[Editor: This article, regarding Barcroft Boake, was written for the Institute of Australian Culture.]
The melancholic nature of Barcroft Boake
It would be reasonable to suggest that Barcroft Boake suffered from clinical depression. Although we do not have a psychiatrist’s report to confirm this, it seems quite evident from his writings, and, of course, from the fact that he committed suicide (which would tend to confirm the diagnosis).
Boake’s mental state would go a long way to explaining why so much of his poetry was gloomy and pessimistic in its tone. Most of Boake’s poems have a negative slant, often involving death; a list of such poems is included herein, to demonstrate this fact. The exceptions are given in a second list.
Negativity in Boake’s poetry
To illustrate the point about Boake’s negativity appearing in his works, listed below are his poems with a negative slant, along with some explanatory comments on the negative aspects of each one. Most of the descriptions are brief, although some of them have a longer description, for those poems where a further explanation is deemed necessary.
An Allegory = About a soldier in battle, and the death of his comrade.
At Devlin’s Siding = About a woman who leaves her baby to die in the scrub (apparently regarding a baby which has been born out of wedlock).
At the ‘J.C.’ = About a dead man, who had carved his initials in a tree whilst he “lay dying slowly”.
The Babes in the Bush = About a young boy who falls down an abandoned mine shaft and dies, along with his older brother (who tried to help him).
The Box Tree’s Love = About a woman who loves a tree and then dies.
A Bushman’s Love (A Fragment) = About a shy bushman who was the target of his secret love’s scorn and wit; an unrequited love.
The Demon Snow Shoes = A story about Carl the Dane, who (in effect) sells his soul for a pair of snow shoes, and is never seen again.
Desiree = About a man’s long-awaited love, asking questions about her eventual appearance. The final stanza ends the poem with a negative tone, querying whether his long-desired romantic love interest will appear at all, whether their fates will be negative, and if she will ever appear at all.
The Digger’s Song = About looking for gold; ends with a failure to find anything whilst panning for gold.
Down the River = About a shearer, who ends up drowning in a river.
An Easter Rhyme — Rather Late = This poem talks about how the city folk care little for someone from the bush (“Little thought have they, or pity, for a wanderer from the bush”). It refers to “Stunted figures, sallow faces, sad girls striving to be gay” (“gay” meaning happy). It ends with “Bah! I’ll go and have a liquor with the genial “Jimmy Wood”” (meaning that he will go and drink alone).
Fogarty’s Gin = A poem that ends with the death of an Aboriginal woman.
From the Far West = A stockman dies in the Never Never.
Good-bye = A sad farewell to his friends at Rosedale in 1888 (the poem was written in the scrapbook of Miss Jean McKeahnie, whose later betrothal to another man was a contributing factor to Boake’s suicide in 1892). This was a personal poem, not intended for publication, but which was included in a memoir of Boake, written by A. G. Stephens. In this poem Boake refers to life as “that treacherous stream that men call Life, which bears them helpless over spray-wrapt falls, o’er sparkling shallows and deep, gloomy pools, to strand them in oblivion whence they sprung.”
How Polly Paid for Her Keep = About a young woman who saves a coach full of people. It ends with the death of the coach driver, whose head is crushed when the coach crashes.
Jack Corrigan = About a criminal (the protagonist of the poem) who flees from a policeman, but then drowns in a river.
Jack’s Last Muster = Jack the stockman and his horse die due to an accident.
Jimmy Wood: A Bar-Room Ballad = About a man who decided to always drinks alone, in opposition to the custom of “shouting” (buying drinks for friends). He becomes a habitual drunk, then suffers from palsy, and dies.
Jim’s Whip = The story of Jim, who dies (told from his sorrowing wife’s point of view; a melancholy poem).
Kelly’s Conversion = About a man (a former drunkard) who saves people from a flood, but dies himself.
Kitty McCrae = About a young woman who, whilst carrying mail bags, is shot by bushrangers; she dies.
A Memory = The death of flowers; a man’s unrequited love.
The Minstrel’s Curse = About a ill-tempered queen and a poor minstrel who suffers her displeasure. She has him whipped, jailed in chains in the deepest cell of the castle’s dungeon, and then he dies. However, before he dies, he writes a satirical poem about the queen on his dungeon wall, which becomes a popular verse (his curse in death is the besmirching of the queen’s name).
On the Range = About a wild horse, being chased for capture, who kills himself.
The Phantom Moorings = About the awful captain of a ship who lets one of his men drown, and in so doing brings a curse down upon himself, his men, and his boat, and they all disappear sea-ward (it is implied that they were never seen again).
Skeeta = About a young woman whose husband abandons her, and who dies waiting for him to return.
A Song from a Sandhill = A poem about rain, in a negative vein. “The pitiless outpouring of an overburdened sky … ’tis maddening and sadd’ning, with its drip, drip, drip”.
’Twixt the Wings of the Yard = A poem about yarding cattle; ends with wondering about whether he will be able to enter Heaven.
A Valentine = About a man, in an isolated hut, reminiscing about a long-lost love (the final stanza tells us that she is dead). The area is flooded, and the night is illuminated by “a half-moon’s sickly shine”. He finds in the flood waters a cradle with a baby (the latter is regarded here as a positive aspect of the poem, regarding the rescue of a baby who has been washed away by a flood). Overall, the poem is dark in its nature.
A Wayside Queen = About a river (including a reference to the “dead men” who swirl along in her waters).
Where the Dead Men Lie = As the title suggests, this is very much a melancholy poem.
Boake’s other poetry
Not all of Boake’s poems are negative in their content. Listed below are those poems of his which are considered to be positive in nature (some explanatory notes are given for each poem).
Babs Malone = A humorous poem.
A Bush School-Girl = A poem about an intelligent girl.
Featherstonhaugh = A heroic farmer battles a trio of bushrangers, and wins (two of them die early on, and then the bushranger leader dies later on). Whilst “Fetherstonhaugh” involves some deaths, it is the loss of three villains who are not the protagonists of the piece, so that scenario hasn’t been counted as a negative.
A Few Verses = A poem written for the birthday of Miss Jean McKeahnie. This was a personal poem, not intended for publication, but which was included in a memoir of Boake, written by A. G. Stephens.
Josephus Riley = A humorous poem.
On the Boundary = About checking a station’s boundary-fence, with a romantic slant.
Our Visitor = A humorous poem about a man who doesn’t want to work.
A Song = About the sea.
A Strike Story = A humorous poem about a groom-to-be, who received his long-awaited wedding clothes on the day of his wedding, only to find that they were very badly made.
To Rolf Boldrewood = A poem dedicated to the writer Rolf Boldrewood (the pseudonym of Thomas Alexander Browne, 1826-1915).
A Vision Out West = About nature.
Negativity in his personal correspondence
Boake’s negativity and depression can also be seen in his private letters. For example:
“I was never so knocked up in my life. I did not seem to care whether I ever got back. I felt I would have gladly died straight away. Besides, I felt so miserable.”[1]
“So there is another inhabitant added to this continent. Poor little beggar! I wonder if he will ever wish he had never been born, like most of us do. I think it is a natural consequence of being face to face with Nature so continually, but the great mystery of human nature often comes before me as I ride about. It seems to me so sad and so disheartening — to toil, with the knowledge of the vanity of it all in our hearts. Civilisation is a dead failure: it only brings these truths more forcibly before us: a savage never thinks of these things.”[2]
“I have read your advice, and I wish for your sake and Grannie’s I could bring myself to follow it. But oh! I should smother if I were to go back to Sydney again: I should have no heart.”[3]
“I have seen too many when I was in the Survey with big families and small salaries. Better to keep single than to drag your wife down to the level of a household drudge as many do.”[4]
“I don’t think in Sydney I could have found the pleasure in life that exists for me here — that is, at times: oftener I feel sick of the whole thing and long for some other country and a more stirring life.”[5]
Anyone can have complaints about life; so, taken by themselves, most of these quotations may not amount to much. However, the passage about the new-born baby seems particularly telling.
To say “I wonder if he will ever wish he had never been born, like most of us do” reveals a deep unhappiness. His reference to “the great mystery of human nature … It seems to me so sad and so disheartening” also indicates his melancholy. Boake’s anti-modernity assertion, that “Civilisation is a dead failure”, shows his unhappiness with the modern world.
Such statements (especially the “wish he had never been born, like most of us do” line) demonstrate Boake’s state of mind. He wasn’t happy with his life, nor was he happy with the world. One suspects that, no matter what circumstances he was born into, Boake was destined, as a result of his brain’s design (or malfunction), to be an unhappy man.
Heroic women
Interestingly, three of Barcroft Boake’s poems involve heroic young women: “Fogarty’s Gin”, “How Polly Paid for her Keep”, and “Kitty McCrae”. Out of the 41 known poems written by Boake, three (almost 7%) is a significant proportion when compared to the percentage of similar poems written by male poets of the same period on the same subject. If we take the two personal poems (not meant for publication) out of the equation, then that percentage becomes almost 8%.
In contrast, his poems involving male heroes number four (i.e. roughly 10%): “An Allegory”, “Fogarty’s Gin”, “Fetherstonhaugh”, and (arguably) “The Babes in the Bush”.
It was unusual for male authors and poets at the time to be producing tales of feminine heroism in such proportion.
No doubt, this emphasis on feminine heroism would generally be seen as a good thing. So, this is at least one example of the fact that Boake did have a positive side to him as well.
In conclusion
It is assumed that the depression felt by Boake was occasional, that it was not riding on his back all the time (as his “dark passenger”, as some might say), and that at other times he would have been quite positive, and generally happy with life.
Nonetheless, his depression clearly had an impact on his poetry, with his mode of mentality affecting what he wrote and how he wrote it.
However, don’t let poor Barcroft Boake’s melancholic frame of mind put you off reading his works; he wrote some great poems, which are well worth perusing.
References
[1] “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir (section 5): From Adaminaby to Trangie”, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 178-179
[2] “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir (section 6): Writing from Mullah”, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 180-184
[3] “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir (section 6): Writing from Mullah”, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 178-179
[4] “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir (section 8): Writing from Burrenbilla and Yowah”, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 186-188
[5] “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir (section 9): Letters from Cunnamulla (Banana-land)”, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 188-191
Editor’s notes:
knocked up = exhausted, very tired (distinct from “knocked up”, referring to a woman who has become pregnant)
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