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Marcus Clarke

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To describe a tempest of the elements is not easy, but to describe a tempest of the soul is impossible.

Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke FRSA (24 April 1846 – 2 August 1881) was an English-born Australian novelist, journalist, poet, editor, librarian, and playwright. He is best known for his 1874 novel For the Term of His Natural Life, about the convict system in Australia, and widely regarded as a classic of Australian literature. It has been adapted into many plays, films and a folk opera.

Quotes

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  • Here I am in bed, with vinegar and brown paper over my nose, all the children sick, the baby howling like an unfledged tempest, some £500 to pay to-morrow; and as I sink disgustedly to sleep, Eliza murmurs (through the brown paper), "I hope you have spent a MERRY CHRISTMAS!"
    • "A Merry Christmas", in Humbug: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Satire (c. 1869), reproduced in The Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume, ed. Hamilton MacKinnon (Melbourne, 1884), p. 73
  • The Australian black is as far removed from Uncas and Chingachook, as Uncas and Chingachook are from reality. ... An Australian Romeo would bear his Juliet off with the blow of a club, and Juliet would prepare herself for her bridal by "greasing herself from head to foot with the kidney-fat of her lover's rival." Poor Paris! ... No genius among them has ever invented a net or a snare. ... A child every two years is considered enough for any reasonable mother, and should she indulge in more, the indignant father cracks its skull against the nearest tree. Nothing is new, we see,—not even Social Science.
  • What can I write in thee, O dainty book,
      About whose daintiness quaint perfume lingers—
    Into whose pages dainty ladies look,
      And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers? ...
    No melodies have I for ladies' ear,
      No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses—
    But only brawlings born of bitter beer,
      And chorussed with the clink and clash of glasses. ...
    Thou breathest purity and humble worth—
      The simple jest, the light laugh following after,
    I will not jar upon thy modest mirth
      With harsher jest, or with less gentle laughter.
  • All my soul is slowly melting, all my brain is softening fast,
    And I know that I'll be taken to the Yarr bend at last.
    For at night from fitful slumbers I awaken with a start,
    Murmuring of steak and onions, babbling of apple-tart.
    While to me the Poet's cloudland a gigantic kitchen seems,
    And those mislaid table-napkins haunt me even in my dreams
    Is this right? — Ye sages tell me! — Does a man live but to eat?
    Is there nothing worth enjoying but one's miserable meat?
    Is the mightiest task of genius but to swallow buttered beans,
    And has man but been created to demolish pork and greens?
    Is there no unfed Hereafter, where the round of chewing stops?
    Is the atmosphere of heaven clammy with perpetual chops?
    • "The Wail of the Waiter", ll. 29–40, in The Bulletin (29 September 1900)
  • Distrust the men who make bargains. They are a disgrace to humanity. No man ever saw a dog swap a bone with another dog.
    • "On Borrowing Money", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Borrowing may be reduced to a Science, or elevated to an Art. Borrowing an umbrella is a science; borrowing half-a-crown is an art. The man who begins with an umbrella may get to half-a-crown, or even five shillings.
    Some men are born borrowers, and some have borrowing thrust upon them; and some thrust borrowing upon other people. I made a man lend me twenty pounds for three months, by telling him that I would pay him punctually, and writing my name on a piece of paper. There is always a fool to be found somewhere. Sometimes lenders become unpleasant. One lender put me into gaol, and said I was a swindler. He had no appreciation for art.
    • "On Borrowing Money", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • I am rather good at it. I have been always borrowing. If I can borrow nothing else, I borrow ideas.
    • "On Borrowing Money", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • It is no use borrowing if you mean to pay. There have been more men ruined by 'temporary accommodation' than anything else.
    • "On Borrowing Money", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Men who tell you that you ought to go into Parliament are usually pretty safe. You can borrow from them easily. One of these persons told me that I ought to be a Member of Parliament, because I was such a thundering liar.
    • "On Borrowing Money", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • A Man of Business is one who becomes possessed of other people's money without bringing himself under the power of the law.
    • "On Business Men", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • They are the cream of the social bowl—in their own estimation. The stone pillars which, according to the Arabic legend, hold the earth up. There never was, or can be, anything to equal them. You may be the best fellow in the world, the sole support of an aged mother, and the protector of a whole boarding-schoolful of orphan sisters. You may work like a horse, and give all your goods to feed the poor, but if you are not a Business Man, you are sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. To be a Business Man is a special gift—a sort of inherent virtue, like a cast in the eye.
    • "On Business Men", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • I used to be a dreadful fellow — nearly as bad as the drunkards in the storybook. I have been drunk for a year and a-half at a stretch. It was natural for me to drink. When I was about three days and a-half old, I saw my nurse hide a brandy bottle away in a cupboard that she couldn't get at afterwards. I never said anything about it then, but as soon as I could walk, I got the keys and drank that brandy.
    • "On Teetotalism", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • I used to drink so that the publicans, when they went out of business, used to sell me among the valuable fixtures.
    • "On Teetotalism", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • I am not a teetotaller — at least, not now. I used to be, but my constitution is not strong, and I could not stand the dissipation.
    • "On Teetotalism", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • As Mr Burnett said to me long ago, 'Q———, you will never be one of us. You have ruined your constitution by early temperance.'
    • "On Teetotalism", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Friends as a rule are a mistake.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • I have had many friends, like the hare in the fable, but most of them didn't pay expenses. Friendship is like mining; sometimes you drop into a good thing, but the majority of places are duffers.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • No poor man can afford to have many friends. They would ruin him. Indeed, friendship is a luxury which should be indulged in with caution even by the rich.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • You cannot bet on friends. They will go and do all sorts of things to spite you. I insured a friend's life once, and got him to assign me the policy. He was a chronic case of rheumatism, and might have died in the course of nature calmly in his bed at any time. We quarrelled one day, and the fellow deliberately sent out and bought a bottle of Connel's East Indian remedies, and took a pint of it every half hour, according to the directions on the label. At the tenth pint he gently dissolved, and the jury brought it in 'determined suicide'. I tried hard to put in a plea of insanity, but it was no use.
    After this I forswore friendship, except as a gentle stimulant, and in case of sickness.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Bouncer was a friend of mine, and when I was going to be married to Miss Tallon, with £50,000, Bouncer said, 'Q., introduce me, old fellow, as your friend! I did; and in six weeks he married the lady. My only consolation was that her father became insolvent before the end of the year.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Friendship, if you know how to work it, is better than a cousin in Parliament.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • It takes two persons to make a Proper Friendship. The one has to be befriended, the other to be friendly. I'd rather be the friendly man by a darned sight. He gets all the fat off the mutual leg of mutton, and not unfrequently scrapes the bone.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • He couldn't be content with small profits, so he took to cards, and was shot aboard a river steamboat. God bless him. He died like a hero, with a king up his sleeve.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Everything he touched turned to gold. When he married an heiress even she died of the yellow fever.
    • "On Friendship", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)
  • Men change their dispositions as they change their climate.
    • "Home Letters", in A Marcus Clarke Reader (1963)

For the Term of His Natural Life

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Serialised in The Australian Journal (March 1870 – June 1872), published in novel-form as His Natural Life (1874), republished as For the Term of His Natural Life (1884)
  • Convictism having been safely got under hatches, and put to bed in its Government allowance of sixteen inches of space per man, cut a little short by exigencies of shipboard, the cuddy was wont to pass some not unpleasant evenings.
    • Bk. 1, Ch. 2
  • About a hundred and seventy miles to the south of this mill-race lies Van Diemen's Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld's Crag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parching hot wind—the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent—blows upon her crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot wind, born amid the burning sand of the interior of the vast Australian continent, sweeps over the scorched and cracking plains, to lick up their streams and wither the herbage in its path, until it meets the waters of the great south bay; but in its passage across the straits it is reft of its fire, and sinks, exhausted with its journey, at the feet of the terraced slopes of Launceston.
    • Bk. 2, Ch. 1
  • As he sat there gloomily chewing, he was a spectacle to shudder at. Not so much on account of his natural hideousness, increased a thousand-fold by the tattered and filthy rags which barely covered him. Not so much on account of his unshaven jaws, his hare-lip, his torn and bleeding feet, his haggard cheeks, and his huge, wasted frame. Not only because, looking at the animal, as he crouched, with one foot curled round the other, and one hairy arm pendant between his knees, he was so horribly unhuman, that one shuddered to think that tender women and fair children must, of necessity, confess to fellowship of kind with such a monster. But also because, in his slavering mouth, his slowly grinding jaws, his restless fingers, and his bloodshot, wandering eyes, there lurked a hint of some terror more awful than the terror of starvation—a memory of a tragedy played out in the gloomy depths of that forest which had vomited him forth again; and the shadow of this unknown horror, clinging to him, repelled and disgusted, as though he bore about with him the reek of the shambles.
    • Bk. 2, Ch. 4
  • Take care what you say! I'll have no hard words. Wretch! If I am a wretch, who made me one? If I hate you and myself and the world, who made me hate it? I was born free—as free as you are. Why should I be sent to herd with beasts, and condemned to this slavery, worse than death?
    • Bk. 2, Ch. 12
  • I have examined you long enough. I have read your heart, and written out your secrets! You are but a shell—the shell that holds a corrupted and sinful heart. He shall live; you shall die!
    • Bk. 4, Ch. 17
  • To describe a tempest of the elements is not easy, but to describe a tempest of the soul is impossible.
    • Bk. 4, Ch. 18
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