The Project Gutenberg eBook, My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin

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Title: My Brilliant Career

Author: Miles Franklin

Posting Date: December 16, 2010 [eBook #11620] Release Date: March 17, 2004 [Last updated: June 6, 2011]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY BRILLIANT CAREER***

E-text prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg contributor

MY BRILLIANT CAREER

MILES FRANKLIN

1901

PREFACE

A few months before I left Australia I got a letter from the bush signed "Miles Franklin", saying that the writer had written a novel, but knew nothing of editors and publishers, and asking me to read and advise. Something about the letter, which was written in a strong original hand, attracted me, so I sent for the MS., and one dull afternoon I started to read it. I hadn't read three pages when I saw what you will no doubt see at once—that the story had been written by a girl. And as I went on I saw that the work was Australian—born of the bush. I don't know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book—I leave that to girl readers to judge; but the descriptions of bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me, and I know that, as far as they are concerned, the book is true to Australia—the truest I ever read. I wrote to Miles Franklin, and she confessed that she was a girl. I saw her before leaving Sydney. She is just a little bush girl, barely twenty-one yet, and has scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life. She has lived her book, and I feel proud of it for the sake of the country I came from, where people toil and bake and suffer and are kind; where every second sun-burnt bushman is a sympathetic humorist, with the sadness of the bush deep in his eyes and a brave grin for the worst of times, and where every third bushman is a poet, with a big heart that keeps his pockets empty.

HENRY LAWSON

England, April 1901

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION

ONE. I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER

TWO. AN INTRODUCTION TO POSSUM GULLY

THREE. A LIFELESS LIFE

FOUR. A CAREER WHICH SOON CAREERED TO AN END

FIVE. DISJOINTED SKETCHES AND CRUMBLES

SIX. REVOLT

SEVEN. WAS E'ER A ROSE WITHOUT ITS THORN?

EIGHT. POSSUM GULLY LEFT BEHIND. HURRAH! HURRAH!

NINE. AUNT HELEN'S RECIPE

TEN. EVERARD GREY

ELEVEN. YAH!

TWELVE. ONE GRAND PASSION

THIRTEEN. HE

FOURTEEN. PRINCIPALLY LETTERS

FIFTEEN. WHEN THE HEART IS YOUNG

SIXTEEN. WHEN FORTUNE SMILES

SEVENTEEN. IDYLLS OF YOUTH

EIGHTEEN. AS SHORT AS I WISH HAD BEEN THE MAJORITY OF SERMONS TO WHICH I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO GIVE EAR

NINETEEN. THE 9TH OF NOVEMBER 1896

TWENTY. SAME YARN (Cont.)

TWENTY-ONE. MY UNLADYLIKE BEHAVIOUR AGAIN

TWENTY-TWO. SWEET SEVENTEEN

TWENTY-THREE. AH, FOR ONE HOUR OF BURNING LOVE, 'TIS WORTH AN AGE OF COLD RESPECT!

TWENTY-FOUR. THOU KNOWEST NOT WHAT A DAY MAY BRING FORTH

TWENTY-FIVE. BECAUSE?

TWENTY-SIX. BOAST NOT THYSELF OF TOMORROW

TWENTY-SEVEN MY JOURNEY

TWENTY-EIGHT. TO LIFE

TWENTY-NINE. TO LIFE (Cont.)

THIRTY. WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS, 'TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE

THIRTY-ONE. MR M'SWAT AND I HAVE A BUST-UP

THIRTY-TWO. TA-TA TO BARNEY'S GAP

THIRTY-THREE. BACK AT POSSUM GULLY

THIRTY-FOUR. BUT ABSENT FRIENDS ARE SOON FORGOT

THIRTY-FIVE. THE 3RD OF DECEMBER 1898

THIRTY-SIX. ONCE UPON A TIME, WHEN THE DAYS WERE LONG AND HOT

THIRTY-SEVEN. HE THAT DESPISETH LITTLE THINGS, SHALL FALL LITTLE BY LITTLE

THIRTY-EIGHT. A TALE THAT IS TOLD AND A DAY THAT IS DONE

INTRODUCTION

'Possum Gully, near Goulburn, N.S. Wales, Australia, 1st March, 1899

MY DEAR FELLOW AUSTRALIANS,

Just a few lines to tell you that this story is all about myself—for no other purpose do I write it.

I make no apologies for being egotistical. In this particular I attempt an improvement on other autobiographies. Other autobiographies weary one with excuses for their egotism. What matters it to you if I am egotistical? What matters it to you though it should matter that I am egotistical?

_This is not a romance—I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn—a real yarn. Oh! as real, as really real—provided life itself is anything beyond a heartless little chimera—it is as real in its weariness and bitter heartache as the tall gum-trees, among which I first saw the light, are real in their stateliness and substantiality._

My sphere in life is not congenial to me. Oh, how I hate this living death which has swallowed all my teens, which is greedily devouring my youth, which will sap my prime, and in which my old age, if I am cursed with any, will be worn away! As my life creeps on for ever through the long toil-laden days with its agonizing monotony, narrowness, and absolute uncongeniality, how my spirit frets and champs its unbreakable fetters—all in vain!

SPECIAL NOTICE

You can dive into this story head first as it were. Do not fear encountering such trash as descriptions of beautiful sunsets and whisperings of wind. We (999 out of every 1000) can see nought in sunsets save as signs and tokens whether we may expect rain on the morrow or the contrary, so we will leave such vain and foolish imagining to those poets and painters—poor fools! Let us rejoice that we are not of their temperament!

Better be born a slave than a poet, better be born a black, better be born a cripple! For a poet must be companionless—alone! fearfully alone in the midst of his fellows whom he loves. Alone because his soul is as far above common mortals as common mortals are above monkeys.

There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without