I don't know what prompted me but I've just re-read Jack McLaren's best-known book, "My Crowded Solitude", in which he wrote about the time he landed on the Cape York Peninsula and cut his initial 'J.M.' and the date '7/10/11' (that's '1911') into a mighty milkwood tree and started a coconut plantation. His opening lines are:
| "On a mighty blaze on a mighty tree are cut two initials and a date. The initials are mine, the date is when I began an eight years' lonely residence among the most backward race of people in the whole of the tropical South Pacific, which is a place where backward peoples abound. This experience was mine primarily because in the midst of an adventurous South Seas wandering the urge came upon me to settle awhile. It was not that I was weary of the South Seas, for I loved them. Nor was it that I was weary of adventuring, for youth was mine, and to my particular kind of youth adventuring was Life. It was merely that I was weary of adventuring in many places and desired greatly to adventure in one place for a change." |
And so it was with me when I bought "Riverbend" thirty years ago: I had become weary of adventuring in many places and wanted to be in one place for a change. As Jack McLaren wrote in the chapter "The Jungle's Revenge":
| "The immobility of the life disturbed me not at all, but seemed, rather, to be what I had always craved. Indeed, at times I was given to reproaching myself for having wasted so many years in idle wanderings, and to denouncing the wanderlust as a demoralizing agent of considerable tonnage. From an aimless roamer I had become a Settled and Respectable Person, a man of property, with a vote in the local council--had there been a local council; a Ratepayer--had there been anyone to pay rates to; and altogether a self-satisfied young man who hoped, trusted and believed that the aforementioned wanderlust was well and truly dead." |
I have since come to the end of this slim book (it's fewer than 200 pages) and the ending resonates with me as much as did its beginning:
|
"... I wanted frequent change, and mobility, and irresponsibleness. I wanted to be a wanderer again, an adventurer in many places, instead of in one place. The urge to settle had been satisfied and now was utterly dead.
At Darwin a Japanese steamer lay at the wharf. The mud of Java was on her anchors, and men of Nippon walked her deck. I would have liked to take passage in her, to go with her whither she was bound--it didn't matter where. I had sufficient money. But I couldn't go. There was the plantation. Already I was past my time for returning. Things at the plantation would be all upside-down if I didn't return at once. I met some cattle-drovers about to set out for Boorooloola. I could have gone with them. This place with all the o's in its name was said to be the most out-back town in Australia and one of the smallest in the world, as it consisted only of an hotel and a store. There would be all manner of adventures on the way. But I couldn't go. There was the plantation. There was always the plantation, and on present appearances there would always be the plantation. I damned the plantation, telling myself I had been a fool to hamper myself with a thing like that, and that a man's possessions were nothing more than restrictions upon his liberty of action. Besides, I was no agriculturist, no earthbound son of the soil. My desire to plant things and see them grow was but a transient phase. I was a roamer, and nothing but a roamer. In this condition of mind I returned to Thursday Island and crossed the Strait to Cape York and to my old familiar scenes--and received such welcome from the tribe and Mary Brown and Fitzherbert and Billy Number Five as to cause me to wonder how I could leave them for ever, should opportunity arise. I looked at the tree which bore my initials and the date of my coming to the solitudes, and thought of the exulting which was mine when I cut those letters and figures. I looked at the buoyant palm which was the first to fruit, the palm which had been to me more a child that was Fitzherbert, and I looked at the other palms, the thousands of them, and thrilled to the knowledge that I was the agent of their being. Never, I thought, would I find it in me to abandon all this. This place I had made and its associations were too personal, too much a part of the thing that was me. To give it all up would be like giving up a part of myself. But when, some time later, a good price was offered me for my share in it all, I was far from being so sure. A confusion of desire was mine, and a confusion of thought. I saw myself journeying to the places to which I would journey were I free of the restriction of possessions. I saw myself happy and content down the years in this place of mine. I wanted to go, and I wanted to stay, and knew not which to do. To the offer I made an indeterminate reply. The price was increased." |
And so it is with me now: I have sufficient money but I can't go. There is always "Riverbend". There is always "Riverbend", and on present appearances there will always be "Riverbend". I damn "Riverbend" and tell myself that I was a fool to hamper myself with a thing like that, and that a man's possessions are nothing more than restrictions upon his liberty of action. And yet there is a confusion of thought. I see myself journeying to the places to which I would journey were I free of the restriction of possessions, and I also see myself happy and content down the years in this place of mine. I want to go, and I want to stay, and know not which to do. The last paragraph in the book explains it all:
| "And then the wanderlust welled up in me, strongly, insistently, and grew to a tidal wave which drowned all other thought, flooded all other desire, washed clear away the dead debris of the urge which had caused me to settle at all. The wilding that was ME would not be denied. I accepted the price -- and set forth on my wanderings once more." |
The most fundamental delight which literature can offer has something to do with the perception or discovery of truth, not necessarily a profound or complex or earthshaking truth, but a particular truth of some order. This "epiphany" comes at the moment of recognition when the reader's experience is reflected back at him. Or, as Kafka put it, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us". Maybe "My Crowded Solitude" has just helped me to write the final paragraph in my "Riverbend" story.
