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Cookson: The Sun, Sunday, August 27 1911.
-The Outlaw's Mother August
27, 1911 matter how strongly facts and inferences may point one way in an event or a controversy-there is always something that may be said for the other side; then, even at this late hour, and after a lapse of 32 years, it may not be amiss to present something of the as yet unheard side of one of Australia's greatest tragedies. It is now 32 years since four men, whom strong sympathy in mutually adverse circumstances had brought together in a common bond of adversity, conceived the desperate resolve of defying law and authority, and of giving full vent, whithersoever that which was evil in their nature might lead them, to individual qualities that, directed in legitimate channels, might have made them most useful and excellent citizens. For 32 years the names of Ned Kelly, Dan Kelly, Steve Hart, and Joe Byrne have been execrated by the whole people of Australia, who have become used, by long and unchallenged custom following upon universal popular condemnation at the time, to regard those names as synonymous with everything that was vile and bad-as designating, in fact, a quartet of monsters whose abnormally vicious and criminal natures were devoid of even the suggestion of one small redeeming quality. With that dreadful verdict of popular execration passed upon them, and their works in the course of their two years' outlawry, the members of the notorious Kelly gang of bushrangers went to their doom. They are all dead, long agone. And if there were no other participants in that doom than the misguided men themselves nothing more need be said. They transgressed, and they paid the inevitable penalty. They defied the law-but succumbed to it in the end. Their many big crimes and minor transgressions they have most fully expiated. In their case the supreme majesty of the law has been vindicated. The dignity of the authority that they defied has been re-established. Which is all right, and proper, and quite as it should be. But though nothing material is to be gained now as far as the outlaws themselves are concerned by opening up the question of their defence, so to speak-though it may not be worth while to attempt any vindication of the conduct for which these men have died-there still remain other considerations which, to an unbiassed mind, must weigh mightily in the discussion of any suggestion for hearing the other side. Because there are many people still living-some of them long ago believed to have been dead-who are yet suffering the consequences of the misdeeds of the Kellys and their associates. And most of these people are putting up brave fights in the endeavor to live down the opprobrium that has become attached-by conformity to popular prejudice and thereafter to custom-to the memories of the outlaws themselves and the names of all who were associated with them, no matter how remotely. Justice has been meted out to the dead. Justice owes it to the living to discover what there is that may be said in the defence of the outlaws. For it is not to be supposed that men possessed of such courage and resource, men animated so strongly by mutual loyalty and devotion to themselves and their people, should be destitute of all that was good or commendable. Atrocious as their misdeeds may be called, these bold bushrangers were in many ways men. They were by no means all bad, nor were they without provocation in the matter of the initial step from which all their subsequent crimes must be counted-that one false step that spoilt their lives and brought undying infamy upon their names. Time may be when these names will be canonised in the heart of Australian boyhood. For the English people dearly love a bold and successful robber, have he anything of chivalry or courtesy about him. But in the meantime let that which may be said in the favor of these notorious outlaws, and for the amelioration of the unhappy lot of those who were principally associated with them in their outlawry and its punishment, be said.
THE OUTLAW'S MOTHER.
two men fared slowly and damply in a small two-wheeled vehicle along a partly submerged road in the vicinity of Glenrowan-scene of the historic and tragic smashing of the most bold and most widely feared gang of bushrangers that have ever shed the lurid light of violent crime upon the history of this Commonwealth. Rain had been falling incessantly for weeks. The entire countryside was under water. In the towns the streets-and many of the houses-were flooded. In the bush, all was thick, chilling wetness. The lofty crests of the towering ranges were shrouded in thick mists-had been so for long. In the foothills the pelting rain whistled mournful dirges amongst the thick and sad-colored foliage. It was colder in the open country, and the deluge here seemed even more pitiless than amongst the timber. For here the atmosphere was indeed "a nipping and an eager air." And the keen wind found out the weak places in the drenched clothing of the travellers and took all advantage thereof. It was in no sort an agreeable excursion-rather one of the most dismal that could be imagined this side of the Styx. But the wayfarers plodding slowly and grievously discouraged through the deluge, had started on their long drive with a fixed objective whose present attainment certain exigencies of time and business made imperative. So they drove steadily on, through muddy lagoons, through artificial cataracts where the road descended from some cutting in a rise, splashing along over wide areas of water that would have been much easier of negotiation in a boat. And at the end of a long and wet and wearisome journey they found the hut of the farmer they were after, only to discover that he was not at home. No; his good helpmeet could not say when he would be at home. He had gone away a morning or two before, in the unostentatious, purely casual manner in which the brotherhood of the bush are accustomed to fare forth upon their expeditions. And that was all that the lady knew. She expressed a personal opinion, as she chased out a small black porker that had joined the family circle at the fireplace-end of the hut, that her husband would be found ploughing at another farmer's place, miles away. But she was not sure. Nothing is ever sure in the bush-nothing, that is, concerning the movements of its human denizens. It was, of course, all very annoying-such a long, wet, dismal pilgrimage for no purpose. But the lady was by no means sorry for the diversion provided by the visit. She had few amusements, and in the lonely places of this vast continent-places where the next neighbor is perhaps a Sabbath day's journey away-any diversion is welcome; which possibly accounts for the toleration by the white people of the bush of that rascally and dangerous nuisance, the alien hawker. It was warm in the hut, for the fireplace occupied the whole of one end of it, and the fire was in proportion. Squatting before it on the hard clay floor were several sturdy youngsters and various domestic animals-and birds. The furniture was scant and crude. But the hostess made tea and showed with pride her collection of faded photos, and other treasures carefully preserved to brighten somewhat the general dulness of the bush life to which she had sacrificed herself. And she was outspokenly sorry when the strangers left. They also were sorry to leave; for it was warm and dry in the big hut, and it was cheerful, too; and before the travellers lay many wet and chilly miles yet to be traversed.
THE KELLY'S PRESENT HOME.
heavens opened and the wetness thereof came down in blinding sheets, shutting out of sight everything beyond a few yards away. And after a mile or two of this the wayfarers decided to seek shelter and defer their home journey till some break in the downpour should occur. Three miles further on they came to a slip-rail. Above it, on a gentle slope, stood a small cottage, fenced, and with some pretence at a garden about it. One does not stand on ceremony in the bush, and before long the travellers were calling loudly to the people in the cottage to come and say "good-day." They came at length, and a queerly assorted group they made. Two rosy-cheeked children and a well-favored girl of 14 summers-these were the first to run into the large living-room to inspect the strangers come thus unexpectedly within their gate. After them came, less quickly, one whose appearance at once commanded the undivided attention of the visitors. An ancient woman, of aspect so forlorn as to suggest most strongly a life not only devoid of hope for the future, but weighed down with some great, overpowering sorrow of the past. Her frame was spare and poorly clad; the wrists and hands were as scant of flesh as the talons of an eagle; the thin shoulders, stooping with the weight of years and of life-long tragedy, giving but feeble support to a head upon which the freckled skin was drawn as tight as parchment upon a drum. The thin, wane face was almost devoid of expression-save that one of hopeless grief and despair that was frozen upon it. But there was expression in the eyes. Weak with age as they were they did not altogether conform to the dull immobility of the hard-drawn face. At sight of the visitors they brightened up suddenly, and it was not difficult to see that they reflected as much apprehension as curiosity concerning the purport of the intrusion. There could be no mistaking it-these were the eyes of one who had lived long and suffered much amidst dangers, grievous and sustained. And not less than of apprehension their strange, hunted expression spoke of distrust, no doubt habitual, of all visitors, be their business what it might-nay, of all strangers whomsoever. For a brief space the crone stood tremblingly at the rough board table, regarding the visitors with such obvious anxiety as to be perceived by the children. "These gentlemen want to come in out of the rain, for a while, Granny," spoke the eldest of the three children, reassuringly. "One of them has come all the way from Sydney to see Mr.----, and he's not home, and they're as wet as anything, and cold." "From Sydney?" murmured the ancient woman, and the words seemed to leave her in a whisper.
"DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!"
Sydney newspaper-"The Sun"-concerning a report that two members of the Kelly gang-Dan Kelly and Steve Hart-popularly supposed to have perished in the great and final tragedy at the Glenrowan Hotel, had been seen alive and well in South Africa and elsewhere. The old woman started violently. "What!" she cried tremblingly. "Dan not dead! No! It's a lie." And the aged head was bowed upon a meagre breast. "It's a lie, she murmured. "Dan is not alive. Dan is dead-dead-dead. What!" she exclaimed, clutching at the rough table for support, "don't I know that he's dead? Haven't I proof of it all these weary years? Do you think I don't know? I tell you Dan's dead and gone, many years ago." "But," the visitor from Sydney put in sympathetically, "these proofs-you say you have proofs-what are they-what do you know about these people?" The old woman's stern, gaunt face had become once more impassive in its pitiful expression of frozen despair. She was looking out of doors-out to where the rain was still steadily drenching the half-flooded countryside-gazing, with the rapt air of one beholds a vision afar off, at something invisible to all save her. Then she spoke, slowly and abstractedly. "Dan is dead. No one knows it better than I do. Yes; I have the proof. Look!"-and she turned to "The Sun" representative, and in a voice that, though feeble, was almost a scream, exclaimed:- "If Dan Kelly was alive all these years, wouldn't he have come to me? Would he let me want and go hungry, as I have done? Would he have seen me ending my life in this misery and done nothing to help me? Wouldn't he have told Jim?"-and she paused for breath, exhausted for the time. "But who is Jim?" "Why, Jim Kelly; the man who owns this place, and the bravest, noblest son a woman could have. I wish Jim was here. He'd tell you. No! They can say what they like! Dan is dead; and that's the end of it." "Then, in the name of all that is astonishing, who are you, madam?" inquired the surprised
pressman. thought you knew," she said slowly, and with something of apologetic sadness in her expression. "I'm Dan Kelly's mother! Dan was my son, and Ned was my son, and Jim is my son-dear, good, kind Jim. And I have only him left." Tears welled into the weary old eyes and trickled down the parchment-like cheeks. "You didn't know Dan," she went on slowly. "If you'd known Dan you'd never come here to find out if he was alive. You'd know, as I know, that he'd have come to me if he wasn't dead. God rest him!" And the grief-worn, broken-hearted mother wept aloud. This, then, was the key of the mystery that lay behind that frozen expression of hopeless sorrow! No need to speculate further upon the cause of the woe with which this life has been haunted. Idle now to wonder how any human face could express in such direful delineament a despair that could scarcely be imagined out of Hades. For the woman who wore that piteous aspect of irredeemable grief had endured more than most women could suffer of long-sustained anguish of mind and body. She had seen her own and her children's lives blasted. She had seen those children, the pride and delight of her mother's heart, hunted like wild animals by men with weapons, intent upon their destruction. She had shared in their dangers, risked life and liberty to help them, had come to live, like them, for weary years, in daily terror of retributive disaster. And she had outlived the fate of one son, done to death by bullet and flame, and that of another-the idol of them all-perishing miserably at the hands of the common hangman! Small wonder that such a mother should spend the closing years of her life in deep and settled melancholy. Leaving out of the question the squalor and discomfort of her lonely surroundings, there was anguish enough in the grim memories of her extraordinary sufferings to bear a less brave and hardy woman to the grave. interest the mother of those desperate men, the fame of whose exploits has rung throughout the world, and whose names will be remembered in Australia long after all recollection of much better men has passed. Here was the woman who had suckled and caressed, as an innocent baby, the chieftain of that gang of desperadoes that for a long time held all Law and Administration at bold defiance, and laughed so long and successfully at Authority that people at length began to wonder whether or not the social system were not at serious fault. These withered arms and talon-like hands had drawn to a mother's bosom men whose names afterwards became a terror throughout two States! This shrivelled face, with its petrified aspect of grim despair, had been proudly pressed in the fresh bloom of youthful motherhood, against the baby faces of men who had since outraged almost all the laws of the community, and who had long ago perished miserably, like wild beasts, in expiation of their crimes. They are dead. But she who brought them into the world and who for long, dreadful years, suffered and wept for them and their grave misdeeds, she has been spared-spared to a life that is but a living death, bowed down in agonising memories, and quite devoid of hope. It is all very strange-and very, very sad, as well. But the old woman remembers what is required of her as hostess. So she begs her visitors draw near the fire and enjoy the warmth of the blazing logs. It is the ordinary bush fireplace, occupying one end of the living-room. Some food is in process of preparation in a kerosene tin that swings over the blaze. The children come round the fire, too. But the conversation is not brisk. It begins with the weather-and threatens to end there, because the aged woman whose identity has just been so surprisingly revealed is not at her ease. She cannot forget the dismal associations that have darkened her life and made wretched its closing hours; and she does not know, it appears, what attitude her visitors may take towards one who had had such a big part in coloring crimson a whole chapter in Australian history. She seems to expect coldness, if not contumely, and to be in no way surprised in the expectation. So she sits silently on a crazy chair at the far corner of the big, broad hearth, fondling the youngest of the children, and gazing with unseeing eyes into the blaze of the big fire, what time the visitors warm themselves pleasantly and discuss many uninteresting topics in a dull and preoccupied fashion. But it is not long before the outlaws' mother is able to realise that the intruders at her hearth wish to show her nothing but kindness. And presently her reserve gradually melts, and her tongue begins to get used to the unwonted exercise of narrative. She has much to tell-much more than there is space for the telling. And her hearers encourage her as they find occasion or opportunity. Naturally, for she was very old, the story of her life, as she tells it, is fragmentary and incomplete. There is such a very great deal that she could not remember, she explained. In a life, so full of big happenings, naturally a vast number of small ones would be overlooked or forgotten. |
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