[Editor: This is section 2 of “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir ”, by A. G. Stephens, published in Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems (1897).]
[Barcroft Boake writes from Rocklands (Adaminaby, NSW)]
From this point there are extant occasional letters from Boake to his relatives and friends, which give directer insight to his mode of life and thought. Writing from Rocklands to his father on 29th May, 1887, he says —
… I had a pleasant ride to-day in and out to Adaminaby in the pouring rain — to church. This was a woman’s freak. —— would go, and asked me; and as I can’t refuse a lady as a rule I made a martyr of myself.
… Tennis every afternoon.
… I will give you an extract from my diary for the last fortnight. ‘Got up just as the breakfast was going in. Rushed in just as grace was finished; ate two chops; bullied Miss M—— about the tea being too weak. After breakfast smoke in the kitchen. Did plans till eleven; another smoke; dinner at one — ate a plate of mutton. Another smoke. Mrs. C—— and I play young Boyd and Miss M——; and, strange to say, always beat them. Mrs. C—— retires about nine; I put in the time yarning in the kitchen with Jack and the cook (Chinese) till ten — then bed.’
Of course, on Saturday whole holiday; go to Adaminaby; hear the latest yarn from W——, the publican (mostly discreditable); then home. On Sunday read the papers all day; tennis in the afternoon.
This is the programme, except that we have cutlets for breakfast occasionally instead of chops. I think I have had beef once only since the spring…
At this time, of course, winter was approaching — the severe Monaro winter — and the surveying camp had been broken up. Boake felt the round of office-work at the farm monotonous after the cheerful changes of the camp. He bore confinement ill at any time, inheriting from his father a predisposition to melancholy which could only be subdued by physical exercise and social excitement. For his temperament was sluggish: he was a dreamer and procrastinator — quick to perceive, slow to act — executing task-work reluctantly and mechanically, though developing plenty of fitful energy when spurred by appropriate stimuli.
Of this dreamy habit, apart from his general delicacy of constitution, the chief cause was a weak, slow-beating heart — often met among children reared in the moist and depressing climate of Sydney. And Boake further slowed his slow heart by the excessive use of tobacco. ‘The pipe was never out of his mouth.’ In the mountain air of Monaro, and especially when walking or riding a great deal, he could throw off the tobacco lethargy and appear for the most part cheerful, even gay. But when his body went unexercised, his mind became immediately overcast. Then he smoked to drive away the blue devils, and every pipeful brought another blue devil to attack him. The troubles and disappointments which a more buoyant temperament would have brushed aside oppressed Boake permanently. He saw the anthills in his mental path as mountains. Time after time he felt himself losing his hold on life; and his craving for adventurous physical employment — in part, as he suggests, hereditary — was partly born of an instinct that this way lay salvation.
When at last he returned to depressing Sydney he came, as his father says, to ‘a house of gloom.’ He was unemployed, physically unexercised: mental troubles reacted on his body, and bodily languor on his mind. And always he smoked, smoked, and his heart beat more slowly; till he would sit for hours with his head bent down — speechless, pulseless, almost lifeless. On previous occasions he had roused himself to end a similar lethargy by change of living scene and occupation. This time the conditions were unfavourable; the disease too desperate for any but a desperate remedy. And Boake changed Life for Death. In effect, he was killed by three things in particular: his sensitive brain, his weak heart, and tobacco. And I am not sure it would be extravagant to say that the greatest of these was tobacco.
It must be remembered that Boake received little more than a fair middle-class education (as that phrase was understood in the seventies) and left school at the age of seventeen. His parents were people of more than average intelligence, but with no exceptional culture. His father strung undistinguished rhymes: his mother had literary tastes, but no literary talents. Consequently the rough form of most of Boake’s compositions is not surprising. In syntax and spelling he did not often blunder; but he was careless in punctuation, and in his letters — scribbled, of course, only for friendly eyes — the sentences run on with hardly a pause. For convenience I have punctuated the quotations which I make, and have occasionally altered the spelling in conformity with usage: otherwise the matter remains as Boake wrote it.
At the date of the next letter preserved (31st July, 1887), winter has fairly grappled with Monaro. ‘For the last two months we have had snow every week,’ writes Boake to his father;
… in Kiandra they are finally snowed in for the winter. The traffic in and out has ceased for some time, with the exception of the mail; and last Sunday it could not get in on account of the snow, so now he has to take it as near as he can on horseback, and a man comes out from the town on snow-shoes and takes it in … Fancy having to use these in sunny Australia! but in Kiandra and the mountains they are the only means of travelling. They have been able to use them in Adaminaby for pleasure, not necessity. It is great sport. They are about seven feet long — just a long mountain-ash paling four inches wide, steamed and turned up at the point, with a leather strap in the middle for the feet. They travel at a tremendous pace on falling ground: of course, on the level or up-hill they can only go slowly…
Source:
Barcroft Boake, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 166-170
Editor’s notes:
The text “which give directer insight” (which could arguably be regarded as archaic or poor wording) was changed in the 1913 edition (p. 177) to “which give more direct insight”.
blue devil = (usually expressed in the plural: blue devils) [see: blue devils]
blue devils = depression, low spirits
directer = (archaic) more direct
extant = currently existing, still in existence, surviving (especially regarding something which is very old); not destroyed, disappeared, extinct, or lost (e.g. old documents which have not fallen apart or perished)
falling ground = sloping ground
gay = happy, joyous, carefree; well-decorated, bright, attractive (in modern times it may especially refer to a homosexual, especially a male homosexual; can also refer to something which is no good, pathetic, useless)
ill = having an adverse, difficult, harsh, objectionable, offensive, unfavourable, unpleasant, or unsatisfactory quality, or to experience something in that way
Monaro = a region in the south of New South Wales
See: “Monaro (New South Wales)”, Wikipedia
mutton = the meat of an adult sheep (as used for food)
paling = (also known as a “pale”) a wooden post, stake, stick, or strip (often flat with a pointed top) which is used to make a fence (such a fence being referred to as a paling fence or a picket fence)
seventies = (in the context of the 19th century) the 1870s
yarn = chat, talk
yarning = chatting, talking
Leave a Reply