For the term of his natural life E-Book

Marcus Clarke

• Herausgeber: Enrico Conti
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke (24 April 1846 – 2 August 1881) was an English-born Australian novelist and poet, best known for his novel For the Term of His Natural Life. It is the best known novelisation of life as a convict in early Australian history. At times relying on seemingly implausible coincidences, the story follows the fortunes of Rufus Dawes, a young man transported for a murder that he did not commit. The book clearly conveys the harsh and inhumane treatment meted out to the convicts, some of whom were transported for relatively minor crimes, and graphically describes the conditions the convicts experienced. The novel was based on research by the author as well as a visit to the penal settlement of Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Leseprobe

For the term of his natural life

by

Marcus Clarke

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Dedication

Prologue.

Book I. — The Sea. 1827.

The Prison Ship.

Sarah Purfoy.

The Monotony Breaks.

The Hospital.

The Barracoon.

The Fate of the “Hydaspes”.

Typhus Fever.

A Dangerous Crisis.

Woman’s Weapons.

Eight Bells.

Discoveries and Confessions.

A Newspaper Paragraph.

Book II. — Macquarie Harbour. 1833.

The Topography of Van Diemen’s Land.

The Solitary of “Hell’s Gates”.

A Social Evening.

The Bolter.

Sylvia.

A Leap in the Dark.

The Last of Macquarie Harbour.

The Power of the Wilderness.

The Seizure of the “Osprey”

John Rex’s Revenge.

Left at “Hell’s Gates.”

“Mr.” Dawes.

What the Seaweed Suggested.

A Wonderful Day’s Work.

The Coracle.

The Writing on the Sand.

At Sea.

Book III. — Port Arthur. 1838.

A Labourer in the Vineyard.

Sarah Purfoy’s Request.

The Story of Two Birds of Prey.

“The Notorious Dawes.”

Maurice Frere’s Good Angel.

Mr. Meekin Administers Consolation.

Rufus Dawes’s Idyll.

An Escape.

John Rex’s Letter Home.

What Became of the Mutineers of the “Osprey”

A Relic of Macquarie Harbour.

At Port Arthur.

The Commandant’s Butler.

Mr. North’s Disposition.

One Hundred Lashes.

Kicking Against the Pricks.

Captain and Mrs. Frere.

In the Hospital.

The Consolations of Religion.

“A Natural Penitentiary.”

A Visit of Inspection.

Gathering in the Threads.

Running the Gauntlet.

In the Night.

The Flight.

The Work of the Sea.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Book IV. — Norfolk Island. 1846.

Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North.

The Lost Heir.

Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North.

Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North.

Mr. Richard Devine Surprised.

In which the Chaplain is Taken Ill.

Breaking a Man’s Spirit.

Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North.

The Longest Straw.

A Meeting.

Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North.

The Strange Behaviour of Mr. North.

Mr. North Speaks.

Getting Ready for Sea.

The Discovery.

Fifteen Hours.

The Redemption.

The Cyclone.

Epilogue.

Dedication

To

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy

My Dear Sir Charles — I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial days, should hear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement.

The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer — so far as I am aware — has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation.

I have endeavoured in “His Natural Life” to set forth the working and the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public opinion, and to he submitted to a discipline which must necessarily depend for its just administration upon the personal character and temper of their gaolers.

Your critical faculty will doubtless find, in the construction and artistic working· of this book, many faults. I do not think, however, that you will discover any exaggerations. Some of the events narrated are doubtless tragic and terrible; but I hold it needful to my purpose to record them, for they are events which have actually occurred, and which, if the blunders which produced them be repeated, must infallibly occur again. It is true that the British Government have ceased to deport the criminals of England, but the method of punishment, of which that deportation was a part, is still in existence. Port Blair is a Port Arthur filled with Indian-men instead of Englishmen; and, within the last year, France has established, at New Caledonia, a penal settlement which will, in the natural course of things, repeat in its annals the history of Macquarie Harbour and of Norfolk Island.

With this brief preface I beg you to accept this work. I would that its merits were equal either to your kindness or to my regard.

I am, My dear Sir Charles, Faithfully yours, Marcus Clarke

The Public Library, Melbourne

Prologue.

On the evening of May 3, 1827, the garden of a large red-brick bow-windowed mansion called North End House, which, enclosed in spacious grounds, stands on the eastern height of Hampstead Heath, between Finchley Road and the Chestnut Avenue, was the scene of a domestic tragedy.

Three persons were the actors in it. One was an old man, whose white hair and wrinkled face gave token that he was at least sixty years of age. He stood erect with his back to the wall, which separates the garden from the Heath, in the attitude of one surprised into sudden passion, and held uplifted the heavy ebon cane upon which he was ordinarily accustomed to lean. He was confronted by a man of two-and-twenty, unusually tall and athletic of figure, dresses in rough seafaring clothes, and who held in his arms, protecting her, a lady of middle age. The face of the young man wore an expression of horror-stricken astonishment, and the slight frame of the grey-haired woman was convulsed with sobs.

These three people were Sir Richard Devine, his wife, and his only son Richard, who had returned from abroad that morning.

“So, madam,” said Sir Richard, in the high-strung accents which in crises of great mental agony are common to the most self-restrained of us, “you have been for twenty years a living lie! For twenty years you have cheated and mocked me. For twenty years — in company with a scoundrel whose name is a byword for all that is profligate and base — you have laughed at me for a credulous and hood-winked fool; and now, because I dared to raise my hand to that reckless boy, you confess your shame, and glory in the confession!”

“Mother, dear mother!” cried the young man, in a paroxysm of grief, “say that you did not mean those words; you said them but in anger! See, I am calm now, and he may strike me if he will.”

Lady Devine shuddered, creeping close, as though to hide herself in the broad bosom of her son.

The old man continued: “I married you, Ellinor Wade, for your beauty; you married me for my fortune. I was a plebeian, a ship’s carpenter; you were well born, your father was a man of fashion, a gambler, the friend of rakes and prodigals. I was rich. I had been knighted. I was in favour at Court. He wanted money, and he sold you. I paid the price he asked, but there was nothing of your cousin, my Lord Bellasis and Wotton, in the bond.”

“Spare me, sir, spare me!” said Lady Ellinor faintly.

“Spare you! Ay, you have spared me, have you not? Look ye,” he cried, in sudden fury, “I am not to be fooled so easily. Your family are proud. Colonel Wade has other daughters. Your lover, my Lord Bellasis, even now, thinks to retrieve his broken fortunes by marriage. You have confessed your shame. To-morrow your father, your sisters, all the world, shall know the story you have told me!”

“By Heaven, sir, you will not do this!” burst out the young man.

“Silence, bastard!” cried Sir Richard. “Ay, bite your lips; the word is of your precious mother’s making!”

Lady Devine slipped through her son’s arms and fell on her knees at her husband’s feet.

“Do not do this, Richard. I have been faithful to you for two-and-twenty years. I have borne all the slights and insults you have heaped upon me. The shameful secret of my early love broke from me when in your rage, you threatened him. Let me go away; kill me; but do not shame me.”