by Peter Rees
Disappointing though this must have been for Bean, marriage was just the panacea he needed.
41
Bluff and double bluff
George Robertson, the brusque and autocratic owner of the publishing house Angus & Robertson, was aghast. He had just read the draft first chapter of the first volume of Bean’s Official History—and felt like getting drunk, or so he claimed. Robertson’s gut reaction to what he had read would have an immediate and profound impact on the writing of the Official History.
The largely self-educated Robertson considered booksellers to be as much engaged in educational work as headmasters and university professors. He regarded bookshops as cultural centres. Tall and stolid, with black hair and beard, he was an imposing figure. As an employer he was controlling and stubborn, with a short fuse. He published some of the biggest names in Australian literature, among them Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and Norman Lindsay. He revelled in battling the egos of his writers. In the small world of Australian publishing he was someone to be reckoned with—especially as he had the contract to publish the Official History. And therein lay the problem. In a letter he wrote in April 1920 after he finished reading Bean’s first chapter, Robertson dismissed the effort. He noted that when Bean first handed him the manuscript he had only looked at the first paragraph, which he thought was acceptable. However,
On the following Sunday night I read the first chapter—and did not get to sleep until 4 a.m.! He told me his secretary had come up to Sydney and got on the bust. Is it any wonder? Only that the wherewithal was lacking and the pubs closed, I’d have done the same! Bean is what our dear friend Henry Lawson calls ‘a Wanterwriteandcan’t’.
Robertson’s letter was to Arthur Jose, who had been associated with Angus & Robertson for many years as a writer and editor. He was also a close friend of Bean’s, whom he had known since their days as early members of the Australian National Defence League. Robertson sent Jose a copy of the material and added, ‘The bare thought of having to lick 6 vols of such jejunery into shape is enough to drive one out of business!’ Jose was not so critical of the material. He thought that ‘the bulk of his stuff will be editable without too many tears.’ Jose may have been influenced in his opinions by the fact that Bean had approached him to write the naval volume of the official history. However, he agreed that the first part—a kind of introduction to the complete history—was as bad as Robertson had said.
In theory, Robertson was obliged to publish whatever material the Defence Department sent him; the department, after all, was paying Bean and his team to write the history. Some volumes were to be sold at a guinea (one pound, one shilling) each and others at eighteen shillings. Potential buyers were invited to subscribe, and were assured that the history would not be subject to censorship. That assurance, Bean said proudly, was unique to Australia.
Robertson dwelt on the matter for two months before writing to Bean to deliver his blunt assessment: in Chapter 1 Bean had ushered Australia into the war ‘with slipshod journalistic talk, misconceived and misbegotten.’ The chapter had simply dismayed him.
Your first chapter would lead the discerning public to think that you do not know what to say, and that, if you did, you could not say it . . . The chapter would suggest that you have no conception of, and no power to discharge the historian’s duty in the highest. Of orderly disposition of matter, resulting from previous digestion and reconception of raw material: of dignified arrangement of language . . . there is no sign.
Bean admitted he was mortified by the criticism, but he remained civil when replying to Robertson shortly after: ‘I count myself fortunate to have had a publisher so conscientious and a friend so courageous as to write it.’ Bean said he had re-read the first chapter and agreed it wasn’t as good as it should be. ‘I suppose five years of continuous work at the front and then in Melbourne without a holiday made me somewhat dull,’ he admitted. Courteous though he was, however, Bean was not going to be stood over. While asserting that he didn’t think it likely that he would ever see ‘eye to eye with you over your suggestions,’ he assured Robertson he would rework the introduction to the history.
Over the next few months—as his romance with Effie Young blossomed—Bean rewrote the manuscript, and by mid-December it was ready to be sent to the publishers. When Robertson saw the proofs of the book in March 1921, he remained horrified. He wrote to George Swinburne, chairman of the Defence Department’s business administration board, to say that he and his assistant, Fred Shenstone, had been dealing with the proofs and they agreed that from almost every viewpoint it was ‘a shocking’ piece of work, which if published ‘would expose the Commonwealth to derision.’ He was convinced Bean had undertaken a task that was beyond him. Robertson continued: ‘My duty is clear, I just do what I can to prevent the Commonwealth from being exposed to indignity. I esteem Mr Bean highly, and wish to act so that a minimum of pain shall be inflicted on him. What I think should be done is to submit the proofs to someone who knows how history should be written . . . and take his advice. Do you concur, and will you move the Minister concerned to take action?’
Born in Essex in 1860, Robertson had come to Australia aged twenty-two, and from the time he began regular publishing in 1895 he had been determined to show the world that Australians could write and produce books that were the equal of any published elsewhere. By the time the war ended, he also felt the need to do something to repay the country that had been so good to him. As he wrote to Swinburne: ‘It is admitted that the Australians can fight—why not show the world that they can write?’ A strong streak of nationalism was thus driving both Robertson and Bean.
Approached by Swinburne, Defence Minister George Pearce duly raised the matter in Cabinet, with the result that Bean was summoned to Melbourne. He met with Prime Minister Hughes, who told him he fully agreed with Robertson that the introduction must be rewritten. Despite Bean’s objections, Hughes urged him to have Professor Thomas Tucker, a retired professor of classical philology at the University of Melbourne and Robertson’s choice as a reviser, take the work in hand. A chastened Bean then wrote to the publishers saying that ‘after conference with Mr Hughes,’ he would recast the first chapter.
Bean believed that this was the only alteration the government wanted in the volume, and there was no mention of handing the proofs over to Tucker to revise. Bean still rejected the thought of anyone editing his work, and told Robertson that if he could not have the final say over the text, he would ‘regretfully tender my resignation to the Minister.’ This was a game of bluff and double bluff. Bean saw Robertson’s demands as akin to censorship, and having endured it countless times during the war was determined never to do so again. But Robertson was unimpressed, again writing to Swinburne and complaining that Bean’s writing was unworthy not just of the Anzacs but also of the Prime Minister, ‘who, after all, must take responsibility.’ Robertson upped the ante, telling Swinburne that all Bean knew of the philosophy of history could be written on the back of a postage stamp. If the task were to be left in Bean’s hands, ‘then we shall formally request to be relieved of the work of publication.’ This was nonsense; Bean’s education had ensured he was familiar not just with the works of ancient historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides but also the great Victorians, Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, and the military historians William Napier and Alexander Kinglake.
Bean’s first proofs went to Tucker in May 1921. In an assessment of Bean’s work, Tucker praised his gift for ‘clear orderly narrative,’ and acknowledged ‘a certain picturesque and panoramic vision.’ But the overall quality of the writing was ‘high-falutin’ in tone and temper, ‘inflated in style, and rather puerile in general.’ Bean’s expression was ‘often unfit, and sometimes sheerly ungrammatical.’ Apart from the introduction, there was Bean’s lack of a ‘nice sense of English.’ Tucker ascribed this to Bean’s background in journalism: ‘What may perhaps stand in transitory journalism will not always stand in monumental history.’
Robertson sent a copy of Tucker’s report to Bean and urged him to take Tucker’s advice. He hadn’t asked Tucker if he would undertake the work, he wrote, but thought he would be interested. ‘Do put an end to all this trouble by approaching him yourself,’ he told Bean, ‘do it this week and I’ll for ever call you Blessed!’ Robertson’s plea hit home and Bean did as requested, writing to Tucker the next day. To Robertson, Bean said he was amenable to having a ‘capable literary friend’ look over each volume—but only to make suggestions. ‘The final decision must rest with me,’ he said. ‘In regard to the introduction, I am prepared to discuss this with anyone whom you may suggest, and to give the fullest weight to his views. But the decision and the work must be my own.’ There, Bean drew a line: ‘Beyond this I am afraid I cannot go. If I were asked to do so I would regretfully tender my resignation to the Minister.’ The stakes were high, as the future of the Official History was now in play.
Tucker agreed, and set out the editor’s role as he saw it: ‘In all matters of fact, in all questions of arrangement and manipulation of the narrative, and in respect of all that is substantial in what you write, you cannot be subjected to revision.’ The issue, however, was not this but ‘one of literary style and tact maintained on a sufficiently high level of expression and lucidity.’ Whoever revised the work would ‘alter nothing except the English, and only then in cases where such alteration was desirable in your own interests.’ Tucker said that he could only undertake the work if ‘I felt that emendations of mine—made to the best of my knowledge and taste, and in a spirit of entire goodwill to you—would be accepted in all cases in which they in no way misrepresented you. I should not propose any gratuitous or vexatious meddling.’ They met soon after and reached an agreement.
Robertson was mollified, telling Bean his arrangement with Tucker was the best news he had heard for a long time, and added: ‘Had it fallen out otherwise, I intended to inform Mr Pearce that on publication of your first volume I should endeavour to secure its withdrawal from sale by causing the matter to be fully discussed in the House of Representatives. See what you had nearly brought me to!’ Robertson couldn’t resist trying to have the last word. But the standoff was over, and Tucker was given a free hand to correct and rewrite.
Bean allowed Tucker to do as he thought fit—‘tuckering’, as Robertson called it—and was pleasantly surprised by the results. After checking final proofs on 3 July, Bean noted that Tucker’s work was excellent. ‘His corrections are one long lesson to me in the nicety of English and fine points in the meaning of words. He has struck the jerkiness out of my style—a jerkiness I have often noted and not liked, but could not account for. He pointed out the cause—that I have got into the way of leaving my sentences unrelated to one another. I know that this was done in the conscious effort to be short and simple.’ This had worked in writing news stories for the press, and fitted with his vow at Oxford to write simply and clearly for readers of ‘average intelligence’; but writing history was another matter.
When Volume I, The Story of Anzac, was published shortly before Armistice Day on 11 November 1921, Bean generously thanked Tucker in his preface to the edition: ‘His work, of value to the nation, and the public spirit which induced him to undertake it, the writer desires here warmly to acknowledge.’ Privately, Bean wrote to Tucker to acknowledge his role in the positive critical reception of the Official History. Aided by Tucker’s editing, Bean wove a story of emerging consciousness of nationhood in the plain prose that had marked his journalism from the start.
Covering the period from the outbreak of war to the end of the first phase of the Gallipoli campaign on 4 May 1915, the 650-page book came in a cover that one military reviewer described as the colour of dried blood. Bean’s own diaries and notebooks—all 226 of them, complete with his own experiences and notes of what other people told him—formed a larger part of his sources for this and the second volume of The Story of Anzac than they would for the four volumes on France that would follow. Volume II would take another three and a half years to complete. As with its predecessor, the dearth of formal records from the Gallipoli campaign meant Bean had to rely almost entirely upon his private diaries and upon notes of his conversations with officers and men at the time and afterwards.
Glowing reviews met the publication of The Story of Anzac. The reviewer for the Sydney Daily Telegraph lauded it as a great work that ‘enshrines the birth of our tradition.’ The reviewer in the London Observer called the book ‘Australia’s Iliad and Odyssey.’ Writing in the Manchester Guardian, General Sir Ian Hamilton—effectively reviewing his own performance—thought also of Homer: ‘As a war record the book is in a class by itself. The story is one of minor tactics; of Homeric struggles of twenty men as they dwindle down to half a dozen.’ Hamilton wrongly assumed that the author must be British by birth: ‘Mr. C.E.W. Bean . . . is well known to be as clean and straight a man as ever Australia imported from the Old Country.’
One old soldier who was not so happy was Bean’s friend John Gellibrand, who was miffed at being described as an ‘unkempt figure, going about his work in the barracks, causing mild amusement to the clerks.’ Bean had added that some officers treated Gellibrand with contempt because of some fixed ideas, and that the clerks thought him eccentric. Gellibrand rebuked Bean, telling him: ‘Personal remarks are as a rule odious and the present ones are no exception. How would you like me to publish what I think of you and your personal appearance and habits.’
When The Story of Anzac from 4 May 1915 was published in 1924, Australians had a complete narrative of the campaign. But not everybody was impressed—among them Wilfred Kent Hughes, who had served at the headquarters of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, commanded by his uncle Frederic Godfrey Hughes. Unhappy with Bean’s account of the ill-fated fighting at The Nek, which reflected poorly on his uncle, Kent Hughes asked Bean to give the sources for some of his statements. Bean wrote back sharply: ‘You cannot be serious in expecting me to disclose to you the names of those living persons on whose statements this story is based.’ The journalist in Bean was never far away—sources were to be protected.
Such criticism aside, Bean had written not only a history but a study and celebration of the Australian character. The Australian, he wrote, ‘was becoming to some extent distinguishable from the Englishman in bodily appearance, in face, and in voice. He also displayed certain markedly divergent qualities of mind and character.’ In Australia, men passed for ‘what in themselves they were worth.’ Socially, he asserted, ‘the Australian people came nearer than perhaps any other to forming one class without distinction of birth or wealth.’ In Egypt, the Australians had been surprised to discover themselves so much bigger than the pink-cheeked lads from Manchester cotton mills, who ‘looked like children.’ To the Australians the British soldiers were naive, deferential and unworldly.
Bean dismissed the campaign as a disaster, doomed in London by poor planning before a single man went ashore; yet he believed it had been a triumph for the Australians, whose rugged virtues helped them face terrible adversity. The reason the Australians had hung on during the first days after the landing ‘lay in the mettle of the men themselves. . . . Life was very dear, but life was not worth living unless they could be true to their idea of Australian manhood.’ Bean believed that herein lay the essence of the typical Australian—whether he was a squatter or shearer, a doctor or a clerk. And these were people, for whom the Official History was written.
42
Censorship, tragedy and farce
Harry Gullett did not mince words: he would have nothing to do with Professor Tucker touching his manuscript on the Light Horse in Sinai and Palestine. He thought Tucker’s literary style was ‘cold and pedantic,’ and ‘as warm as frozen fish.’ Gullett—whose background, like Bean’s, was in journalism—threatened to withdraw his manuscript and send his payment back to the Defence Department. Gullett and George Robertson didn’t like each other, so acceptance of Tucker as an editor was never likely.
But Gullett did grudgingly agree to let Arthur Jose edit his book. Angered by the ‘thousands of trivial and unnecessary suggestions’ that Jose made, however, Gullett threatened not only to withdraw the book but to publish it independently. The fact was that having joined the Australian Immigration Bureau in Melbourne, he was overworked.
Gullett was determined to keep the book as much as he could to his own vision, even if this brought him into conflict with Bean’s desire to show a particular Australian nationalism. In a letter to Bean, a more down-to-earth Gullett wrote: ‘I did not accept, owing to sheer incapacity, your suggestion to stamp the early chapters with some high moral purpose and peculiar Australian psychology. I failed to discern such things in the Light Horsemen. As I saw it their campaign was to a remarkable extent one with a casual sporting purpose to which they bent all their high intelligence and endeavour.’
Jose’s revision and Gullett’s objections, together with the demands of his new job, caused delays in production of the volume. Printing and mapping difficulties further exacerbated the problems. And then there was the matter of the Surafend massacre, on 10 December 1918. The incident had followed the murder of a New Zealand trooper by an Arab thief while the Anzac Mounted Division was resting near the Jewish settlement of Rishon Le Zion. When General Headquarters failed to act, New Zealand and Australian troops took matters into their own hands and demanded that the local sheikh hand over the murderer. When this did not happen, the men—with British artillerymen joining in—took their own retribution.