print is clearly evident in his correspondence with Lothian and Angus and Robertson even though his experience with Stephens had made him wary of publishers. As always he was concerned about his reputation as a poet and anxious that his family should benefit from any royalties after his death. During the the last months of his life Neilson, frail and exhausted, was determined to leave behind a separate collection of his light verse and turned yet again to his willing family for help in locating poems in scattered news-cuttings and old notebooks. The urgent requests written from Sydney while resting on his homeward journey after visiting James Devaney make poignant reading. Prior to this, we are privy to the more formal bread-and-butter letters he dictated from 160 Gordon Street, Footscray—to acknowledge hospitality, to respond to invitations to supper parties and functions; to thank friends for books and to subscribe to magazines and testimonials—all of which signify Neilson’s secure and esteemed place in the Melbourne literary and artistic community.

Neilson began sending poems to the Bulletin in 1895 and 1896. A reply, referred to in Neilson’s Autobiography and dating from early 1901, encouraged Neilson to send more verse. Vigorous and influential, the Bulletin was a national contributor-oriented weekly whose ground rules were laid down by J. F. Archibald in the 12 March 1892 issue:

‘Every man can write at least one book’, every man with brains has at least one good story to tell; every man with or without brains moves in a different circle and knows things unknown to any other man. Write carefully and plainly on one side of the paper only, obliterating every unnecessary word; then mail your work to The Bulletin, which pays for accepted matter ... Short stories or ballads ... 1360 words go to a column ... Don’t write a column on any subject if a half-column will do; don’t write half-a-column where a mere paragraph is enough. ‘Boil it down’.⁸

Contributions came from all over Australia and, frequently without consultation with the writer, many editorial practices were implemented —correcting, revising, punctuating and assembling sketches, stories and verse into a publishable state. The bush writers were often poorly schooled, always on the move and difficult to contact. This may explain some of the liberties Stephens took with Neilson’s work,⁹ for he showed a particular interest in the young poet from the beginning and had considered his verse for an anthology.¹⁰ Indeed, in a letter to Kate Baker he recalls how, when he received Neilson’s ‘Polly and Dad and the Spring Cart’,¹¹ he ‘was struck by the sympathy, the truth, the heart in it. I printed it upon the Red Page, and have looked for his work ever since’. He continues:

At first I used to try and improve it; perhaps sometimes I did slightly, but my rhythm does not move with his, so that now—occasionally—I suggest alterations here and there. He feels better than I know—as a rule.¹²

Just how much editorial help or interference Neilson received from Stephens with the actual composition of the poems and how much Neilson was prepared to acknowledge in later life will always be an area for conjecture. I would venture, however, that it was not as much as was so modestly conceded by Neilson in 1924 when he wrote to his mentor about the welcome he received in Melbourne.¹³

Letters passed to and fro with Neilson sometimes requesting help or Stephens urging word changes or the reworking of stanzas—‘Wants more work—but only when you are inspired. Can’t churn without cream’. Yet in a self-mocking tone Neilson was able to write to Mary Gilmore when he was composing a poem for her alone, ‘A. G. S. may pick it to pieces and I may never be able to take heart again’.¹⁴ Stephens, however, could also be influenced by the opinions of other writers and the debate about Neilson’s choice of title for his first book is an example. ‘By the way I must pray God to deliver you for having allowed Neilson to christen his volume Green Days and Cherries, all the Mortons [Frank] and McCan’t Writes will be hatching their rotten eggs and parodies about the place until you will begin to wish you had stayed in the manuscript’, wrote Hugh McCrae.¹⁵ Mary Gilmore recalled in a letter to Connie Robertson, ‘It was I who said No, it is too intentionally pretty. And your father took my advice’.¹⁶ Stephens attempted to justify the choice to Nettie Palmer:

I have noted all your Neilson names and objection to the title. Others were suggested, including ‘Yellow Air’ and ‘Petticoat Green’, but I like Green Days and Cherries best. Have you never been in a green orchard, when green, green, green sang through the air? Have you not read Marvell’s orange-tree poem hanging golden globes in a green night?¹⁷ If not and until then you may be perplexed. But I think, when you get the book and feel the surge of youth in it you will appreciate the green. Take it as a cherry tree, with poems for cherries. I find in poetry, as often before a picture, that one has to keep an open mind, coming without prepossession in order to let the artist express his message fully.¹⁸

Stephens it seemed bowed to pressure and advised Neilson: ‘Green Days and Cherries is all right. I would like to appeal to England and America, starting with Australia’. He then suggested variants of green or simply Poems but, when finally published, the collection was titled Heart of Spring after the first poem in the book. ‘A. G. S. never consulted me about the name of the book or anything else’, Neilson told James Devaney.¹⁹ It was not until after Stephens’ death when Lothian published The Collected Poems under the editorship of Neilson’s friend Bob Croll, that he could, with Croll’s patient encouragement, choose what poems should be included, omit inferior material and alter words and titles back to their original form.

In effect Neilson handed control over to Stephens and it is remarkable just how much energy Stephens put into making Neilson known. Over the years he sent copies of Neilson’s books to agents and other writers at home, in London and in New York. Havelock Ellis writing from Herne Hill, London, replied to Stephens:

I am always pleased to hear your news. Sad the literature is not more flourishing in Australia. Too much sunshine. (I pine for it here.) A fireside is probably needed for literature. And sunshine, by promoting sociability, diminishes individuality. You did not send me the parcel you spoke of. I should like to see something of Neilson, whom you speak of with praise.²⁰

As well as submitting articles to journals and newspapers and lecturing on Neilson’s poetry for the Workers’ Educational Association, Stephens introduced the verse to a network of New Zealand poets—Edward Tregear, Hubert Church, Arnold Wall, Eileen Duggan, Jessie Mackay and Blanche Baughan.

When one sees how extensive his efforts were it is surprising how difficult on occasions Stephens could sometimes be once the Memorandum of Agreement existed between publisher and author. For Neilson’s sympathizers, now and then, there is incomprehension and frustration about Stephens’ paradoxical treatment in such areas as the publishing contracts or conflicts over light and serious verse. The record of this puzzling heavy-handedness, at odds with Stephens’ determination to promote the ‘First of Australian poets’ is very important, for the Memorandum restricted Neilson from contributing to other literary magazines—for example, Bertram Stevens’ The Native Companion, published by T. C. Lothian. Stephens also controlled the number of Neilson’s poems to be included in the collections of Australian verse edited by Bertram Stevens, Percival Serle and others. Regarding anthologies merely as ‘seed scatterers’, he authorized fewer poems than requested. This was apparently a common fault with publishers, as a similar thing happened when Dr George Mackaness applied to Lothian to reprint some of Neilson’s verse for his anthology.²¹ Perhaps of even greater consequence were Stephens’ dealings over copyright with Louise Dyer who was in a position to publish and promote his work abroad, and similarly with the visiting English composer, Dr W. G. Whittaker.²² Stephens’ misguided protection of Neilson’s rights limited the opportunity for the poet’s lyrics to become ‘art songs’ widely known and sung in Britain and Europe. Neilson and Louise Dyer would have to wait until after Stephens’ death when an Australian composer, Margaret Sutherland, inspired by the Collected Poems, set six for various combinations of voice and instruments, which were subsequently published by L’Oiseau Lyre Press.

Stephens’ behaviour was puzzling for Neilson and the friends who wanted to help. On a number of occasions when Stephens, for personal or financial reasons, seemed not to have Neilson’s interests at heart, offers to publish his work (which ultimately came to nought) were received from Mary Gilmore, Percival Serle, Frank Wilmot and probably Kate Baker. Neilson knew better than to pass on to Stephens Blamire Young’s suggestion that he illustrate his poems, and the painter had to find other ways to assist the poet. Never could Young’s generosity be acknowledged with grace by Stephens who was unable to regard him as anything other than a mere decorator.²³

Stephens was a complex character. Following the informal gathering at ‘Ettrick’, Studley Park, given by Beatrice Fowler for Neilson, Mary Gilmore, and Hubert Church, Nettie Palmer continued her conversation with Gilmore by correspondence:

But I wanted to ask you about A. G. Stephens. Unfortunately I’m one of those he thinks he has antagonised—for sufficient reason. Yet Vance and I both love him, though he does such difficult things. He sacrifices himself in such quixotic & beautiful ways—as in the matter of all he has done for Shaw Neilson—and then on an impulse does something both grasping and futile that he bewilders people. Still he’s far ahead of his rule of thumb antagonists and in a better-arranged world his great powers would have been of greater public use.²⁴

Not valuing the letters in the way his friends and future collectors would, Neilson had clear-outs as he moved around. Thus he was unable to provide any early material for James Devaney or Vance and Nettie Palmer who were interested particularly in the extent of his reading of French and Irish writers and in Stephens’ overall influence. When Vance was editing Stephens’ life at the request of the A. G. Stephens Memorial Committee, Neilson expressed surprise at how few letters he still had. When Connie Robertson sold some he had sent to her father, A. G. Stephens, for £5 each Neilson was shocked and even inquired about how he might purchase them back.

Many of the letters which refer to Neilson and the publication of his verse illustrate methods used at the time for book production and distribution. If one did not have a wealthy and cultured patron, as Neilson did in Louise Dyer for Ballad and Lyrical Poems, or was not prepared to finance one’s own work as he had to with Beauty Imposes, another option, which Stephens always preferred, was to circularize an advertising leaflet with printed testimonials solicited from writers and a subscription application attached. It was hoped that pre-payment would at least cover the printer’s bill and any remaining books could then be sent to booksellers, A. H. Spencer of Hill of Content, Frank Wilmot at Cole’s Book Arcade and Captain Peters at Robertson and Mullens, all of whom took a higher commission. Stephens’ succesful efforts to interest Kate Baker, Edward Vidler, an independent publisher, and Beatrice Fowler, the proprietor of The Australian Press Cuttings Agency, in establishing a network of subscribers stems from a widespread belief among the literary community that Neilson was making a unique contribution to Australian literature and that his work needed to be in print.

In the latter years it was to the Queensland poet and critic, James Devaney, that Neilson turned for discussion about rhyming and getting published and it was at his suggestion that Neilson dictated the six long chapters of Autobiography to his sister Annie and half-sister Lisette during 1934. It is readily apparent from their correspondence that Devaney, whose wife was at times seriously ill, sacrificed his own work to help Neilson produce and secure publication for the final collection, Beauty Imposes. Devaney would return Neilson’s poems with opinions, suggestions and always encouragement. He would point out weaknesses and explain his reasons and then the next time consider any revisions Neilson had made. It was a companionable and creative relationship between the two poets but there was some reserve and not only because he was dictating: ‘I could not for very good reasons give you any more particulars concerning the songs which you call love songs’, he told Devaney.²⁵

Included in this collection are 91 letters handwritten by Neilson, 219 dictated to different amanuenses, 86 letters addressed to Neilson and 90 between other correspondents writing about Neilson. There are thirteen extracts from published and unpublished sources. Although Neilson wrote much of his correspondence and verse by hand, he dictated regularly in later life when living at Footscray with his sister Annie McKimm and her family. ‘If my sister charged me a shilling an hour I would have to go broke’, he told Stephens. Neilson found it easier to dictate; he could think about what he wanted to put into words and he was always very tired. He had problems with his eyes and his own comments about his sight appear in letters throughout the collection. Not only his stepmother Elizabeth Neilson, but Mary Gilmore, Blamire Young and Louise Dyer organized eye-tests and new spectacles for him. His half-sister Lisette, whom Neilson referred to as his secretary, recalls:

I spent some time writing his verse for him, generally on a Sunday afternoon, as his eyes were not so good at that time. That would be about 1934–1936, whilst I was single. Much has been said about his failing eyesight when young. This I cannot understand and must disagree with, as I have his handwriting in books given to my sister [Lily] and myself during the 1930’s, and also some given to his father who died in 1922, and I would not say it was the writing of a partially blind man, as one is led to believe so many times. In fact, I found it quite clear and easy to read.²⁶

Dictating had certain drawbacks. He admitted to getting very impatient at the slowness of it all and the problems caused by misheard words. If they appeared in a poem sent to Stephens or Devaney this would result in further discussion and correction. Usually he did not read through the dictated material and spelling mistakes could pass unnoticed and prove embarrassing, as with a letter regarding a memorial for A. G. Stephens. On a particular occasion Neilson found it too difficult emotionally, when writing to Connie Robertson, to dictate what needed to be said about her father and the arrangements they had made together. When away navvying and he had the urge to write down his lines and thoughts it was difficult to find a quiet spot and, if his eyes were strained, someone who might take dictation. Not having the writing materials could present a problem and some of the letters are written in pencil on the torn-out pages of a small notebook. He complained to Devaney: ‘My memory is very poor, and I can’t see how my verse looks’.²⁷ Always he was concerned about spelling and punctuation, especially when he was dictating.

In 1941 Neilson made the journey to Brisbane and stayed with the Devaneys. The first-hand experience of living day-to-day with the poet, the letters that had passed between them and the Autobiography provided material for Devaney’s biography, Shaw Neilson, three years later. Acting as the frail poet’s amanuensis Devaney paints a portrait of an old and very weary man:

Before dictating a letter he would sometimes discuss the subject of it vigorously enough, giving his real feelings and opinions; and then the dictated letter immediately afterwards would be ludicrously deferential by comparison, and in fact different altogether. This was not insincerity so much as a curious timidity or desire to please, to be friendly.²⁸

That Neilson was nevertheless accomplished at dictating is evident in his letters to Stephens where he demonstrates an ability to concentrate at length, often on complicated and unpleasant matters. Therefore I have often wondered to whom he was writing in the way Devaney describes above, as the letters which survive from this period are generally brief, and addressed to family members and close friends.

Certainly it is true that Neilson was always careful about what he committed to paper. Of great importance, therefore, is his handwritten correspondence with Mary Gilmore begun in 1912. Here we observe two poets of Celtic background, a reserved bachelor and a sensitive mature countrywoman, establishing a rapport that allows Neilson to open up, uncharacteristically, both emotionally and intellectually. In letters written under physically difficult conditions during the arduous years of labouring, he confides to her his concerns for his ageing father with a second family and the instability and health of his brother Bill. After reading her provocative and wide-ranging articles for the Worker he admits to a greater appreciation of the plight of the Aborigines—‘we had lost a great chance in our literature’²⁹ and the need for prison reform.³⁰ In her turn, Gilmore uses Neilson’s poem ‘Marian’s Child’, which draws on his reading of George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede, to head an article she wrote on unmarried mothers and baby-farming rackets.

Unequivocal proof that Paul Verlaine’s Art Poétique exerted a profound influence on Neilson’s own poetics is confirmed in a letter to Gilmore. Responding to her comments about Norman Lindsay’s illustrations for Hugh McCrae’s book Satyrs and Sunlight: Silvarum Libri, Neilson commends the artist’s versatility but deplores his ‘coarse females’. He then continues:

This pushing of ugliness always into the foreground I cant see the sense of it. In music and poetry it is not tolerated. Music ever. I think it is Verlaine says that. What a great thing it is to keep a man from getting too far down in the mud.³¹

Nettie Palmer’s English translation of Paul Verlaine’s Art Poétique was printed under the pseudonym ‘Owen Roe O’Neil’, in the first issue of The Heart of the Rose, edited by Bernard O’Dowd and published by Lothian in 1907. It reads:

Music before all else! And let your music be the irregular, which is vaguer, and melts into the air, being no wise hampered or circumscribed. Thus you’ll be wrong if you choose your words without a certain degree of incompleteness: what is better than the poem of half-lights, where the Indefinite joins the Precise?—like lovely eyes behind veils, like broad daylight in the shimmer of noon, like a sky when autumn is mellow, all crowded over with shining stars. For ’tis Shades we desire—not colour at all, only Shades, which alone link dream with dream, flute with horn. Avoid with all your might the murderous point, the cruel clever saying, the unclean joke, such as bring tears to blue eyes—avoid all such kitchen garlic! Take Eloquence, and wring its neck. ’Twill be well for you if in the very current of your energy, you stop, somewhat to modify your elaborate rhyming; for if you don’t watch it, where will it stop? Who will tell of the sins of such rhyme? What deaf child, what idiot barbarian counterfeited this gem for us, with a copper that rings false and hollow under the file?

Music still, music ever! Your verse should be the winged Something that is felt to flee from a soul on departure for other skies, other loves. It should be the good Fortune that is shed abroad on the fresh morning wind, bearing the fragrance of mint and thyme—all the rest is literature.

Neilson was familiar with Palmer’s translation and kept a copy of this particular issue of The Heart of the Rose at his sister’s house in Footscray. Years later when staying with the Devaneys he wrote asking for it to be sent to him.³² It contained, in addition to the translation from Verlaine, an article on Charles Baudelaire by Archibald Strong. The magazine manifested a strong interest in European literature and Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Voyelles’ with an English translation by ‘Shalott’ was published in the fourth and final issue, subtitled Fire o’ the Flame.

Verlaine’s theories of poetics were the subject of numerous articles, some of which may have come Neilson’s way. Christopher Brennan referred to him as the ‘master of half-tones and whispers’;³³ Stephens reviewed Arthur Symons’ The Symbolist Movement in Literature³⁴ and when introducing The Bulletin Story Book (1901), claimed: ‘Verlaine’s cult of Faded Things, extolling the tinted hue before the gross colour, finds a natural home in Australia—in many aspects a Land of Faded Things of delicate purples, delicious greys and dull, dreamy olives and ochres’.³⁵ Neilson received the Bookfellow regularly and no doubt read the article ‘Suffering Art’ with Stephens’ rather curious pronouncement —in view of his crowning of Neilson five years later as ‘first among Australian Poets’:

... a poet to me means Shelley, Verlaine, and their kindred. The others I call verse-writers merely, they cannot give me the big emotion. I do not believe in cheapening the price of laurels. Even to Miss Jessie Mackay or Mr Shaw Neilson, I dislike applying the great word poet. I prefer to say that they are poets in kind, or that they have written poetry, and thus make a distinction. For a man can write poetry without being a poet in my Shelley sense ...³⁶

Such a comment would have spurred Neilson on and there is no doubt that by the time his first book, Heart of Spring, was published in 1919 he had produced some very fine work. But of all the articles he may have read on new French writing, or the French sonnets he may have received from Stephens, I believe it is Palmer’s translation of Verlaine in The Heart of the Rose which confirms the qualities he believed intuitively he should aspire to in his poetry and uphold in his relationships with others.

After re-rereading ‘Song Be Delicate’ in the Collected Poems Lothian published in 1934, Nettie Palmer wondered:

What led this poet half-blind, living in a remote Mallee settlement, to write a tiny Art of Poetry, as if he were a Horace or a Boileau? Did the impulse spring from some deep need within himself, or did it arise from his discussions of his poetry by letter with A. G. Stephens? At that time Neilson had written little but easy balladry, and had not read many of his fellow-poets. What made him lay the kind of injunctions upon them that are to be found in Verlaine’s subtle and difficult Art Poétique?³⁷

Palmer has underestimated the range of poetry Neilson would have read by the time ‘Song Be Delicate’ was published in the Bookfellow (15 November 1913) and certainly by that time the range of his craft encompassed more than ‘easy balladry’. The journal entry continues with an assessment of her translation of Art Poétique for O’Dowd:

I would say that I missed from it that strange hovering between life and death, here and hereafter, reality and unreality (vice versa, I should have put it) that comes from Verlaine’s poem like an emanation, and to me explains the Symbolist movement more than words I have read about it. But if my version failed to catch this ‘hovering between life and death,’ Neilson’s did not so fail:

Let your song be delicate.

Sing no loud hymn:

Death is abroad ... O the black season!

The deep—the dim!³⁸

If the theme of ‘Song Be Delicate’ can be said to echo the opening and closing sections of Verlaine’s exhortation, then for sentiments paralleling the outcry against eloquence and false sounds we need look no further than Neilson’s conviction ‘that harsh noises are bad for a nation. They lead to a dullness of comprehension’. He further comments in the article ‘Free Verse Old and New’ about ‘discordant new verse’, ‘the constant noise’ and vulgarity of Walt Whitman and the detrimental influence of Wagner: ‘Personally I think that his incredible violent bombast, and his unnecessary thunders may have had something to do with the origins of such things as frightfulness and total war’.³⁹ Rudyard Kipling and his ‘jingles’ also distressed Neilson.⁴⁰ His response to the spread of British imperialism and the aftermath of the Boer War is clearly stated in ‘The Soldier is Home’:

Weary is he, and sick of the sorrow of war,

Hating the shriek of loud music, the beat of the drum ...⁴¹

Neilson was as sensitive towards sounds and ‘listening’ as he was about his eyesight and ‘seeing’. In ‘The Flight of the Weary’, the lines ‘The silent shall speak, and the ears of / The deaf shall be shaken with sound’ recall The Gospel According to St Matthew, 11:5. A kind of synesthesia, or in F. S. Pierpoint’s words ‘the mystic harmony / Linking sense to sound and sight’,⁴² is integral to such poems as ‘Love’s Coming’, ‘The Sun is Up’ and ‘The Orange Tree’:‘... There calls / no voice, no music beats on me / But it is almost sound’. It occurs in many of Neilson’s lines such as ‘The flowers can hear’;⁴³ ‘O thou of intrepid apparel, thy song is thy gown; / Translate thy proud speech of the sunlight—O lory come down!’⁴⁴ and in his manifest delight in the daisies as lovers: ‘When the song is out on the eyelids / And the dance is at the heart’.⁴⁵

In addition to the ‘valour of music’ associated with military brass bands Neilson, who rejected and condemned in his poetry the narrow, uninspired orthodoxy of the day and the manner in which it was preached, also draws attention to the role of the drummer to ‘Fetch ’em, fetch ’em, fetch ’em’ to the Salvation Army.⁴⁶ This new evangelistic approach to saving souls en masse Neilson found equally fanatical and oppressive. During World War I Henry Lawson summed up the wide-ranging public reaction towards the Salvationists in ‘Booth’s Drum’:

They were ‘ratty’, they were hooted by the meanest and the least,

When they woke the Drum of Glory long ago in London East,

They were often mobbed by hoodlums—they were few, but unafraid—

And their lassies were insulted, but they banged their drum and prayed.

Prayed in public for the sinners, prayed in private for release,

Till they saved some brawny lumpers—then they banged the drum in peace ...⁴⁷

The Salvation War began in Victoria in 1883 and by 1888 a barracks was established at Nhill. The energy and force with which the Commissioner and ‘the arrogant drummer’ led the troops, splendid in their navy blue uniforms and red-lined capes, is graphically depicted both in the War Cry, 1891,⁴⁸ and by Neilson:

Captains and Corporals have great hardihood

Move with great splendour in an age of noise.⁴⁹

‘The arrogant drummer’

Following up this campaign some months later, ‘The Field Secretary in the Wimmera’ reported ‘The Spoils of War—Forty for Purity, Thirty-two for Pardon, and Twelve Candidates’.⁵⁰ ‘The intolerant bray’⁵¹ and fervour of ‘soldiers’ and local converts—’Watty went into the Army / It keeps him from the drink’⁵²—and the constant harping on a theme is parodied by Neilson in ‘On the One String’.

Mighty men, crowing men,

Heavy of jaw

Teach their God cheerfully

All the fine law.

Mighty men, heavy men,

Look to the sky,

Say all their prayers and then

Cheerfully die.⁵³

Neilson’s mother and his sister Maggie attended the open-air meetings and the latter became an ardent Salvationist. The unrelenting drill of the Army was to leave a deep and indelible impression on the poet’s sensibilities. ‘The clapping of a thousand hands, / The trembling of a tambourine’,⁵⁴ formed part of ‘the dream’ out of which arose the stunning strident image of the drummer. Against this formidable figure and all it represented Neilson balanced qualities he quietly praised and found in nature; for instance, his reference to the softly spoken Autumn—’It has no band nor any rude red drummer’—and the ‘sober and wise’ crane which ‘bleats no instruction’ and ‘is not an arrogant drummer’.

Neilson writes freely to Gilmore of his appreciation of dancers and young girls in white dresses and his agitation when Spring arrives arousing in him the desire to start ‘rhyming’. He confesses he is unnerved and brought to tears by the chapter ‘The Golden Gates are Passed’ in The Mill on the Floss where Maggie and Tom are forced to leave their childhood behind. Neilson’s tribute is ‘Maggie Tulliver’ in which he deliberately incorporates George Eliot’s own words ‘Unseen Pity’ into the last stanza.⁵⁵ They appear in Maggie’s emotional response to Stephen’s letter in the last pages of the novel. Again Neilson draws directly on Eliot’s prose in the composition of ‘The Land Where I was Born’ when he re-creates the make-believe world of Maggie and Lucy, a world where ‘they never reach their teens’.⁵⁶ But there are more subtle examples demonstrating Neilson’s appreciation of Eliot’s humanitarian outlook. He concludes a letter to Gilmore with the comment about Stephens: ‘He has been very good to me. What an enthusiast he is’. This description, applied also to his friend Beatrice Fowler, draws on Eliot’s explanation in The Mill on the Floss of ‘something that good society calls ENTHUSIASM’:

Something that will give patience and feed human love when the limbs ache with weariness and human looks are hard upon us—something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires, that includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is not ourselves. Now and then that sort of enthusiasm finds a far echoing voice that comes from an experience springing out of the deepest need.⁵⁷

The passage struck a deep chord within Neilson and he longed to see ‘active love’ in his surroundings.

Maggie Tulliver was one of a number of dark-eyed heroines celebrated in Neilson’s poetry. Another was a letter-carrier for the Sea Lake Post Office, a girl called Florence Case. ‘Almost a Woman / Half awake’,⁵⁸ Florence became the inspiration behind many of Neilson’s poems including this beautiful tribute, ‘Her Eyes’:

Dark eyes are hers—that move my heart to sing.

They have consumed the Summer! caught the Spring!

Stolen the star-light, and exultingly

lifted the moonbeams’ old embroidery:

Dark eyes are hers.⁵⁹

In 1911 the thirty-nine-year-old bachelor gave Florence a copy of The Mill on the Floss; she was seventeen.⁶⁰ He was in love with her but too poor to offer anything but his poetry and it is to the poems we must look for love’s flowering and full expression. No letters have survived from this period—1903–13—so one can only conjecture about their relationship. Florence left the Sea Lake Post Office in about 1913 to work in Melbourne where she married a year later. Perhaps Neilson’s play on words in ‘May’, which dates from 1909,⁶¹ gives us a subtle clue to his infatuation.