A Certain Style

by Jacqueline Kent

  From a distance of more than half a century, as Ruth Park pointed out herself, the furore caused by The Harp in the South is bewildering. It became one of Australia’s best-loved and most enduringly popular novels, was translated into thirty-eight languages and made into a television miniseries. The grandchildren of its critics probably studied it at school. So why did it cause such a fuss? In her autobiography, Ruth Park stated that the reaction came from her status as a newcomer to Australia and as a woman. There is some evidence for this, particularly as regards gender: a hullabaloo greeted Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo, Kylie Tennant’s The Battlers and, a few years later, Dymphna Cusack and Florence James’s Come In Spinner. And while You Can’t See Round Corners by the Sydney-born Jon Cleary was a tougher and more violent book, it received nothing like the hostile public response of Harp.

  Beatrice, it must be said, did not care for The Harp in the South, which she found too commercial and journalistic and not sufficiently literary for her taste. Douglas Stewart was no supporter of Harp either – he had been backing another novel to win the Herald competition.6 Beatrice also disapproved of Angus and Robertson’s commitment to publish prizewinners in a literary competition, even the august Sydney Morning Herald’s: her view was always that Angus and Robertson must choose the books they wanted. She made no bones about this, telling Ruth Park that The Harp in the South was not the sort of book A&R cared to publish, but that they had a gentleman’s agreement with the Herald.7 Naturally Ruth Park was dismayed by this and she also felt a sense of foreboding. She knew that a reluctant publisher is little better than none at all, and if someone as influential in A&R as Beatrice did not care for her book, what were its chances of being properly presented to the public? She already had reason for doubt. A&R had not used Harp’s serialisation in the Herald to generate any publicity for the book; indeed, they hardly publicised or advertised it at all.8

  Considering that the book was so controversial and its author so personable (Ruth Park was a young mother), it is extraordinary how little A&R did to promote The Harp in the South. They did not publish it until 1948, almost eighteen months after the competition, and then they printed fewer than 5000 copies. Walter Cousins flatly denied that, far from dampening the demand for a book, serialisation generally makes readers want to read it in full. When it finally appeared it sold, as D’Arcy Niland remarked to his wife, like salted peanuts.9 And still A&R hesitated to reprint; Hedley Jeffries told Ruth Park he had to talk hard to convince them.10 When Angus and Robertson heard via London that Robert Lusty, publishing director of Michael Joseph, had doubled the first printing order on reading the manuscript, they were pleased for Park but unimpressed.

  Despite A&R’s efforts, Ruth Park became a successful author and she and Beatrice became friends. Whatever her feelings about The Harp in the South, Beatrice was honestly delighted by Park’s success. She took her under her wing and often invited Park to Folly Point. ‘We are all such old fuddy-duddies, my pet, you must come along and be young and beautiful,’ she told Park (at the time Beatrice was in her late thirties, Park in her mid-twenties). They also occasionally lunched at David Jones in Elizabeth Street, usually after Beatrice’s weekly hair appointment. A great bond was their shared enthusiasm for The Pea Pickers and Eve Langley – whenever Park visited her family in New Zealand she made a point of writing to Beatrice with news of her.

  Beatrice’s relationship with Ruth Park shows how easily and well she could distance herself from her role at Angus and Robertson and be simply a friend. She and Park never discussed Park’s work, for instance. Park knew that her writing was ‘not Beatrice’s thing at all’ (though Beatrice must have recognised how good it was), and like most writers she was secretive about projects in their early stages.11 She and Beatrice undoubtedly preserved a tactful silence on the subject of Park’s contractual struggles with A& Walter Cousins had initially been reluctant to give Park a contract for The Harp in the South, telling her that A&R operated on a handshake.

  After the novel became a bestseller in England and the US, it finally dawned on A&R that Ruth Park was a highly profitable author. They published Poor Man’s Orange, the sequel to Harp, in 1949 with a print run of 10 000, selling all but 1300 copies in the first four months.12 The Witch’s Thorn, published in October 1951, had an initial run of 15 000 copies in Australia and New Zealand and became a Book Society choice in the US (the American publishers, Houghton Mifflin, had some trouble with the idiom, wanting to know whether a lamington was a Maori cake). For Ruth Park – to borrow the title of a memoir she and D’Arcy Niland wrote a few years later – the drums had truly gone bang. She was now embarked on a long and distinguished writing career, and described winning the Herald competition as ‘the biggest break we ever had’.13

  Meanwhile D’Arcy Niland was beginning to think that, despite the time needed to produce them, there might be something in writing novels. He took time out from short stories and magazine articles and wrote Gold in the Streets, a story about the seamy, occasionally violent Sydney he knew. The novel won third prize in the Herald competition in 1948, and early in 1950 he submitted it to Angus and Robertson.

  The first reader, Alec Bolton, recommended it, though he warned that it contained a number of passages that were ‘unswervingly physical’. Beatrice thought it was ‘realistic and sordid in the extreme’ but could see beyond its subject matter, and her judgement was a considered one:

  The author avoids melodrama – and he is not sentimental. In this respect he outstrips Ruth Park as a writer, but it is extremely doubtful whether his work would have the same popular appeal. Jon Cleary’s was a better piece of work in some ways than Ruth Park’s, but his novel didn’t sell and hers did. To publish a third novel in so short a time with the same Sydney background would perhaps not be wise, though a talent like D’Arcy Niland’s cannot be ignored.14

  A&R turned down Gold in the Streets. Beatrice wrote to Ruth Park that the novel was both powerful and beautifully written, and reiterated her view that in some ways Niland surpassed both Park and Jon Cleary as a writer. This seems a tactless statement for an editor to make, though Beatrice was well aware that the Park–Niland literary relationship was not a jealous or competitive one. Beatrice suggested that Niland might consider doing another draft, toning down the violence: ‘with his grasp of character, excellent technique and sure sense of drama, he could well become a very fine novelist,’ she added, and A&R would certainly be happy to see his next novel.15

  As rejections with encouragement often do, this had the effect of galvanising Niland to further enthusiasm. He assured Beatrice that he was keen to write another novel, but work would have to wait, ‘owing to certain delaying factors, which I hope to tell you about soon. You’ll be surprised,’ he added. ‘I was.’16

  The delaying factors were born in September. ‘How very nice of you to let me know so soon about the twins,’ wrote Beatrice soon afterwards. ‘Very many congratulations! … What an amazing girl Ruth must be to have demanded her writing pad on the twins’ birthday!’ D’Arcy Niland declared his intention of calling them Angus and Robertson. Pity you can’t because they’re girls, responded Beatrice, suggesting Angostura and Roberta instead. (They were named Kilmeny Mary and Deborah Mary.)

  Park and Niland wrote to Beatrice as if she were an angel and kindly elder sister combined. ‘I can’t tell you what [your encouragement] means to us,’ Park wrote from New Zealand. ‘A bit of encouragement and advice from the right person does so much to smooth out the rough places, of which we’ve had quite a few lately.’17

  D’Arcy Niland’s second novel was The Big Smoke, which won second prize in the Commonwealth Jubilee Novel Competition. A&R’s first reader thought it was ‘an extraordinary mixture of soft-heartedness with extremely gory and repellent toughness’, and Beatrice turned it down. She tried to break the news gently to its author:

  You have so much competence and emotional capacity … as a writer that I think you must soon produce a real novel that wi
ll last, but I do not think this is it. You are still the short-story writer here, and a very good one … but your preoccupation with brutality seems almost morbid – as though you thought that only through drawing tough people could you write forcefully. Surely you don’t …18

  A disappointed Niland vowed to produce a novel that A&R would accept, but realised that this would have to wait: the bills needed to be paid. ‘I could write a dozen short stories in the time I’d spend labouring over another clunker,’ he told his wife disconsolately.19 Though an idea for a novel was germinating – the story of an itinerant bush worker who, to spite his estranged wife, takes his small daughter wandering with him through the outback – he turned his attention to more promising short-term prospects. These included more stories and a book on short-story writing, the latter drawing on the expertise that had enabled him to support himself as a freelance writer for more than a decade. This was probably Australia’s first ‘how to’ book on creative writing for the local market, and Beatrice was dubious about it. She could not believe, she said, that enough people wanted to write short stories for the book to be successful. (Perhaps she hadn’t looked at A&R’s pile of unsolicited manuscripts for a while.) Niland promptly fired back list upon list of clubs, groups and other assorted organisations dedicated to the written word – one newsletter named ‘Writers’ World’ had a circulation of 4000 – proof that in 1954, as now, Australia was bristling with would-be writers. He finally convinced A&R, and his brisk and practical book, with its grab-you-by-the-collar title of Make Your Own Stories Sell, did well.

  But it was his new novel that Niland really cared about. This was the story of the seasonal worker Macauley who tramps through the towns of western New South Wales encumbered by his four-year-old daughter Buster. He sent it to Beatrice early in 1954. The first reports were cautious, not to say sniffy: ‘In his endeavours to be tough, Mr Niland positively bellows in one’s ear,’ was the reaction of the first, unnamed, reader, who thought that the end, where Buster almost dies, was a bit much – ‘I may be wrong but I thought “crises” went out with the advent of penicillin’. But the reader did think the novel had dignity and the characters were well drawn. The second reader thought it was written with colour and vigour but had too many long, gory fights.

  Beatrice approached the Commonwealth Literary Fund, and their reader – possibly Vance Palmer – was much more enthusiastic, commenting that the novel had ‘vigour which at times rises to genuine power’. However, the reader thought that the book’s violent descriptions and crudity of language prevented it from being a first-class novel. Like A&R, the CLF could sometimes be rather prissy.

  D’Arcy Niland was becoming nervous. ‘Every time the postman whistles I rattle like a loose window,’ he wrote to Beatrice.20 But finally, in June 1954, she wrote with the news that, yes, A&R were interested in publishing the novel, with some revision and perhaps a new title. D’Arcy Niland’s cabled reply had all the relief and exhilaration of an author who, after a long struggle, might finally have hit the jackpot: ‘WONDERFUL NEWS THANKS A MILLION GOT ANY DRAGONS YOU WANT KILLED’.21

  Beatrice reported that the publishing committee didn’t much like the book’s title: The Shiralee, they said, was a difficult word that would mean nothing to the reader. D’Arcy Niland defended it strongly, saying that this authentically Australian word, meaning ‘swag’ or ‘burden’, summed up the novel’s dual theme – that all men need to learn to carry burdens, and that the main character’s burden was his daughter.22 He also pointed out that the public had not hesitated to buy a popular travel book named Kon-Tiki. A&R capitulated, though reluctantly: on balance they rightly thought The Shiralee a better title than the author’s alternative, A Man Like a Wheel.

  But in the end, Beatrice turned the novel down, on the grounds that the hero was ‘such a rough young man’.23 Ruth Park sent it to a friend in London, who took it to Michael Joseph. They were immediately enthusiastic and offered to publish. When Niland told Beatrice she was annoyed. Why, she asked, would Niland look for a British publisher when Angus and Robertson had recently begun publishing overseas?24 ‘If every author who thinks he has a chance of being accepted by a British publisher leaves us, we have little chance of succeeding with Australian authors in the United Kingdom,’ she told him.25 Her persuasiveness and charm convinced Niland, who agreed to give Angus and Robertson the British Empire rights to his new book. Having a better head for business than her husband, Ruth Park argued that an English publisher would be more likely to sell the book in the UK than A&R, but the deal had been done.

  Beatrice’s editing of The Shiralee was cautious. She thought Macauley’s swearing diluted the reader’s sympathy for the character, and Niland agreed. But apart from excising the odd ‘Christ’ or ‘Jesus’, she made few changes to the manuscript. She remained doubtful about the title, though was reconciled to it when she learned that the London office had no objection. Niland suggested that the novel’s flyleaf include a short ballad explaining the meaning of the word ‘shiralee’, which Ruth Park would write. ‘As far as I’m concerned, her name and the fact that we’re a team would add something to the book, if only from a publicity angle,’ he wrote to Beatrice.26

  And indeed, by the mid–1950s Ruth Park and D’Arcy Niland were probably Australia’s best-known literary couple. Their combination of talent, industry and good looks made them attractive to magazine editors. Not only did they write novels, radio plays, short stories and magazine articles, but they looked after five children; D’Arcy Niland was particularly admired for knowing on which end of a child a nappy went. Their sheer energy and dedication as writers and parents greatly impressed Beatrice, too: more than once she told them she didn’t know how they managed everything either. She was particularly struck by the way in which they were able to avoid a clash between their family and professional lives.

  In 1956 Park and Niland collaborated on a memoir, The Drums Go Bang. With joky line illustrations, and written in a light, breezy style, the book described their early years together, making their struggles to survive as writers in Surry Hills sound difficult but fun. (Many years later, in Fishing in the Styx, the second volume of her autobiography, Ruth Park gave a less cheery picture of that time in their lives.)

  As a team Park and Niland threw themselves into promoting The Shiralee. Some of their less serious ideas amused Beatrice, especially Park’s joke that half a dozen swagmen should march into the A&R bookshop and beat up Hedley Jeffries with their billy cans. But they had some good marketing ideas, such as flashing a photograph of the dust jacket on the screens of picture theatres before the main feature started: everything from Holden cars to McNivens icecream was advertised in this way, they said, so why not books? Niland suggested the title be the answer to a quiz question on one of the radio shows run by the very popular Jack Davey. (This did happen, with no prompting from A&R.)

  The Shiralee was published early in 1955 and was an immediate success. It sold more than 20 000 copies in its first six months on the Australian market, and despite A&R’s misgivings that the English might find it too slangy and ‘essentially Australian’, it had sold more than 30 000 copies in the UK by the end of 1956. (The Australian novels that have done best in the UK market have usually dealt with life outside the cities.) The Shiralee was a UK Book Society choice and a Daily Mail Book of the Month. William Morrow bought it for the US, and German, Dutch, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish rights were sold.

  Even more exciting was the prospect of The Shiralee being made into a film. Niland gave permission for A&R, in the person of Hector MacQuarrie, the New Zealander who ran A&R’s London office, to be his agent for the film rights at a commission of 20 per cent. MacQuarrie, a long-time A&R employee whose sojourn in London had made him more British than the British, was very proud of his connections with the UK publishing and film worlds.27 In April 1955 he cabled A&R that Ealing Studios would film The Shiralee, with Peter Finch as Macauley. Finch’s versatility and talent as an actor had taken him
from being a star of 1940s Australian radio and theatre to success in London. There was a much publicised hunt for someone to play Buster, the part eventually going to a young Australian girl named Dana Wilson. To coincide with the release of the film in 1957, two songs were written to be sold as sheet music – ‘The Shiralee’ and ‘She’s Buster, The Swag-man’s Daughter’.

  With the release of the film, sales of the novel rolled on and on: so did The Shiralee industry. Little girls were named Shiralee, and so was an Australian racehorse; London’s Chelsea Flower Show even launched a rose with that name. (Niland signed a letter to Beatrice’s secretary Judy Fisher as ‘Petals’.28) Niland was now famous: ‘Three out of four Australians selected at random could probably tell you who D’Arcy Niland was,’ boasted A&R’s blurb on the cover of his next novel, Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1957). His two early novels, Gold in the Streets and The Big Smoke, were published in 1959, though by Horwitz, not Angus and Robertson (Niland had decided not to offer them to A&R again). But not everything was running smoothly. Through inexperience, Hector MacQuarrie had done a disastrous deal on the film rights to The Shiralee. Even after the film’s success, Park and Niland were closer than they should have been to having, in the words of Australian author Arthur Upfield, ‘all the fame and no bloody money’.

  Their disappointment over The Shiralee film deal might have slightly soured Park and Niland’s relationship with Beatrice. Certainly it became less close, though perhaps they were all too busy to see much of each other. Beatrice was put out that Niland had not told her he was writing Call Me When the Cross Turns Over – she heard about the new novel from A&R in London. She told him, perhaps a little acidly, that she hoped he would confide in her sometime.