My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

My Brilliant Career

By Miles Franklin.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface Introduction Special Notice My Brilliant Career I: I Remember, I Remember II: An Introduction to ’Possum Gully III: A Lifeless Life IV: A Career Which Soon Careered to an End V: Disjointed Sketches and Grumbles A Drought Idyll VI: Revolt VII: Was E’er a Rose Without Its Thorn? Self Analysis VIII: ’Possum Gully Left Behind. Hurrah! Hurrah! IX: Aunt Helen’s Recipe X: Everard Grey XI: Yah! XII: One Grand Passion XIII: He XIV: Principally Letters XV: When the Heart Is Young XVI: When Fortune Smiles XVII: Idylls of Youth XVIII: As Short as I Wish Had Been the Majority of Sermons to Which I Have Been Forced to Give Ear XIX: The 9th of November 1896 XX: Same Yarn (Continued) XXI: My Unladylike Behaviour Again XXII: Sweet Seventeen XXIII: “Ah, for One Hour of Burning Love, ’Tis Worth an Age of Cold Respect!” XXIV: Thou Knowest Not What a Day May Bring Forth XXV: Because? XXVI: Boast Not Thyself of Tomorrow XXVII: My Journey XXVIII: To Life XXIX: To Life (Continued) XXX: Where Ignorance Is Bliss, ’Tis Folly to Be Wise XXXI: Mr. M’Swat and I Have a Bust-Up XXXII: Ta-Ta to Barney’s Gap XXXIII: Back at ’Possum Gully XXXIV: But Absent Friends Are Soon Forgot XXXV: The 3rd of December 1898 XXXVI: Once Upon a Time, When the Days Were Long and Hot XXXVII: He That Despiseth Little Things, Shall Fall Little by Little I II XXXVIII: A Tale That Is Told and a Day That Is Done Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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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 sunburnt 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

Introduction

’Possum Gully, near Goulburn, NSW, 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!