arthur william upfield

302 Pages·2008·1.18 MB·English

ARTHUR WILLIAM UPFIELD: A
BIOGRAPHY

Travis B. Lindsey
BLittComm MA

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of
Murdoch University
February 2005
ii

I declare that this dissertation is my own account of my research and contains as
its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at a
university or other institution.

(Travis Barton Lindsey)
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ABSTRACT

This dissertation is an exhaustive account of the life and work of Arthur William
Upfield (1890-1964). It is presented as a critical biography and narrates the life of the
writer, in his socio-cultural milieu, from birth. It also positions Upfield as a writer
who dealt with issues of Aboriginality at a time when this was a singularly polemical
subject. My work is informed by the theory of Zygmunt Bauman and others and is
posited in the context of late-modern biography theory.

English-born, Upfield arrived in Australia in 1911 and took work in the bush, serving
overseas with the Australian army at the outbreak of World War I and marrying an
Australian army nurse in Egypt. Returning with his wife and son to Australia in 1921
he intermittently carried his swag until he was employed patrolling the Western
Australian number 1 rabbit-proof fence for three years to 1931. By that time he had
published four novels, including two crime novels featuring his fictional creation, the
part-Aboriginal, part-European, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (“Bony”),
arguably the first fully-developed character in Australian popular fiction.

Leaving the fence, Upfield settled with his family in Perth and wrote full-time until
joining the Melbourne Herald in 1933. Retrenched, he resumed career writing to be
further interrupted by a war-time intelligence posting in 1939. In 1943 the first Bony
mysteries were published in America, where Upfield’s critical success was maintained
until his death. In 1945 he left his wife for Jessica Uren, to whom he remained
devoted.
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Upfield’s in all twenty-nine Bony novels, many of which have been translated across
eleven languages, afforded him notable success both at home and abroad, in good
part due to his descriptive gifts and the uniqueness of his fictional character, the part-
Aboriginal Bony.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful for the help and encouragement in this work of many people,
especially the knowledgeable and generous Joe and Gaby Kovess, Bill and Francesca
Upfield and Don and Lynette Uren. Joe Kovess has been generous, too, in his
sharing of his extensive and painstakingly gathered listings of Upfield’s articles and
other writings. Others, too, have been generous - Philip Asdell, the chairman (Peter
Fleming) and the board of Bonaparte Holdings Pty. Limited, Jan Howard Finder, Bill
Finlay, Patricia Kotai-Ewers, Paul McEvoy, the late Louise Mueller, Brian Pinchback,
Pamela Ruskin, Haille Smith and many more, including my tolerant wife Felicity.

My special thanks for their interest, guidance and encouragement go to my
supervisors Professors Vijay Mishra, Horst Ruthrof and Kateryna Olijnyk Longley.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract iii
Acknowledgments v
1 Introduction 1
2 The First Twenty Years (1890-1910) 17
3 The Bush Mould (1911-14) 25
4 The Great War and Afterwards (1914-21) 33
5 Back to the Bush (1921-27) 43
6 The West and the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1927-29) 51
7 Aborigines in Society 56
8 Aborigines in Australian Literature 70
9 The Genesis of Bony 82
10 Writing and the Fence (1930-31) 93

11 Murder on the Fence (1929-32) 103
12 Penning, Penury and the Paper (1931-34) 113
13 Struggles, Succour and Success (1934-39) 126
14 The Second War and America (1939-45) 152
15 A Life Change (1945-46) 165
16 Anthropology and the Death of the Author (1946- 173
48)
17 A Trek, the Seaside, Rain, Politics and Mud (1948- 187
53)
18 Bermagui, a Biography and Bowral (1954-58) 214

19 Recognition, Reflection and the Westering Sun 235
(1959-64)
20 Conclusion 254
Selected Bibliography 255
1
1 INTRODUCTION

This is a critical biography with a difference. It is neither a purely chronological
account of the life of a writer, nor is it a theoretical engagement with the production
of biographies. Instead, its purpose is to present for the first time in Australian letters
a comprehensive account of the life, works, philosophy and outlook of Arthur
William Upfield (1890-1964). Furthermore, it positions Upfield as a writer in the
context of the first half of 20th century Australian history, one who dealt with issues
of Aboriginality at a time when this was an under-theorized area of critical
knowledge.

From the sketchy evidence we have, it seems Upfield’s early life in England was
serene and reasonably stable. Born and bred in Hampshire he enjoyed a middle-class
existence until for health reasons he was dispatched at the age of 20 to South
Australia, where he arrived early in 1911. For some years, and it seems by choice, he
took employment on outback stations, intermittently humping his swag, until in the
1930s he rode for nearly three years a section of the number one rabbit-proof fence
in Western Australia, where one of his novels provided a blueprint for a real-life
murder. This period, during which several novels were produced, was interrupted by
his volunteering for military service in World War I and eventuated in his marriage in
Egypt to an Australian Army nurse.

Following a period in 1933-34 when he was contracted to, and then retrenched from,
the Melbourne Herald, Upfield supported his family and himself through his writing.
During World War II he worked as a civilian for a department of military intelligence
2
and found great success with his mystery novels in the American market. Upon
resigning from his wartime post he resumed writing on a full-time basis. In 1946 he
left his wife and son for a widow, Jessica Uren, for whom he had developed deep
feelings. The somewhat inhibited Upfield thus seems to have discovered love late in
his life - an intense love which ended only with his death. That period is sketched in
Jessica’s letters, in her unpublished manuscript Beauty for Ashes1 and in interviews with
Jessica’s son, Don. With love also came a consolidation of Upfield’s style of mystery
fiction and he remains to this day one of only a handful of Australian authors who
were or are able to support themselves through their writing.

As an Australian writer of popular fiction Upfield has few equals, although his special
contributions to Australian letters are little remarked in the standard histories of
Australian literature. (The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature does, however,
go some way towards remedying this.)2 What stands out is his creation of the part-
Aboriginal, part-European, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (“Bony”) of the
Queensland Police, arguably the first fully-developed character in Australian popular
fiction. So important was Bony to his creative imagination that between 1929 and
(posthumously) 1966 Upfield produced twenty nine crime mysteries featuring Bony.
All but one of the Bony novels have been at various times published in Australia,
Britain and America and many have been translated across at least eleven languages.3

1 Jessica Hawke, Beauty for Ashes, ts., undated, archive of Don Uren, Mansfield, Victoria.
2 Elizabeth Webby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000 ) 72, 125.
3 The Barrakee Mystery (1929) has so far not been published in Australia. For various title
translations see for example: Zanik Jezera, trans. F. Jungwirth (Prague: Mlada Fronta, 1965).
Den Sorte Jomfru, trans. N. Gabe (Copenhagen: Wangel, 1960). De Moord op de Weerprofeet,
trans. A.M. van Steyn-Dingjan (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1958). Bony Ostaa Naisen, (Helsinki:
Otava, 1971). Le Business de M. Jelly, trans. Michèle Valencia (Paris: Editions 10/18, 1998).
Mei-Tantei Napoleon (Tokyo: Tokyo Sogen-Sha, 1958). Die Leute von Nebenan, trans. Arno
Dohm (Munich: Goldman, 1957). Passi del Diavolo (Milan: Garzanti, 1950).
Politiinspektoren Kjoper en Kvinne (Oslo: Elingaard, 1975). Un Autor Muerde el Polvo, trans.
A. Custodio (Mexico: Novaro, 1956). I Laga Ordning (Stockholm: Lindquist, 1976).
3
Given Upfield’s status as a full-time, popular writer with an international reputation it
is surprising that he is the subject of only two book-length studies. The first major
text is Jessica Hawke’s biographical work Follow My Dust!, published in 1957, which
carries on its dust jacket the notation “Written in collaboration with Arthur Upfield,”
an assertion that is strongly supported by stylistic evidence.4 The work draws heavily
from, although from a textual perspective it is frequently an improvement upon,
Upfield’s mostly unpublished autobiographical work, The Tale of a Pommy.5 (The
Melbourne Herald published in January 1934 articles relating to Upfield’s early years
in Australia and Upfield incorporated these articles into his autobiography.)

Jessica Hawke’s 238-page book comprises in its first 39 pages a sequential account of
Upfield’s family life in England to the time of his departure for Australia. After that it
becomes in large part a collection of yarns surrounding Upfield. The period 1914-
20, during which time he married, is covered in one sentence - “Upfield joined the
A.I.F August 23rd 1914 and became a soldier for five years”6 - and the yarns cease

Upfield’s letter to Louise Mueller of 14 August 1960, archive of Louise Mueller, Germantown,
Wis., complains that the Russians were publishing his books without payment, but there is no other
evidence for this.
4 Jessica Hawke, Follow My Dust! (London: Heinemann, 1957). Hawke is the maiden name of
Jessica Uren, Upfield’s de facto wife from 1946. The publication was thought on stylistic evidence
by a number of contemporary reviewers to have been written by Upfield.
5 Arthur W. Upfield, The Tale of a Pommy, mostly unpublished ms., circa 1938, archive of
William Upfield, Melbourne, Victoria. Upfield was working on an autobiography in 1934 (see
Arthur Upfield, letter to Charles Lemon, 3 October 1934, 2138A Battye Library, Perth. ) but the
serial of events covered in the ms. ceases with an account of the Snowy Rowles murder case of
1932. This manuscript was tentatively retitled Beyond the Mirage sometime between 11 November
1937 and 11 May 1938, and then Men, Women and Camels around the end of May 1938. When
Angus & Robertson, who were reluctant to publish it themselves, failed through their agents to
interest Oxford University Press, Upfield wrote on 27 December 1938 to Angus & Robertson
(Mitchell Library MS3269) “. . . re rejection of Men, Women and Camels by Oxford Press. I am
more than inclined to agree with their reasons for rejection, and to save further expense the
typescript should be destroyed and written off like a bad debt. It is a form of writing which I have
not made my own.” The work was seen in one quarter at least as “essentially a series of anecdotal
essays about bush life in Australia.” Footnote references hereafter to The Tale of a Pommy show
my own sequential numbering of pages, since the manuscript is a cobbling of various typescripts
and a number of articles by Upfield published in January 1934 by the [Melbourne] Herald under
the series title “My Life Outback.” The page numbering on my copy is otherwise highly eccentric,
suggesting significant textual changes.
6 Hawke, Follow 111.
4
with Upfield’s departure from the (Melbourne) Herald in 1934. The period to around
1953 is then covered in six pages, but there is only one, very brief, reference to
Upfield’s family life after 1910.7 These are glaring gaps which I propose to fill. There
is also the matter of the post-1953 void, which I address. However, I am reliant upon
The Tale of a Pommy, as well as Hawke’s work, for their accounts of Upfield’s early
years.

The second major text on Upfield is Ray B. Browne’s The Spirit of Australia: The Crime
Fiction of Arthur W. Upfield, published in 1988.8 The first 46 pages of this 266-page
work are devoted to the life and philosophy of Upfield, with some pages in other
chapters also taking up Upfield’s philosophical position. The comparatively small
biographical element clearly draws upon Follow My Dust! and a number of published
articles of an “introducing the author” nature. Browne’s discussion of Upfield’s
philosophy is derived from the texts of the Bony novels. The work as a whole is
interesting in its analysis of some of Upfield’s novels, but it is uneven and marred by
errors of interpretation and fact. Let me cite a couple here.

One of the early mistakes in Browne’s work is his locating the rescue drama
surrounding the 19th century wreck of the steamer Georgette in the surf (sic) of the
Darling River in country New South Wales instead of on the West Australian coast.9
This may not be a serious error, but here is another, which as it forms part of the
book’s conclusion requires a longer commentary. The ending reads in part:
As we look back at the life and the works of Arthur Upfield, what conclusions can be
drawn? . . . He was first of all, it seems, a Britisher gone Australian . . . . But he was also

7 Hawke, Follow 113; “Only just got back,” Upfield said. “Was married. It was a failure.
Headed for the Back country.”
8 Ray B. Browne, The Spirit of Australia: The Crime Fiction of Arthur W. Upfield (Bowling
Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988).
9 Browne, 21.