My Brilliant Career

My Brilliant Career

The Project Gutenberg eBook, My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin
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Title: My Brilliant Career
Author: Miles Franklin
Release Date: March 17, 2004 [eBook #11620]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY BRILLIANT CAREER***
E-text prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg contributor

MY BRILLIANT CAREER
MILES FRANKLIN
1901

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 sun-burnt 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

CONTENTS



CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
ONE. I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER TWO. AN INTRODUCTION TO POSSUM GULLY THREE. A LIFELESS LIFE FOUR. A CAREER WHICH SOON CAREERED TO AN END FIVE. DISJOINTED SKETCHES AND CRUMBLES SIX. REVOLT SEVEN. WAS E'ER A ROSE WITHOUT ITS THORN? EIGHT. POSSUM GULLY LEFT BEHIND. HURRAH! HURRAH! NINE. AUNT HELEN'S RECIPE TEN. EVERARD GREY ELEVEN. YAH! TWELVE. ONE GRAND PASSION THIRTEEN. HE FOURTEEN. PRINCIPALLY LETTERS FIFTEEN. WHEN THE HEART IS YOUNG SIXTEEN. WHEN FORTUNE SMILES SEVENTEEN. IDYLLS OF YOUTH EIGHTEEN. AS SHORT AS I WISH HAD BEEN THE MAJORITY OF SERMONS TO WHICH I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO GIVE EAR NINETEEN. THE 9TH OF NOVEMBER 1896 TWENTY. SAME YARN (Cont.) TWENTY-ONE. MY UNLADYLIKE BEHAVIOUR AGAIN TWENTY-TWO. SWEET SEVENTEEN TWENTY-THREE. AH, FOR ONE HOUR OF BURNING LOVE, 'TIS WORTH AN AGE OF COLD RESPECT! TWENTY-FOUR. THOU KNOWEST NOT WHAT A DAY MAY BRING FORTH TWENTY-FIVE. BECAUSE? TWENTY-SIX. BOAST NOT THYSELF OF TOMORROW TWENTY-SEVEN MY JOURNEY TWENTY-EIGHT. TO LIFE TWENTY-NINE. TO LIFE (Cont.) THIRTY. WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS, 'TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE THIRTY-ONE. MR M'SWAT AND I HAVE A BUST-UP THIRTY-TWO. TA-TA TO BARNEY'S GAP THIRTY-THREE. BACK AT POSSUM GULLY THIRTY-FOUR. BUT ABSENT FRIENDS ARE SOON FORGOT THIRTY-FIVE. THE 3RD OF DECEMBER 1898 THIRTY-SIX. ONCE UPON A TIME, WHEN THE DAYS WERE LONG AND HOT THIRTY-SEVEN. HE THAT DESPISETH LITTLE THINGS, SHALL FALL LITTLE BY LITTLE THIRTY-EIGHT. A TALE THAT IS TOLD AND A DAY THAT IS DONE

INTRODUCTION

Possum Gully, near Goulburn, N.S. Wales, 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