'The bitter bread of banishment' (Henry Savery)

‘THE BITTER BREAD OF BANISHMENT’ (Henry Savery) Henry Savery (1791-1842) is the author of the first novel written on Australian soil, Quintus Serviton (1830-1). Only three copies are known to exist today. In his last years he bought a farm, was permitted one or two assigned servants and granted a conditional pardon. Again he fell into debt and forged bills to repay money owed. He was sent to Port Arthur, where he died on February 6, 1842.

I am tried relentlessly but can endure no longer. O how I have tasted of the lees of affliction! My mind sundered adrift by stormy blasts and wavering tempest-tossed. I bow my close-shorn head, shackled in despair. Our nuptial bond has fallen apart. I am judged a double convict in two distant lands.

Yes, I flew too close to the sun when I was serving my apprenticeship in the business of sugar refining in Bristol. When I was given charge of the account-books, temptation for easy money was too much. Just quietly, I learned how to counterfeit bills. I was ever a good learner.

Shamed to say, foraging among trustees’ signatures I did indeed forge my way, till I was found out and declared bankrupt at the Commercial Rooms. With debts weighing a millstone round my neck, what else could I do but plead guilty upon the advice of the magistrate? As a consequence, I can speak nothing but ill of such testy, unforgiving men and the straitjacket of the law, for I was condemned to death for telling the truth. Where in the name of God Almighty is the meed of justice?

Flying up in a passion of anger, I vowed to flee to America. Alas, without more ado, I took leave of my aggrieved wife Eliza, who shed such bitter tears. ‘Why are you abandoning us?’ she wailed, bunching up folds of her apron with angry fists. Even more miserable was the pitiful sight of my young son Henry, who fell a-whimpering for his mother, bewildered by the whole scene, which occasioned such dreadful panic within me. Yet to save my own skin, I felt obliged to cut my cable and flee to a new world. With that in mind, I set forth on the scrounge in a south-easterly direction toward the south downs and island of Wight. There, moored alongside the docks of Cowes, I espied a likely ship bound for my Promised Land, the Hudson, which was victualled up and ready to raise anchor. I sneaked aboard and hid close of the gangway, a runaway both hunted and haunted. Liberty at last, I reckoned! And breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Yet within a mere half-hour of setting sail, alarm bells rang in my ears!

I well nigh fainted. The watchies had recognised me! In urgent need of jumping overboard, I went a-floundering with heaving desperation before they hauled me aboard, a captive once more. I freely admitted guilt, but for why? Godamercy, I was sentenced to hang even so!

Which shook the very ghost into me. Taken into custody a second

time, I fell into a pit of such despondency and despair that I leapt over the side for the mercy of Davy Jones’s chest-lid. Splashing around in a frenzy of anger and frustration, I fell to dashing my head against the bulwarks. I knew not what to do but hope to drown.

My mind blacked out for some while, so when I recovered my wits I sensed that a gang of tars and watchies must have snitched me from the water’s icy grip, for I knew not how to swim. What I do remember clearly was my second appearance at Bristol assizes. There I pleaded guilty, for I had in mind before me the example of one Henry Fauntleroy, a London banker turned forger of signatures. Trust funds, to be more particular. Such documents provided for him a life of lust and luxury. When I learned that he was strung up on a gibbet, notwithstanding his admission of guilt and presenting favourable references from supporters, I suffered fits of the shakes, mortified by anguish and shame. What hopes!

As matters turned out, my own judgement was commuted on the very day appointed on what should have been my final shaming on Tyburn tree. Lo and behold, with the fear of death upon me, transportation suddenly beckoned! I was saved from ignominy! But no, my hopes were soon dashed, as I realised the significance of such a foolish venture that signified a fate worse than death! Anyways, I was destined never to clap eyes on my jewel of a wife, Eliza and young Henry ever again! Or so I thought.

I cannot describe the terrors of that endless sea voyage on the Medway.

Fogged in mind, panic even, wavering between steepling swells of crested combers and plunging into yawning troughs, hearts heaved into mouths parched dry, bodies flung and bruised battened down. Finally, after six long months, one hundred and seventy-three of us soaked, weary wretches scarred with stripes fetched up at Hobart Town in December, 1825.

Thanks to my schooling and manner of speaking, I was promptly given work as clerk in the office of the colonial secretary, situated next to the colonial treasurer.

So there you have it: my life ‘s course has lurched from the press of business to press man with the Hobart Mercury, from Bristol sugar refinery to the refinement of language in this new south land. ‘Tis my misfortune to have fallen in with a rum mob of felons . . . fallen ones.

Leastwise, my own tongue is not defiled. I speak of pounds and pence as money or currency, not ‘blunt’. Indeed, I was marked a Sterling gentleman convict, now a servant of the Crown, not an incorrigible, nut-brown Currency lag working in irons. I was assigned to the colonial treasurer, on account of knowing my letters as an educated man from a grammar school, not an eddicated sharper from the school of hard knocks. So became a scribbler in confidential affairs of government, albeit under the guise of the assumed name of Simon

Stukely. As such, I authored Sketches of Hobart Life under the title of The Hermit in Van Dieman’s Land.

O my god, how I have I paid in those sketches for my barbs against that durned tyrant, Governor Arthur and his cronies, who call me out for a Grub Street hack. But I yearned to cut a shine, a figure true to life, not mere flights of fancy. My moral tale Quintus Serviton is novel, but not fiction, for books are moral maps of human kind. Hence it is a tale drawn close to mine own life, a story unfettered. I use no flash tongue, nor vulgar cant. Fiction I saved for my account-books, fictitious bills and counterfeit signatures . . .

My dear wife Eliza, mine own angel, stayed steadfast and three years after my taking leave, in 1828, she rejoined me in Tasmania. O sweet heaven, what a flutter of excitement our reunion! Mercifully, she too had escaped drowning from the wreck of the Jessie Lawson just off the English coast, so was obliged to delay a further three months before acquiring a berth on the Henry Wellesley with young Henry.

Our love re-kindled and flamed – but all too briefly snuffed! Alas, it was scarcely a week before I was hearing whispers, such hideous rumours that inflamed my attempt at suicide. I sensed I was riding for a heavy fall, a chilling sickness in my breast, when I myself was witness to Eliza, like some fancy-piece, hanging on the arm of the newly appointed attorney-general, Algernon Montagu, a pompous popinjay, who had accompanied her as a kind of avowed protector on the five-month voyage out and was clearly posturing to win her favour.

No doubt, he had smudged after her. Was my wife quaffing with that durned magistrate? Aye, too right she was and is, that scurvy scoundrel who hazes me before my own wife! What say you to his breach of trust, this Janus? Such a breach was insupportable, unbearable, utterly dishonourable. O god, where is my deliverance?

A week after the arrival of my tarnished jewel, I vowed to cut my throat but was thrown into prison for my pains. In a solitary lock-up, I was obliged to weigh my faults and follies.

Before her departure three months later, early in 1829, Eliza expressed her sorrows. I was no longer the man she remembered and loved.

‘Why are you still waiting for your ticket-of-leave?’ she protested.

‘After all these years. Even now your destiny is prison-bound. For how long, may I ask? And you’re still running up debts!’

I confess I felt myself unworthy of her, but when a few months later I was handed my ticket-of–leave, I hastened to make amends and applied for Eliza to be brought out again. Alas, I never received any word of reply, not a jot. I was heart-broken.

Fortune did seem to smile upon me once. Now I bow my close-shorn head in grief. The blade of shame cuts me to the quick. The avocation of authoring is my solitary relief.

At last I am making a start on my octavo. At least, I have a title: Quintus Serviton. A story unfettered.

To my great surprise, nay, to my great comfort, my mind’s eye eagerly conjures the picturesque landscape of south Devon, wherein a valley, a river gliding through pastures green and fertile, sometimes soggy; winding past rocky cliffs and stands of oak in ancient woodland or shadowing tufted knolls above the narrow pathway; owls tooting in the eerie recesses of the antiquated church and woodpeckers chattering around the old forge relic in the centre of the village; cottages with tall chimney stacks rising from deep brown helmets of thatch sweeping down in a curve head-high nestle behind wicket gates, while honeysuckle and red roses ramble up and along the grey stonework.

And yet the joy of memory sours in silent tears. The sylvan God of this ancient English landscape has a melancholy brow that wrings my heart, like the round of gunshots that brings a tumble of plump pheasants crashing down at the gamekeeper’s feet on a ground of hazel and holly.

Michael Small May 31-July 5, 2018