Robitt Jon Clow - The cause of Kelly [Brian Stevenson]

Among the oddest of literary manifestations of the Kelly story must surely be Robitt Jon Clow's play in blank verse, The cause of Kelly: a complete history of the primitive colonial war between the Kelly family and the police in blank verse. (It's got a long title too.) I looked at a copy in the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland in Brisbane: to own such an item is prohibitively expensive, but thanks to the existence of fine research libraries such as Fryer, literary treasures (and horrifying literary curiosities) can be perused by the general public for free.

Clow, a minister of religion who was born in 1876 and died in 1952 was a correspondent of J J Keneally. In a 1944 letter to the author of The complete inner history of the Kelly Gang and their pursuers, and published in one of the many editions of that work, Clow related how he had met 'a lady neighbor' who went to school with Steve Hart. Naturally, he was frequently named as the best behaved boy in the school for that week! The Reverend Clow also recalled his meeting with Mr Ingram, the bookseller at Beechworth, who remembered Ned as being 'of a quiet, unassuming disposition - a quiet and gentlemanly man' and Joe as 'a very nice little fellow' and 'well behaved.'

As for the play, it's a curious little volume. I have not turned up any evidence of it ever being performed, and it seems more than likely that Clow paid to have it printed in Ballarat in 1919. One wonders if many people attended the launch, but at least the volume was produced!

His sympathies are unsubtle, even if his praise of Ned is awkwardly phrased: 'No matter what his faults were, he is the father of our National Courage and the heart of our Literature.' Clow thought it was strange that Barry's statue 'should obtrude the entrance to our Public Library ... Why has his stature [sic] not been removed by direction of Parliament and used to macadamise the road?' (It seems that our playwright has forgotten, for the moment, that the community-spirited Barry practically invented the Public Library of Victoria.)

Clow says in the Introduction 'I have striven to make my narrative accord with history', but even allowing for dramatic licence, inaccuracies abound. Fitzpatrick (rendered here as Fitz-Patrick) flees the Eleven Mile instead of departing with a boot up his hindquarters: Joe shoots Lonigan: all shoot Scanlon and Dan finishes off Kennedy. For some reason that I cannot make out, Ned tries to incite Wild Wright, who appears to be terrified of the Gang, into murdering Constable Arthur. Wild, obviously, neglects to do so. Sadlier [sic] tries to bribe Wild to give information about the Kellys, but Wild refuses to cooperate, more out of fear than loyalty to Ned.

For some reason, Curnow is described in the dramatis personae as one of Ned's 'slippery friends' - Aaron Sherritt is the other. Gaunson is misnamed as Bill Gaunson, not David, and the courageous sister who dares so much and so often for the Gang is named as Nell, not Maggie. Ned later says of her 'All the Florence Nightingales in the world/Would not make another like our sister.' Ned gets to talk to J F Archibald, legendary founder of the Bulletin - what a conversation that would have been, had it occurred!

Clow ungenerously puts Fitzpatrick in gaol for the course of the Outbreak. Ned is, however, generous to Fitzpatrick on the morning of his execution and says to his mother: 'We won't speak of him at present mother/ Poor fellow! He's kicked his heels in gaol since.' However, Ned is a lot less generous to Jim, who apparently has let him down in not turning up at Glenrowan: 'Our blasted Jim - on whom I depended/Did not turn up until I was captured/In every war there is a laggard wretch/With James in command he will not fetch.' Ned is strolling through the prison gardens with his mother, the prison governor and three warders and he picks some flowers and presents them to his mother: 'Ah mother! Let me present thee a bouquet/Make thy heart like a lassy's once again.' I would have loved to have seen the faces of Fitzpatrick, Jim, and the 'lassy' all very much alive in 1919, reading those words, though from what Fitzpatrick said in the Cookson interviews he seemed used to being bucketed on stage.

Some of the characters do seem to be speaking in ways that the real life ones never would have. McIntyre reassures a captured Ned: 'True Curnow played a most ignoble part/which contributed nothing to thy fall/the break in line the pilot would have found.' The dying Judge Barry sees a vision of the now deceased Ned bearing a placard with the words 'You and I will meet over yonder/and much sooner than you think.' So far so good, but the letters are of fire and Barry screams to his maid: 'My brain's blazing with flaming centipeds [sic]/Arranged in letters like words of him/who in gaol suffered for his crimes this day.'

An interesting sub-plot that is never developed comes when Steve and Joe discuss turning themselves in and giving Queen's evidence. Steve says, awkwardly: 'My brother suggested that evidence/of our female majesty I should turn.' Ned and Dan overhear them and decide that Dan should keep an eye on Joe and Ned should pair with Steve to monitor the situation. Did someone just say something about honour among thieves? Nothing comes of this sub-plot, however, perhaps because Clow realised that to go further might make his narrative accord less with history.

The play is not without some powerful bits, even if here the poetry is not particularly elegant. Steve and Dan are both rendered temporarily unconscious in the siege but when Steve revives he yells to Dan: 'Wake up quickly! Why we're in hell/All that's blazing is blazing well.' McIntyre describes Ned as 'A bushman in a warlike statue/With his face enclosed in iron plate/Colonial who with metal wrought/what strange foreboding state of thought.' Such a phrase could also be applied to the mind of Robitt Jon Clow, who produced this curious little item. It's easy to knock the historical inaccuracies, the awkward phraseology, the melodrama (remember, the unvarnished story of the Kellys was pretty damn melodramatic) and the odd behaviour of the characters, but it was a fun item to read, even if it does not add much to our understanding of the Kelly story.