by
Geoffrey Serle
Edward
Vivian (Vance) Palmer (1885-1959), writer, was born on 28 August 1885 at
Bundaberg, Queensland, seventh child of Australian-born Henry Burnet Palmer,
schoolteacher, and his Irish wife Jessie, née Carson. His father's bookishness
and rather prim, middle-class decency were strong influences. The boy's early
education was in several Queensland towns, then at Ipswich Grammar School where
he excelled more at cricket and Rugby than academically, although he
matriculated and knew by heart much of 'Banjo' Paterson's verse. A visit by
Victor Trumper provided an ideal of physical perfection.
Vance
left school at 16, worked as a doctor's secretary and invoice clerk in
Brisbane, read widely—especially Chekhov, Turgenev, Flaubert, Balzac and de
Maupassant—from the School of Arts library, and fell under the influence of A.
G. Stephens of the Bulletin. He began to write, especially for Steele Rudd's
Magazine: 'Rudd' encouraged him and in 1905 published his article, 'An
Australian national art', which foreshadowed his basic attitudes. Late that
year he sailed for England to serve an apprenticeship on Grub Street, 'a kind
of literary beachcombing'. He returned home adventurously in 1907 via Russia
(where he tried to visit Tolstoy) and Japan. Palmer then taught for a year at a
Brisbane grammar school. Early in 1909 he visited Melbourne, made literary
contacts and joined in the spirited activities of the Victorian Socialist
Party. Later that year he became tutor and bookkeeper on Abbieglassie
cattle-station, north-west Queensland, improving his horsemanship and gaining
experience which deeply affected his subsequent career.
Palmer
spent 1910-15 in England and France but for a period in 1912-13 when he
returned home by way of the United States of America and strife-torn Mexico. He
won a modest place in the English literary world, associating with Katherine
Mansfield, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Frank Harris, Herbert Read and Will
Dyson. He made a reasonable living from pot-boiling stories (eighty-one in his
first nine months in London), serials and music-hall sketches, but he also
placed serious stories and poems; in 1905-15 he contributed to about one
hundred publications. He was captured by the guild socialist movement, largely
through professional association and friendship with A. R. Orage, editor of the
New Age, and his group. Palmer's outlook was deeply affected by their beliefs
in the brotherhood of craftsmen, the virtues of the common man and the
sterility of middle-class values, fear of development of the 'servile state',
the attempt to blend nationalism and national character with socialism, and
revolt from 'Literature with a capital L' in favour of emphasis on the lives of
ordinary people.
On
23 May 1914 in London Palmer married Janet Gertrude Higgins; they had been
engaged since 1911. They were still honeymooning in France when war was
declared and returned home from England early in 1915. Deeply conscious of his
nationality, Vance had never intended to stay. His first volumes of stories and
sketches, The World of Men, and poetry, Forerunners, were published in London
in 1915.
In
Melbourne again, Palmer wrote for the Bulletin, prepared a second edition of
Furphy's Such is Life, and was active in writers' societies. He saw new hope,
especially from the labour movement, in developing national sentiment and identity.
He was thinking in terms of a nationalism which might be internationalist while
anti-Imperialist. Closely associated with Frederick Sinclaire of the Free
Religious Fellowship and Frank Wilmot, he wrote for Sinclaire's Fellowship and
a series of fourteen articles for the (Brisbane) Worker, 'Towards industrial
democracy'. Palmer delighted in the defeat of the conscription plebiscites in
which he actively campaigned, sympathized with the major 1917 strike and
attacked the wartime censorship and the Imperial Federation movement. He was,
and remained, sceptical of the pretensions of Marxism.
Although
now a family man with two infant daughters, Palmer felt compelled to enlist in
the Australian Imperial Force during the war crisis of March 1918. However, the
14th Battalion reinforcements did not arrive in France until three days after
the armistice. He found something to praise in military life, even propounding
the 'idea of the army as a guild, or band of brothers'. He spent some time in
France, England and Ireland before he was discharged, still a private, in
Melbourne on 4 November 1919.
His
second volume of verse, The Camp (1920), contained his best-known poem, 'The
farmer remembers the Somme'. To earn a living he resigned himself to an
'incessant flood' of hack stories and novels, some under the pseudonym 'Rann
Daly'; he wrote prolifically for Aussie in 1920-23 and contributed foreign
affairs notes to the Catholic Advocate. He was disillusioned politically,
concluding that urbanization and suburbanization were destroying bush values,
that Australian democracy was weaker than he had hoped and that philistinism
prevailed: 'rich drapers' became a frequent target of his criticism.
In
London in 1919, with Louis Esson and William Moore, Palmer prepared for
performance a group of short Australian plays, but could not find a management.
In Melbourne Palmer and Esson joined Dr Stewart Macky in forming the Pioneer
Players, inspired by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and aiming at founding a
national theatre. The company performed one night a week for several months in
1922 and 1923 and later, but other playwrights could not be found, the amateur
or semi-professional actors were inadequate, the authors' bush themes were not
generally appreciated and organization was weak. Palmer's contribution was 'A
happy family' and several one-acters published as The Black Horse and other
Plays (1924). Later full-length plays included 'Prisoner's Country', performed
in 1960, Hail Tomorrow (1947) and 'Christine'. Louis Esson and the Australian
Theatre (1948) was his eventual tribute to his friend.
The
Palmers continued to live by their pens: until about 1927 their joint income
rarely averaged more than £6 a week. In 1925-29 they lived economically at
Caloundra, Queensland, before returning to Melbourne. Nettie's increasing
earnings enabled Vance to concentrate on serious writing. When in 1929 and 1930
Men are Human and The Passage won third and first prizes in the Bulletin
novel-competition, amounting to £400, their situation greatly improved. The
decade from 1925, which included five novels and two collections of stories,
was his first rich period of writing.
Palmer
visited England and the U.S.A. briefly in 1930, largely to promote his work. In
1935-36 he and Nettie had a prolonged stay in Paris, London and Spain where
they and their daughters became closely involved with the Republican cause. His
creative writing had run dry, and he temporarily concentrated on writing in
Australian history, pursuing his belief in an 'Australia of the spirit' and
investigating the 'Australian dream'. In 1937 he published his and Nettie's
abridgement of Such is Life; it outraged some critics, but introduced Furphy to
a new generation. National Portraits (1940), a collection of biographical
sketches, was an innovative basic work in Australian studies. A selection of
Stephens' criticism (1941) was followed by a sketch of Frank Wilmot (1942) and
in Meanjin Papers 'Battle', a noble statement of war aims; he was to become a
major adviser to the journal. His historical work culminated in The Legend of
the Nineties (1954), an affectionate recollection of the Bulletin school and
early nationalists but primarily a judicious reconsideration of the legend.
From
the late 1930s Palmer reviewed books for the Australian Broadcasting
Commission, in 1941-56 fortnightly, one of his most distinguished activities
which probably won him his widest public. During 1943-44 he worked in the
Department of Labour and Industry, largely writing propaganda to boost morale.
From 1942 he was a member of the Commonwealth Literary Fund's advisory
committee and from 1947 to 1953 chairman; he suffered despicable allegations
that he was a communist (Prime Minister Menzies defended him). A liberal
socialist of the broad left, Palmer made his last overseas trip in 1955 to
Helsinki as delegate to the World Peace Council. He had declined the offer of
an O.B.E.
After
the war Palmer had returned to writing fiction. In 1948 Golconda appeared—the
first of a trilogy broadly inspired by the life of E. G. Theodore, novels which
are among his best. Moreover, in these years he wrote some of his finest
stories, gathered in Let the Birds Fly (1955); and he published with Margaret
Sutherland the pioneering work, Old Australian Bush Ballads (1951). He began
working on his reminiscences; Intimate Portraits (1969) demonstrates again his
biographical talent.
Above
all, Palmer wanted to be a great novelist and perhaps underrated his other
literary accomplishments. Critical opinion consistently prefers his short
stories to his novels, which are sometimes held to lack vitality and intensity
of feeling. Yet they show intellectual vigour, poetic vision and breadth of
social observation. The range of characters, reflecting his own varied
experience, constitutes a 'parade of contemporary Australian humanity'; his
interpretations of Australian life and of what it was to be an Australian of
his time made a major intellectual contribution which has been largely
neglected. His stories—predominantly rural, strong on atmosphere of place and
man's relationship to Nature—displayed steadily maturing craftsmanship and
guarantee his permanent prominence in the canon of Australian writing. He was
proudly of the Lawson tradition but sought to link it with more sophisticated
metropolitan literature.
The
Palmers' partnership was dedicated to promotion of a national literature in a
period when few were interested in Australian arts and letters. They emerged as
leaders of a profession only beginning to recognize itself; for thirty years
and more they (usually Nettie) wrote appreciatively and helpfully, assuring
friendship and hospitality, to the author of any book of quality. They were
essentially 'intellectuals, deeply concerned with the world of ideas'—their
strength was in combining knowledge of world literature and international
standards with passionate devotion to fostering national writing. They
cheerfully accepted professional chores—reading manuscripts, writing introductions,
editing anthologies, lecturing, judging prizes, encouraging young writers—and
fought book censorship. Vance was a founder of the Victorian branch of the
Fellowship of Australian Writers (1938) and a member of the Rationalist
Association and Brian Fitzpatrick's Council for Civil Liberties. They shrank
from personal publicity, indeed subdued their public personalities with an
'almost mannered reticence'. Nevertheless, in Melbourne especially, they were
inspirational tribal elders; many writers of disparate approaches drew deeply
on their friendship and encouragement.
Palmer
was a handsome man. Frank Dalby Davison described him: 'A figure of medium
height and build, clad except on formal occasions in fresh-looking sports
clothes … usually with a blue shirt and bow tie … a walking-stick, a curly pipe
… a rich, quiet, well-modulated voice … a ready smile and ready courtesy …
coming from innate friendliness and inner poise … Palmer has plenty of hot
coals inside him, but he is meditative and … gives the impression of
detachment'.
Early
in 1959 in searing heat, having already suffered two heart attacks, Palmer
played cricket for Meanjin against Overland and exuberantly insisted on running
short singles. He died suddenly at home at Kew on 15 July, only days before
publication of a special issue of Meanjin in his and Nettie's honour, the
conferring of an honorary doctorate by the University of Melbourne, and issue
of The Big Fellow. Survived by his wife and their two daughters, he was
cremated. With Nettie he had, as he claimed, kept 'some sort of fire alive for
over fifty years'.
Select
Bibliography
H. P. Heseltine, Vance Palmer (Brisb, 1970)
V. B. Smith, Vance and Nettie Palmer (NY, 1975), and Letters
of Vance and Nettie Palmer 1915-1963 (Canb, 1977)
D. R. Walker, Dream and Disillusion (Canb, 1976)
Walkabout, 1 Aug 1950
Meanjin Quarterly, 18, no 2, 1959
S. Murray-Smith, Speech Opening the Vance and Nettie Palmer
exhibition, State Library of Victoria, 19 Aug 1985 (manuscript, privately held)
Meanjin Archive (University of Melbourne Library)
Vance and Nettie Palmer papers (National Library of
Australia)
private information.
Sources:
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