Joseph Furphy, Australian

JOSEPH FURPHY, AUSTRALIAN BRUCE SUTHERLAND I N the year that Furphy's first book, Such is Life, was published Havelock Ellis wrote a short essay on Australian :fiction. Furphy is not mentioned, for Ellis had never heard of him, but the tone of the essay is prophetic. "It is always interesting," wrote ElJis, "to study the literature of a young race, the offshoot of an old race living under the influences of an absolutely new environment. The interest of such work is often out of all relation to its absolute literary quality, because ... we see the outcome of a new combination of influences and ideals, a combination which has never exactly come about before.... In a land like Australia where a predominantly northern and British race, brought into closer contact with the sunshine, has become accustomed to find the extremes of luxury and hardship almost side by side . . . a young nation runs the risk of becoming rotten before it is ripe. That is a risk which the Australians may happily escape . . . and the beginnings of their national literature will one day, we may be sure, be a subject of reverent study."1 In a restricted sense Furphy comes close to being a "subject of reverent study" in his native Australia. He has emerged as one of the original forces in Australian letters because he himself was original. He had much to say that was worth saying and a way of saying it that is natural and unrestrained. There is enough of "a new combination of influences and ideals" in his work to warrant his own description of it: "temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian." Furphy's contemporaries largely ignored his work; there are many present-day Australians who either dislike his books or have never read them; there has been much over-praise and misinterpretation, but the fact remains that so far as indigenous Australian literature is concerned Furphy stands out in bold relief. The Australian environment worked its wonders on this representative of a northern race and one of Furphy's firmest convictions was that environment exerts a far more powerful influence upon the growth of human character than does heredity. He deliberately chose not to be separated from his own environment; consequently his writings come close to being an epitome of the ideals and characteristics of a way of life which was a part of the Australia that he knew so well. His heritage, too, was important in the formation of his ideals, and that is where the story of Joseph Furphy begins. 1 Weekly Critical Review, Sept. 17, 1903. 169 UNrvERSITY OF ToRONTO QuARTI?.RLY, vol. XX, no. 2, Jan., 1951 170 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY In I841 a young Irish couple, erstwhile tenants on the estate of the Duke of Manchester in County Annagh, arrived at Port Phillip, Victoria, as bounty immigrants. They were immediately employed on a sheep station a few miles from Melbourne where the only free man among convict workers was Samuel Furphy, and the only white woman, his wife Judith. Samuel Furphy was an extremely capable man: a gardener whose botanical knowledge was of valu~ to visiting scientists; an amateur ethnologist who smdied aboriginal lore; a clever man who could do almost anything needful with his hands; a pious, hard-working, unworldly Methodist who lacked the ingredients for what the world generally regards as success. After about a year the Furphys moved to another station at Yarra Glen, also near Melbourne, and here Joseph Furphy was born on September 26, 1843. His early training came entirely from h.is parents and from them he learned to respect books and book learning and the fundamentals of Christian living. Among the available books were Shakespeare and the Bible, and, like Hardy, Furphy soon came to know them both so well that by the age of seven he could recite long passages at random from either work. Unlike his English contemporary , however, there were long years of manual labour ahead for Furphy, but the joy of books and the zest for knowledge remained a We-long passion. Furphy's reading habits followed no pattern. For long periods he had to take what was available, and...