Rethinking the Australian Legend

Abstract

Fifty years after its publication Russel Ward's The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national culture. It was shaped by a long debate, in Europe and Australia, about the cultural basis of national selfhood, as well as by the events of Ward's own time: the 1930s depression, the popular front against Nazism and the early years of the Cold War. Russel Ward was a true believer in the bush legend as well as a critical interpreter of its origins, an ambiguity of purpose that reflected his shift from radical activist to academic, and from folklorist to cultural historian. In its preoccupation with ideas of national belonging it stands in a tradition that begins with the German Romantics and continues in contemporary interests in the Dreamtime.

Notes

¹Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1958). I wish to acknowledge helpful comments by Frank Bongiorno, John Hirst, Stuart Macintyre and David Walker on an earlier draft of this paper.

²Ward's book has been the subject of several commemorative assessments: on the 25th anniversary of the book in ‘The Australian Legend Re-visited’, Historical Studies 18, no. 71 (October 1978); on Ward's death in John Hirst, ‘Russel Ward (1914–95): The Life and the Work’, Australian Historical Studies 27, no. 107 (October 1996): 38–43; and on the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication in Frank Bongiorno and David Andrew Roberts, eds, ‘Russel Ward: Reflections on a Legend’, Journal of Australian Colonial History 10, no. 2 (2008).

³See Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 203–6.

⁴Ward, Australian Legend, 1–2.

⁵Some examples: Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia: An Argument Concerning the Social Origins of Australian Radicalism and Nationalism (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1970), 42–44 and Miriam Dixson, The Real Matilda: Women and Identity in Australia 1788 to 1975, (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1976); Marilyn Lake, ‘The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context’, Historical Studies 22, no. 86 (April 1986): 116–131; for Ward's response see, ‘The Legend Re-visited’, Historical Studies 18, no. 71 (October 1978): 171–90.

⁶Douglas Stewart and Nancy Keesing, Old Bush Songs (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1957), vii.

⁷J. S. Manifold, ‘Who Wrote the Ballads’, Realist Writer 12, (1963): 11.

⁸G. Davison, ‘Sydney and the Bush: An Urban Context for the Australian Legend’, Historical Studies 18, no. 71 (October 1978): 191–209.

⁹McQueen, 15.

¹⁰For biographical details see John McLaren, Free Radicals: Of the Left in Postwar Melbourne (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003); Ian Turner, ‘My Long March’, Overland 59, (1974): 23–40; Rodney Hall, J. S. Manifold: an Introduction to the Man and his Work (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1978); Brian Matthews, Manning Clark: A Life (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2008); Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2011).

¹¹G. Davison, ‘Alexander Harris and the Australian Legend’, Melbourne Historical Journal 2, (1962): 55–58.

¹²Ward's own account of his early life, A Radical Life: The Autobiography of Russel Ward (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1988) is revealing, although his interviews with Hazel de Berg (1968) and Neville Meaney (1986), cited below, are often less inhibited.

¹⁵Russel Ward Interview with Neville Meaney, 8 November 1986, NLA, 4.

¹³Russel Ward, Letters to his Parents, 1940–54, Ward Papers, 21–24, National Library of Australia (NLA).

¹⁴R. M. Gibbs, ‘Ward, John Frederick (1883–1954)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography 12, 1891–1939, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990), 384–85.

¹⁶Russel Ward Interview with Neville Meaney, 8 November 1986, NLA, 6.

¹⁷Jean Yule (Ward) in Renate Howe, A Century of Influence: The Australian Student Christian Movement 1896–1996 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009), 240–41.

¹⁸Russel Ward Interview with Hazel de Berg, 23 August 1968, NLA.

¹⁹Russel Ward Interview with Hazel de Berg, 23 August 1968, NLA.

²⁰On Ward's Communist Party career, see Drew Cottle, ‘A Bowyang Historian in the Cold War Antipodes: Russel Ward and the Making of The Australian Legend’, Journal of Australian Colonial History 10, no. 2 (2008): 171–86.

²¹Russel Ward Interview with Neville Meaney, 22. Compare Alistair Davidson, The Communist Party of Australia: A Short History (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1969), 82–83.

²²Russel Ward Interview with de Berg.

²³P. R. Stephensen, The Foundations of Culture in Australia (Sydney: W. J. Miles, 1936).

²⁴Anthony Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (London: Polity, 2001); Smith, ‘The Nation: Invented, Imagined, Reconstructed?’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies 2, no. 3 (1991): 353–68.

²⁵Benedict Anderson, Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), espec. 37–46.

²⁷Herder, Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1794–91) in J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, translated, edited and with an introduction by F. M. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 309.

²⁶Johann Gottfried Herder, Governments as Inherited Regimes (1785) in Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings, translated … by Ionnis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004), 128.

²⁸Ward, The Australian Legend, 230.

²⁹Johann Gottfried Herder, Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language, and History, translated, edited and with an introduction by Marcia Bunge (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 142.

³⁰E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 101–08; William Wilson, ‘Herder, Folklore and Romantic Nationalism’, Journal of Popular Culture 6, no. 4 (1973): 819–35; John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism; The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Modern Irish State (London: Allen and Unwin in association with LSE, 1987).

³¹Smith, Nationalism, 51–57.

³²Gellner in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

³³Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Phoenix, 1997), 73–4.

³⁴Henry Lawson, ‘Song of the Republic’ (1888); compare Ian Turner, ‘Australian Nationalism and Australian History’ in his Room for Manoeuvre: Writings on History, Politics, Ideas and Play (Melbourne: Drummond, 1982), 5.

³⁵Helen Doyle, ‘Australia Infelix: Making History in an Unsettled Country’ (PhD Thesis, Monash University, 2005), 2.

³⁶Frederick Sinnett, ‘Fiction Fields of Australia’, Journal of Australasia, 1 (July–December, 1856): 2. Accessed from <http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au>

³⁷Henry Gyles Turner, ‘Romance and Tragedy in Victorian History’, Victorian Historical Magazine, 3 (December 1913): 49.

³⁸Francis Adams, The Australians (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893), 28, 154, 167, 171, 173.

³⁹David Walker, Dream and Disillusion: A Search for Australian Cultural Identity (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976), 17–19; Palmer, ‘Letters from London, 1920–1921’ in The Writer in Australia: A Collection of Literary Documents 1856–1964, ed. John Barnes (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1969), 191–95.

⁴⁰D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo (1923) (London: Penguin edition, 1977), 18, 25; compare Robert Darroch, D. H. Lawrence in Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981).

⁴¹Craig Munro, Wild Man of Letters: The Story of P. R. Stephensen (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984).

⁴²P. R. Stephensen, The Foundations of Culture in Australia: An Essay Towards National Self-respect (Sydney: W. J. Miles, 1936), 25, 98–99. Italics in original.

⁴³Rex Ingamells and Ian Tilbrook, Conditional Culture (Adelaide: F. W. Preece, 1938), 16–18;

⁴⁴Ward, A Radical Life, 84–5, 108.

⁴⁵On relations between the Jindyworobaks and Australian First see Munro, Wild Man of Letters, 108.

⁴⁷Gorky Speech to Soviet Congress of Writers, August 1934. Accessed from <http://www.marx.org/archive/gorky-maxim/1934/soviet-literature.htm>

⁴⁶Hannjost Lixfeld, Folklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 62–67, 78–85.

⁴⁸Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 9–14.

⁴⁹The ECCI Secretariat ‘Short Thesis’ on the Second World War 9 September 1939 (as dictated by Palme Dutt to CPGB Central Committee, 2 October 1939) in Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997), 246–7.

⁵⁰Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 106, 108.

⁵³S. Purdy, ‘Our National Pride’, Communist Review (August 1944): 308–09; for further examples, see Miles Franklin, ‘Joseph Furphy, Democrat and Australian Patriot’, ibid, (September 1943): 122–23; Katherine Susannah Prichard, ‘Tribute to Henry Lawson’, ibid, (October 1943): 137–38. Oriel Gray relates the background to the play and gives a lively account of the New Theatre in these years in her Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman (Melbourne: Penguin, 1985): 108–11.

⁵¹N. Baltiisky, ‘Patriotism’, Communist Review (October 1945): 524–29

⁵²For a summary see Ten Years of the New Theatre 1947–8 [Sydney, 1948], copy in Ian Turner Collection, P2/1/11242, Butlin Archives of Business and Labour, Australian National University.

⁵⁴Edgar Waters and Stephen Murray-Smith, Rebel Songs (Melbourne: Australian Student Labor Federation, 1947).

⁵⁵E. Lancaster, ‘Folk Song and the Festival’, Singabout 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1956): 4.

⁵⁶‘Dick Diamond’, Biographical Note in New Theatre Collection, Performing Arts Museum, Melbourne.

⁵⁷ Reedy River Songbook, 3rd ed. (Sydney: New Theatre, 1966), [2].

⁵⁸Obituary of Edgar Waters, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2008.

⁵⁹Ian Turner, ‘Ten Years of Australian Folklore’, Australian Tradition (March 1966): 7–8 and (June 1966): 19–20.

⁶⁰Russel Ward, ‘The Genesis and Nature of the Historical, Social and Political Content of Poetry between the Two World Wars With Particular Reference to the Works of Auden, Eliot and Pound’ (MA Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1950).

⁶¹Russel Ward, ‘The Genesis and Nature of the Historical, Social and Political Content of Poetry between the Two World Wars With Particular Reference to the Works of Auden, Eliot and Pound’ (MA Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1950)., 23.

⁶²Russel Ward, ‘The Genesis and Nature of the Historical, Social and Political Content of Poetry between the Two World Wars With Particular Reference to the Works of Auden, Eliot and Pound’ (MA Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1950)., 61–63.

⁶³See description of his plans and response of his prospective supervisor Laurie Fitzhardinge in Russel Ward to his parents, 4 September 1952, Ward Papers NLA.

⁶⁴Percy Jones, ‘Australia's Folk Songs’, Twentieth Century 1 (1946–7): 37–43. On the folk revival more generally, see Graeme Smith, Singing Australian: A History of Folk and Country Music (Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia, 2005), 81–96.

⁶⁵Nancy Keesing to Russel Ward, 10 April 1953; Douglas Stewart to Russel Ward, April 1954, Ward Papers, NLA.

⁶⁶John Manifold, ‘The Poets I've Known’, manuscript submitted to Realist Writer c. 1954 but rejected by Murray-Smith. Stephen Murray-Smith Papers, State Library of Victoria (SLV).

⁶⁷John Manifold, ‘The Tone of Voice’, Realist Writer (April–May 1954): 6; John Manifold, ‘Who Wrote the Ballads’, Realist Writer (1963): 8–12.

⁶⁸Preface to ‘Old Bush Songs’ (1905) in A. B. Paterson, Song of the Pen, Complete Works 1901–1941, (Sydney: Ure Smith Press, 1983), 254.

⁶⁹Clement Semmler, The Banjo of the Bush: The Life and Times of A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1974) 156.

⁷⁰ Australian Tradition 1, no. 3 (July 1964), inside front cover.

⁷¹ Gumsucker's Gazette (July 1963): 2

⁷²‘Essay at the Definition of Australian Folk-songs’ (n.d. but probably early 1950s); ‘Ballad Talk’, Fellowship of Australian Writers, Canberra University College, 24 Sept 1953, Ward Papers, NLA; Defining ‘folklore’ was a perennial topic of debate among the Left: see for example Harry Pearce, ‘What is Folklore?’, Gumsuckers’ Gazette (November 1961): 4–5.

⁷³Russel Ward, ed. The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads (Melbourne: Penguin, 1964), 17–22; ‘Folksong and Ballad’, Australian Tradition (December 1969): 20–25 and compare Matthew Hodgart, The Ballads (London: Hutchinson, 1950).

⁷⁴‘Essay at the Definition of Australian Folk-songs’.

⁷⁵Edgar Waters, ‘The Folk Song Revival’, Australian Tradition (July 1964): 9–12; Rex Mortimer, ‘The Place of Topical Song’, Australian Tradition, no. 4 (September 1964): 3–5; Joy Durst, ‘Folk Songs of Today’, Australian Tradition (March 1964): 15. Edgar Waters to Russel Ward, 12 September 1954, 31 December 1954, Ward Papers, NLA.

⁷⁶Edgar Waters, ‘Origins of the Bush Ballad’, ANU Seminar Paper delivered 3 October 1961, Stephen Murray Smith Papers Box 196, 3–1; Edgar Waters, ‘Some Aspects of the Popular Arts in Australia, 1880–1915’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University 1962).

⁷⁷David Martin to Stephen Murray-Smith, Tuesday, [1954?], Overland Correspondence, Murray-Smith Papers, SLV.

⁷⁸Clive Turnbull to Stephen Murray-Smith, undated [1954], Overland Correspondence, Murray-Smith Papers, 1/2-2, SLV.

⁷⁹Editorial, Realist Writer (September–October 1953).

⁸⁰‘Reedy River’ by Dick Diamond, New Theatre Programme (1953?), ‘The Show every Australian has been hoping for!’ Handbill 1959, New Theatre Collection, Performing Arts Museum, Melbourne.

⁸¹Joy Durst, ‘Thoughts on Australian Songs’, Gumsucker's Gazette (December 1960): 3, March 1961.

⁸²Wendy Lowenstein to Ian Turner, 10 May 1964, Turner to Lowenstein, 9 June 1964, Ian Turner Papers, NLA.

⁸³Rex Mortimer, ‘The Place of Topical Song’, Australian Tradition 4 (September 1964): 3–5.

⁸⁴See for example, ‘Analysis of 8 Indubitable Australian Folk-songs’ in Ward Papers, series 12, Notes on the Planning of Thesis, NLA.

⁸⁵Ian Turner, ‘The Life of the Legend’, Overland, 16 (Summer 1959–60): 25.

⁸⁶Ward, The Australian Legend, 235.

⁸⁷‘Two Noble Frontiersmen’, typescript of thesis chapter, 23, Ward Papers, cites Manning Clark, Select Documents in Australian History (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1955), vol. 2, 661.

⁸⁸Russel Ward Interview with Neville Meaney, 19.

⁸⁹Manning Clark, Diary, 11 September 1942, NLA.

⁹⁰Manning Clark, Diary, 27 February 1940 as quoted in Brian Matthews, Manning Clark, 99.

⁹¹Manning Clark, ‘A Letter to Tom Collins’, Meanjin 2, no. 3 (1943) in Manning Clark, Occasional Writings & Speeches (Melbourne: Fontana/Collins, 1980), 93.

⁹²Brian Matthews, p. 63; also see Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity, 196–201.

⁹³Manning Clark Diary, 18 October 1942, NLA.

⁹⁴Manning Clark Diary, 15 February 1943, NLA.

⁹⁵‘Whose Country Is It?’ in Manning Clark, Speaking Out of Turn (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997) 144.

⁹⁶A. P. Elkin, ‘Steps into the Dream-Time’, Meanjin 2, no. 2 (Winter 1943): 14–17.

⁹⁷Albert Tucker, ‘Art, Myth and Society’, Angry Penguins 4 (1943): 49–54 in Modernism and Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917–1967, eds, Ann Stephen, Andrew McNamara and Philip Goad (Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2006), 427–35.

⁹⁸Noel Counihan, ‘How Albert Tucker Misrepresents Marxism’, Angry Penguins 5 (1943) in Modernism and Australia, 443.

⁹⁹For Palmer's elision of secular utopianism with ‘dream-time’ see his The Legend of the Nineties (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1954), 1, 17, 52, 70, 166.

¹⁰⁰Ward, ‘Genesis and Nature’.

¹⁰¹Ward, The Australian Legend, 186.

¹⁰²Russel Ward to Margaret Kiddle, 23 June, 3 August 1955, Ward Papers, NLA Ms 7576/1/102.

¹⁰³Compare W. E. H. Stanner, ‘The Dreaming’ (1953) in The Dreaming & Other Essays, ed. Robert Manne (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2009), 60.

¹⁰⁴Ward, Australian Legend, 211–12.

¹⁰⁵Ken Inglis, ‘Multiculturalism and National Identity’ in his Observing Australia 1959–1999, ed. Craig Wilcox (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 186–219; Graeme Davison, ‘National Identity’ in The Oxford Companion to Australian History, eds, Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), 456–58; John Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2010), 16–17.

¹⁰⁶Interview with Hazel de Berg, 21.

¹⁰⁷Russel Ward to Margaret Kiddle, 3 August 1955, Ward Papers, NLA Ms 7576/1/102.

¹⁰⁹Quoted in Peter Read, Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 113.

¹⁰⁸Compare Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (New York: Viking, 1976).

¹¹⁰ Age, 17 April 2008.