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A short story by Henry Lawson |
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The Sex Problem Again |
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Title: The Sex Problem Again Author: Henry Lawson [More Titles by Lawson] It was Mitchell's habit to take an evening off now and then from yarning or reflecting, and proceed, in a most methodical manner, to wash his spare shirts and patch his pants. I was in the habit of contributing to some Sydney papers, and every man is an editor at heart, so, at other times, Mitchell would take another evening off, and root out my swag, and go through my papers in the same methodical manner, and make alterations and additions without comment or reference to me; and sometimes he'd read a little thing of my own which didn't meet his views, and accidentally drop it into the fire; and at other times he'd get hold of some rhyme or sketch that was troubling me, and wrap it up and give it to a passing mailman unbeknown to me. The unexpected appearance of such articles in the paper, as well as the effects of the involuntary collaboration in other pieces, gave me several big surprises. It was in camp on a fencing contract west of Bourke. We had a book which we'd borrowed from a library at Bourke for a year or two--never mind the name of it--it was in ninety-one or ninety-two, and the sex problem was booming then. I had been surreptitiously tearing some carefully-written slips of manuscript--leaves taken from an old pocket-book--into small pieces; I dropped them, with apparent carelessness, into the fire and stood with my back to it. "I'll bet five pounds," said Mitchell, suddenly, "that you've been trying your hand on a sex-problem story." I shifted uneasily and brought my hands from behind me into my pockets. "Well, to tell you the truth," I admitted, "I have." "I thought so," exclaimed Mitchell. "We'll be put to the expense of sending you to Sydney for medical treatment yet. You've been having too easy times lately, plenty of hard graft and no anxiety about tucker or the future. What are the symptoms?" "Well," I said, taking a hand out to scratch the back of my head, "the plot looked all right--at first sight." "So there's a plot, is there? Well, in the first place, a plot is a problem. Well, what's the plot? . . . Come on, you needn't be frightened to tell an old mate like me." "Well," I said, "the yarn looked all right at first sight; that article of 'T's' in the _Bulletin_ turned me off it; listen and see what you think of it: There was a young fellow, a bit of a genius---" "Just so, it's the geniuses that build the sex problems. It's an autobiography. Go on." "Well, he married a girl." Mitchell (sotto voce): "God help her." "He loved her, and she loved him: but after they'd been married a while he found out that, although he understood her, she didn't and couldn't possibly ever understand him." "Yes," commented Mitchell, "and if he hadn't caught the sex problem, nor been reading about it, he would never have found that out." "It was a terrible disappointment," I continued--I had got into the habit of taking Mitchell's interruptions and comments as matters of course--"He saw that his life would be a hell with her---" Mitchell: "Didn't strike him that her life would be a hell with him?" "They had no thought in common." Mitchell: "She was in her right mind then." "But he couldn't leave her because he loved her, and because he knew that she loved him and would break her heart if he left her." "Must have been a pretty cocksure sort of a fellow," remarked Mitchell, "but all geniuses are." "When he was with her he saw all her obstinacy, unreason, and selfishness; but when he was away he only saw her good points." Mitchell: "Pity such men don't stop away." "He thought and thought, and brooded over it till his life was a hell---" Mitchell: "Jes-so: thanks to the problemaniacs." "He thought of killing her and himself, and so taking her with him" "Where?" asked Mitchell. "He must have loved her a lot. . . . Good Lord! That shows the awful effects of the sex problem on the mind of a healthy young man like you;" and Mitchell stood up. "He lay awake by her side at nights thinking and fighting the thing out." "And you've been lying awake, thinking, with me and 'the Oracle' by your side. We'll have to plant the tommy-hawk, and watch you by turns at night till you get over this." "One night he rested on his elbow, and watched her sleeping, and tried to reconstruct his ideal out of her, and, just when he was getting into a happier frame of mind, her mouth fell open, and she snored. . . . I didn't get any further than the snore," I said. "No, of course you didn't," said Mitchell, "and none of the sex problemers ever will--unless they get as far as 'blanky.' You might have made the snore cure him; did it?" "No, it was making things worse in my idea of the yarn. He fell back and lay staring at the ceiling in a hopeless kind of a way." "Then he was a fit case for the lunatic asylum. . . . Now, look here, Harry, you're a good-natured, soft old fool when you're in your right mind; just you go on being a good-natured, soft old fool, and don't try to make a problem out of yourself or anybody else, or you'll come to a bad end. A pocket-book's to keep your accounts in, not to take notes in (you take them in your head and use 'em in your arms), not to write sex-problem rot in--that's spoilt many a good pocket-book, and many a good man. You've got a girl you're talking about going back to as soon as we've finished this contract. Don't you make a problem of her; make a happy wife and mother of her. . . . I was very clever when I was young"--and here Mitchell's voice took a tinge of bitterness, or sadness. "I used to make problems out of things. . . . I ain't much to boast of now. . . . Seems to me that a good many men want to make angels of their wives without first taking trouble of making saints of themselves. We want to make women's ways our ways--it would be just as fair to make our ways theirs. Some men want to be considered gods in their own homes; you'll generally find that sort of men very small potatoes outside; if they weren't they wouldn't bother so much about being cocks on their own little dunghills. . . . And again, old mates seldom quarrel, because they understand each other's moods. Now, if you went brooding round for any length of time I'd say to you. "Now then, Harry, what have I been doing to you? Spit it out, old man.' And you'd do the same by me; but how many men would take even that much trouble with their wives?" A breeze stirred the mulga and brought the sound of a good voice singing in the surveyors' camp: Should old acquaintance be forgot "That damned old tune will upset the Oracle for the rest of the night," I said. "Now, there's the Oracle," said Mitchell. "He was wronged by a woman as few men are wronged; his life was ruined--but he isn't the man to take any stock in sex problems on account of her. He thinks he's great on problems, but he isn't. It all amounts to this--that he's sorry for most men and all women and tries to act up to it to the best of his ability; and if he ain't a Christian, God knows what is--I don't. No matter what a woman does to you, or what you think she does to you, there come times, sooner or later, when you feel sorry for her--deep down in your heart--that is if you're a man. And, no matter what action or course you might take against her, and no matter how right or justified you might seem in doing it, there comes a time when, deep down in your heart, you feel mean and doubtful about your own part. You can take that as a general thing as regards men against women, and man against man, I think. And I believe that deep-down feeling of being doubtful, or mean, or sorry, that comes afterwards, when you are cooler and know more about the world, is a right and natural thing, and we ought to act more in accordance with it." Came the refrain from the surveyors' camp: We twa hae run about the braes, "We feel sorry for our quarrels with our worst enemy when we see him lying still and quiet--dead. Why can't we try and feel a bit sorry beforehand?" For Auld Lang Syne. "I used to feel blazing bitter against things one time but it never hurt anybody but myself in the end. I argued and quarrelled with a girl once--and made a problem of the thing and went away. She's married to a brute now, and I'm what I am. I made a problem of a good home or the world once, and went against the last man in God's world that I should have gone against, and turned my back on his hand, and left him. His hand was very cold the next time I took it in mine. We don't want problems to make us more bitter against the world than we get sometimes." And here's a han' my trusty frien', "And that song's the answer of all problems," said Mitchell. But it was I who lay awake and thought that night. [Children of the Bush by Henry Lawson II] [The end]
Some definitions and Australian slangs: anabranch: A bend in a river that has been cut through by the stream. The main current now runs straight, the anabranch diverges and then rejoins. See billabong. Barcoo-rot. "Persistent ulceration of the skin, chiefly on the hands, and often originating in abrasions". (Morris, Australian English). Barcoo is a river in Queensland. billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely. blackfellow: condescending for Australian Aboriginal blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to break a workers' strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never cross a picket line. Also scab. blanky or --- : Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used for "bloody"--see crimson/gory. blooming: actually used in speech instead of "bloody" (see crimson). bluey: swag. Explanation in Lawson's "The romance of the Swag" here. bob: one shilling bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed. bummer: A cadger or bludger. Someone who begs for food. Interesting Americanism already. Also, tramp. (Different meaning today) bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions (cf. `mulga' and `mallee'), and hence equivalent to "outback". Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest. bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires. bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy") bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the `bush'-- scrub--and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures--cf. Ned Kelly--but usually very violent. bunyip: Aboriginal monster, inhabiting waterholes, billabongs particularly. Adopted into European legends. caser: Five shillings (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound ("quid")). As a coin, a crown piece. chaffing: teasing, mocking good-humouredly churchyarder: Sounding as if dying--ready for the churchyard = cemetery crimson = gory: literary substitutes for "bloody"--the "colonial oath", unacceptable in polite company. Why, is a complete mystery. Popularly explained as contraction of "by Our Lady". Unproved. In reproducing (badly) a German's pronunciation of Australian, Lawson retains the word, but spells it "pluddy". dood: Dude. A classy/cool dresser. drover: one who "droves" droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head. fiver: a five pound note gory: see crimson Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney humpy: rough shack half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown. jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch".) jim-jams: the horrors, d.t.'s jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: "where's that jolly jumbuck, you've got in your tucker bag".) larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member of a gang ("push"). Was considered a major social problem in Sydney of the 1880's to 1900. The _Bulletin_, a magazine in which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the "aggressive, soft-hatted stoush brigade". Anyone today who is disrespectful of authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the Australian character. lucerne: Alfalfa in US mallee: dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under harsh rainfall conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket. mateship: See Lawson story, "Mateship". A heavily romanticised, but nevertheless very practical form of (male) loyalty to a (male) companion who travels with/works with him. A "mate" provides not only companionship, but help in emergencies. Typical of an Australian in the "outback"--or "Never-Never", or under war conditions. A man without a mate was a "hatter"--"his hat covers his family". Such a person might go "ratty" (see further in The romance of the Swag). Equivalent to the "buddy system" in SCUBA diving. metalled: of a road, covered in crushed rock (e.g. "blue metal") mulga: Acacia sp. ("wattle" in Australian) especially Acacia aneura; growing in semi-desert conditions. Used as a description of such a harsh region. mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed. In Lawson generally mud (alluvial) rather than rock myall: aboriginal living in a traditional--pre-conquest--manner nobbler: a drink nuggety: compact but strong physique; small but well-muscled pastoralist: OED sees it a equivalent to "squatter", but in Lawson someone often someone managing a large cattle/sheep "station" for a "pastoral company" rather than an individual. Seen as ultimate capitalist oppression. pluddy: see crimson quid: monetary unit; one pound ratty: insane--or, very eccentric, "cranky". ringer: the champion sheep shearer in a shed that season rouseabout: Labourer in a (sheep) shearing shed. Considered to be, as far as any work is, unskilled labour. sawney: silly, gormless scab: see blackleg shout: In a group; to stand (pay for) a round of drinks. Bad form to leave before your turn comes around. Much peer pressure to drink more than one wished. One can also "shout" for everyone in the pub. skillion(-room): A "lean-to", a room built up against the back of some other building, with separate roof. spifflicated: punished, thrashed without mercy. spree: prolonged drinking bout--days, weeks. squatter: Someone who took up large areas of land, originally without official permission ("squatted"), for sheep especially. Became the "landed aristocracy" of Australia. ("Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred") steever: Originally a Dutch coin. Used here like "penny"--or brass razoo. sundowner: a swagman (see) who is NOT looking for work, but a "handout". Lawson explains the term as referring to someone who turns up at a station at sundown, just in time for "tea" i.e. the evening meal. Line (2494) of actual text (not counting P.G. matter). swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback" with a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag".) Lawson also restricts it at times to those whom he considers to be tramps, not looking for work but for "handouts". In view of the Great Depression (1890->. In 1892 it was reckoned 1/3 men were out of work) perhaps unfairly. Perhaps because he _was_ there. See `travellers'. Tattersalls: The earliest public lottery in Australia. (1881) tenner: a ten pound note. tin-kettling: making noise by striking metal pots/pans. May be celebratory (weddings--in this collection, New Year's Eve), or may indicate extreme social disapproval of someone. travellers: "shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work" (Lawson). [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |