The Dickens Boy

In The Dickens Boy, Tom Keneally has proved once again that he is a great storyteller as he weaves a narrative around the experiences of two of Charles Dickens' sons in Australia.

Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, better known as Plorn, arrived in Melbourne at the end of 1868 to try to prove to his father and, more importantly, to himself that he could be successful and was not worthless as his father seemed to imply. Sixteen year old Plorn travelled to a large sheep station near the Darling River in northern New South Wales where he had to adjust to a very different environment compared to England and learn many new skills.

His brother, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, was already in Australia working on another property. The brothers were not the only sons of well known English writers in Australia as the son of Anthony Trollope was also trying his luck in the colonies.

A major issue faced by Plorn was that he had managed not to read any of his father's books before leaving England, although he knew a little about most of them. When he came to New South Wales he discovered that his father was revered by everyone he met and people wanted to know what it was like being the son of a great writer. Plorn attempted to explain how he only knew his father as a person. Plorn and Alfred's relationship with their father was complicated as Charles Dickens had separated from their mother and was in a relationship with another woman. The boys needed not only to reconcile the world view of their father with the person that they knew but to establish their own identity in a new land.

As the cover of the book suggests, cricket was one of the occasional past-times between teams from neighbouring properties and towns. The cover is of a well known painting by Russell Dysdale painted in 1948.

There are parallels between Plorn's experiences described in this novel to part of my family story as my great, great grandfather, aged nineteen, arrived in Melbourne from England in August 1869 to learn to work, like Plorn, on sheep stations in Victoria and New South Wales.

References:

Adrift in Australia: Charles Dicken's youngest son finds a new story  - review - SMH 22 May 2020 [also same review published in The Age 23 May 2020 with title A Son Grows out of his Father's Shadow]

Mr Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens (1852-1902) - Parliament of NSW

Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens - Monument Australia

Unlucky Plorn Dickens - SMH 4 November 1939 - Trove

The Tale of Edward Dickens - ABC Late Night Live (audio) 1 April 2020

Dickens of a Time - SMH 24 December 2002

The Children of Charles and Catherine Dickens 10 - The Victorian Web

The Soldier's Curse

A series of crime novels set in 1820s New South Wales has been written by Meg Keneally with her father, Tom Keneally. The first book in the Monsarrat Series is The Soldier's Curse, published in 2016.

Set in the convict settlement at Port Macquarie the novel provides detailed description of life in a convict settlement including the demarcation between convicts, former convicts and the free (usually soldiers).This convict settlement is for those who have been convicted twice for offences. Hugh Monsarrat has been assigned as a clerk in the office of the Commandant of the settlement while he awaits his ticket of leave and transcribes the many documents relating to the management of the settlement. Working at Government House he befriends the house keeper, Mrs Mulrooney, as well a a young soldier who regularly visits the house.

The plot centres around the gradual decline in health and eventual death of the Commandant's wife, Honora. When the housekeeper is accused of murdering her mistress Monsarrat is left with the task of exposing the killer.

At times I suspected that the authors were not sure whether they were writing primarily about life in the convict system or writing a crime novel as the plot is intertwined with detailed descriptions of convict life. Being the first book in a series it also contains copious back stories providing information about the main characters which slow down the unravelling of the story. Hopefully other titles in the series will concentrate a little more on the plot if they are meant to be crime novels.

The book does provide an interesting fictional account of convict life in New South Wales. The second book in the series, The Unmourned, published earlier this year is set in the Parramatta Female Factory. Hopefully the storyline will move a little faster than in The Soldier's Curse. It will be interesting to watch the development of this series.

Review in The Australian 27 February 2016

Daughters of Mars

Sally and Naomi Durance were sisters, the daughters of a New South Wales dairy farmer. They were both nurses but although Sally worked in the local hospital while continuing to live at home helping her father look after her sick mother, Naomi had escaped to work in a Sydney hospital. Then came World War I and both the girls enlisted to serve overseas. This novel by Thomas Keneally traces the relationships of the two sisters as they encounter the horrors wrought by war on the bodies of the young soldiers fighting at Gallipoli and then on the Western Front. The many aspects of the wrath of Mars are described through the experiences of the nurses first on a hospital ship, the Archimedes, on an evacuation station on the island of Lemnos and at clearing stations and at an Australian Voluntary Hospital in France. The story however is told through the lives of the two sisters and their friends as they struggle to survive and help those wounded in battle. Based on war diaries written by First World War nurses the book provides an insight into the effects of war both physically and mentally on those who become involved. Although euthanasia forms a sub-plot in the story a major theme is the development of the relationship and understanding between the two sisters forged largely by their war-time experiences.

During the next few years with the centenary of the First World War approaching this book is a valuable contribution to the material written about events occurring between 1914 and 1918.

Australians volume 1 Origins to Eureka

The first volume of Thomas Keneally's history of Australia provides the stories of European settlement of the country until the 1850s. Well known for his novels Thomas Keneally has written other works of non-fiction relating to Australia including The Commonwealth of Thieves, an exploration of the settlement of Sydney as a convict colony.

Keneally is interested in characters so he tells his story by interleaving events as they affected the lives of a selection of participants. A detailed time line to 1860 is provided along with extensive notes and an index.

The Commonwealth of Thieves dwelt on the transportation system, conditions on the transport ships and the initial establishment of Sydney. Like Australians the story is character driven and provides a readable insight into what conditions may have been like in the 1770s and 1780s. The notes and bibliography provide guides for future research for those interested in this period of history.

The early sections of Australians also provides information about the transportation system but concentrates on the development of the colonies that later became Australia, although the emphasis is on Sydney. Telling the story through events in the lives of the convicts and other settlers provides graphic images of life including challenges and achievements at the time.

Having 12 convicts in my family who had arrived in Sydney by 1808, both these books are valuable source books providing background information for family history research, especially as one of the convicts who features as a character in both books is Simeon Lord.