Author’s short life as colourful as his novels
Marcus Clarke was one of those writers whose life was a succession of stories in itself.
He was born in London on April 24, 1846. At 16 his father, a barrister, fell ill, lost the power of speech, and died in an asylum. Clarke had expected to inherit £70,000, but the money had vanished.
He was sent to Australia where his uncle was a judge in Victoria. Clarke was found a job in a bank, then worked on a sheep station for a few years before he returned to
Melbourne to work as a journalist with The Argus newspaper and the weekly, The Australasian.
But when he wrote a review of a concert that, unknown to him, the singer had cancelled through illness, he lost his job.
Then when the Argus and the Age boycotted the Melbourne Cup over a dispute about free tickets, he wrote a report of it for the Herald, allegedly obtained by camera obscura. It read like something out of a novel. It was. Clarke had recycled an account of a race from his first novel, Long Odds.
The Café de Paris was one of his favourite hangouts. It became the fashionable place for theatre people and journalists.
In 1868 Clarke helped establish the Bohemian and literary Yorick Club.
He married Marian Dunn, daughter of Irish actor John Dunn, in 1869. A popular actor before her marriage, 11 years later she was back on stage to help out with the family cash crisis. In 1870 Clarke was writing the serial of His Natural
Life, short stories, and Old Tales Of A Young Country. His great novel of the convict system, His Natural Life, brought him fame, but not fortune. In 1874, the year it was published in book form, he was declared bankrupt.
Seen drinking absinthe, Clarke was asked if he liked it. “Not particularly, but I’m experimenting with it. They say it’ll drive a fellow mad in a month and I want to find out if that’s a fact. I’ve tried opiumsmoking, and rather like that.”
Eventually he became sick
with pleurisy which led to liver failure.
He died on August 2, 1881, aged 35, and left a wife and six children, the eldest aged only 11.