Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), from The Complete Poetical Works of Adam Lindsay Gordon, 1913. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Adam Lindsay Gordon (19 October 1833 - 24 June 1870) was an Australian poet, jockey, and politician.

Life

Overview

Gordon was born in the Azores, the son of an officer in the army. He went to Australia, where he had a varied career in connection with horses and riding, for which he had a passion. He betook himself to the Bush, got into financial trouble, and died by his own hand. In the main he derives his inspiration (as in the "Rhyme of Joyous Garde," and "Britomarte") from mediæval and English sources, not from his Australian surroundings. Among his books are Sea-spray and Smoke-drift (1867), Bush Ballads (containing "The Sick Stock-rider") (1870), Ashtaroth (1867). In many of his poems, e.g. "An Exile's Farewell," and "Whispering in the Wattle Boughs," there is a strong vein of sadness and pathos.

Youth

Gordon was born at Fayal in the Azores, son of Captain Adam Durnford Gordon who had married his first cousin, Harriet Gordon (both of whom were descended from Adam of Gordon of the ballad). Captain Gordon, who had retired from the Bengal cavalry and taught Hindustani, was then staying at the Azores for the sake of his wife's health. After living on the island of Madeira, they went to England and lived at Cheltenham in 1840.

Gordon was sent to Cheltenham College in 1841 when he was only 7, but after he had been there a year he was sent to a school kept by the Rev. Samuel Ollis Garrard in Gloucestershire. He attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1848, where he was a contemporary and friend of Charles George Gordon (no relation, later 'Gordon of Khartoum') and Thomas Bland Strange (later known as 'Gunner Jingo'). There Gordon appears to have been good at sports, but not studious and certainly undisciplined - and like Richard Henry Horne, he was asked to leave. Gordon was again admitted a pupil at Cheltenham College. He was not there for long - he appears to have left in the middle of 1852 - but the story that he was expelled from Cheltenham is without foundation. Then Gordon was sent to the Royal Grammar School Worcester in 1852. Gordon began to lead a wild and aimless life, contracted debts, and was a great anxiety to his father, who at last decided that his son should go to Australia and make a fresh start in 1853 to join the mounted police with a letter of introduction to the Governor.

Gordon was tall and handsome (see portrait prefixed to The Laureate of the Centaurs). But he stooped and held himself badly, partly on account of his short sight. He was shy, sensitive and, even before he was overwhelmed with troubles, inclined to be moody.

Gordon had fallen in love with Jane Bridges, a girl of 17 who was able to tell the story 60 years afterwards to his biographers. Gordon did not declare his love until he came to say good-bye to her before leaving for Australia on 7 August 1853. "With characteristic recklessness he offered to sacrifice the passage he had taken to Australia, and all his father's plans for giving him a fresh start in life, if she would tell him not to go, or promise to be his wife, or even give him some hope." This Miss Bridges could not do, though she liked the shy handsome boy and remembered him with affection to the end of a long life. It was the one romance of Gordon's life.

That Gordon realized his conduct had fallen much below what it might have been can be seen in his poems ... "To my Sister", written 3 days before he left England, and "Early Adieux", evidently written about the same time.

To Australia

Adam Lindsay Gordon Obelisk, Blue Lake, South Australia, 2011. Photo by C. Goodwin. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Gordon was just over 20 years old when he arrived at Adelaide on 14 November 1853. He immediately obtained a position in the South Australian mounted police and was stationed at Mount Gambier and Penola. On 4 November 1855 he resigned from the force and took up horse-breaking in the south-eastern district of South Australia. The interest in horse-racing which he had shown as a youth in England was continued in Australia, and in a letter written in November 1854 he mentioned that he had a horse for the steeplechase at the next meeting. In 1857 he met the Rev. Julian Tenison Woods who lent him books and talked poetry with him. He then had the reputation of being "a good steady lad and a splendid horseman". In this year his father died and he also lost his mother about two years later. From her estate he received £6944-18-1 on 26 October 1861. He was making a reputation as a rider over hurdles, and several times either won or was placed in local hurdle races and steeplechases.

On 20 October 1862 he married Margaret Park, then a girl of 17. In March 1864 Gordon bought a cottage, Dingley Dell, near Port MacDonnell, and, in this same year, inspired by six engravings after Noel Paton illustrating "The Dowie Dens O' Yarrow", Gordon wrote a poem The Feud, of which 30 copies were printed at Mount Gambier. On 11 January 1865 he received a deputation asking him to stand for parliament and was elected by 3 votes to the South Australian House of Assembly on 16 March 1865. In politics, Gordon was a maverick. His semi-classical speeches were colourful and entertaining but largely irrelevant, and he resigned his seat on 20 November 1866.

In July 1865 Gordon, performed the daring riding feat known as Gordon's Leap on the edge of the Blue Lake. A commemorative obelisk erected there has an inscription which reads: "This obelisk was erected as a memorial to the famous Australian poet. From near this spot in July, 1865 Gordon made his famed leap on horseback over an old post and rail guard fence onto a narrow ledge overlooking the Blue Lake and jumped back again onto the roadway. The foundation stone of the Gordon Memorial Obelisk was laid on 8th July 1887."

Gordon's time in politics stimulated him to greater activity - poetry, horse racing and speculation. He was contributing verse to the Australasian and Bell's Life in Victoria and doing a fair amount of riding. He bought some land in Western Australia, but returned from a visit to it early in 1867 and went to live at Mount Gambier. On 10 June 1867 he published Ashtaroth, a Dramatic Lyric, and on the nineteenth of the same month Sea Spray and Smoke Drift.

Move to Victoria

File:Melbourne Spring Street - Adam Lindsay Gordon Statue (1833-1870).jpg

Statue of Gordon by Paul Rafael Montford (1868-1938) in Spring Street, Melbourne. Photo by VirtualSteve, 2006. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

With his failures behind him, Gordon turned to Victoria, not to Melbourne which had ignored his poetry, but to Ballarat. In November he rented Craig's livery stables at Ballarat in partnership with Harry Mount, but he had no head for business and the venture was a failure. In March 1868 he had a serious accident, a horse smashing his head against a gatepost of his own yard. His daughter, born on 3 May 1867, died at the age of 11 months, his financial difficulties were increasing, and he fell into very low spirits.

In spite of short sight he was becoming very well known as a gentleman rider, and on 10 October 1868 actually won 3 races in one day at the Melbourne Hunt Club steeplechase meeting. He rode with great patience and judgment, but his want of good sight was always a handicap. He began riding for money but was not fortunate and had more than one serious fall. He sold his business and left Ballarat in October 1868 and came to Melbourne and eventually found lodgings at 10 Lewis Street, Brighton. He had succeeded in straightening his financial affairs and was more cheerful. He made a little money out of his racing and became a member of the Yorick Club, where he was friendly with Marcus Clarke, George Gordon McCrae, and a little later Henry Kendall. On 12 March 1870 Gordon had a bad fall while riding in a steeplechase at Flemington Racecourse. His head was injured and he never completely recovered.

Afterward he was never the same man again, and subsequent accidents aggravated his condition. Any suggestion that drink was a contributing cause may be disregarded. Sir Frank Madden, who was with him the day before his death, said that he was then absolutely sober, "he never cared for it [drink] and so far as I know seldom took it at all". The Rev. Tenison Woods in his "Personal Reminiscences" said "Those who did not know Gordon attributed his suicide to drink, but I repeat he was most temperate and disliked the company of drinking men".

He had for some time been endeavouring to show that he was heir to the estate of Esslemont in Scotland, but there was a flaw in the entail, and in June he learnt that his claim must be abandoned. He had seen his last book, Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes, through the press, and it was published on 23 June 1870; it was not successful at the time, but is now regarded as one of the most important pieces of Australian literature. Gordon on that day met Kendall who showed him the proof of the favourable review he had written for the Australasian. But Gordon had just asked his publishers what he owed them for printing the book, and realized that he had no money to pay them and no prospects. He went home to his cottage at 10 Lewis Street Brighton, carrying a package of cartridges for his rifle. Next morning he rose early, walked into the tea-tree scrub and shot himself. His wife went back to South Australia, married Peter Low, and lived until November 1919.

Writing

Gordon's death drew much attention to his work and especially in Melbourne the appreciation of it became overdone. This led to a revulsion of feeling among better judges and for a time it was underrated in some quarters. George Bernard Shaw jokes about Gordon's verse in his play Shakes versus Shav, a dialogue between Shakespeare and himself during which Shakespeare laughs at a line attributed to Gordon. Much of his verse is careless and banal, there are passages in Ashtaroth for instance that are almost unbelievably bad, but at his best he is a poet of importance, who on occasions wrote some magnificent lines. Douglas Sladen, a life-long admirer, in his Adam Lindsay Gordon, The Westminster Abbey Memorial Volume has made a selection of 27 poems which occupy about 90 pages. Without subscribing to every poem selected it may be said that Gordon is most adequately represented in a sheaf of this kind. His most sustained effort, the "Rhyme of Joyous Garde", has some glorious stanzas, and on it and some 20 other poems Gordon's fame may be allowed to rest.

Critical introduction

by Thomas Humphry Ward

Adam Lindsay Gordon was the son of that Captain Adam Durnford Gordon who, having served well in India, became ultimately Professor of Hindustani in Cheltenham College, where the boy went for a time; he was afterwards at Woolwich, but obtained no commission. He seems to have spent much of his time with boxers and horse-trainers.

In 1853 he was sent out to Australia; a poem written to his sister shows that he knew that he went in disgrace, but that his "stubborn pride" did not quail before the future. The poem "Whisperings in Wattle-boughs" ... shows that in his exile he was often tormented by remorseful thoughts of those he had left behind. In Australia he entered the Police as a constable; he stayed in the force two years, making a name meanwhile as a steeplechase rider. After 1855 he became famous in that capacity, but in 1862 he married one Maggie Park, who had nursed him after a fall; in 1864 he inherited £7,000 and entered the South Australian Parliament, till having spent his money he retired and opened a livery stable at Ballarat. The mysterious thing about him is that during his riotous youth, and during these ten years among horses and horsemen in Australia, he picked up a good knowledge of Latin, Greek, and French literature.

The next five years were divided between steeplechasing and poetry; in one day at Melbourne (1868) he won 3 races, and just about the same time he wrote his Song of Autumn and The Sick Stockrider. Then in an evil day he laid claim to a great estate (Esslemont) in Scotland, believing himself to be head of his branch of the Gordon family. In June, 1870, he learnt that his application had failed; he was pressed for money, and he had not recovered from the effects of a bad fall. So he sent to the press his volume of Bush Ballads and quietly shot himself.

Unfortunately, too, a friend obeyed too literally the instructions in a letter from Gordon, and burnt a whole trunkful of his manuscripts, verse and prose; so that all that remains of his writing is the two small volumes which, in the country that he had made his own, gained and kept for him the name and fame of the Australian Poet. A book on Adam Lindsay Gordon and his Friends has been written by Mr. Douglas Sladen, who has also issued the Poems in a little volume (Constable & Co., 1912).

Gordon’s literary models were Byron and, after 1865, Swinburne; but his extraordinary verbal memory enabled him to remember by heart whole pages of other poets, from Horace to Macaulay and Browning. Yet none can call him an imitator, except perhaps of Swinburne. His miscellaneous poems and songs are original, though the feeling they express is common to many in all lands. His bush poems and his riding verses are the free and spirited outcome of his own experience, and form an unrivalled picture of the Australia of fifty years ago, and of the passions and interests that animated the makers of a new country.

Recognition

Adam Lindsay Gordon monument in Melbourne, by Paul Rafael Montford. Photo by Virtual Steve. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

One of Gordon's poems, "The Swimmer", forms the libretto for the 5th movement of Edward Elgar's song cycle, Sea Pictures. Elgar also set to music another of his poems, "A Song of Autumn".

A memorial bust of Gordon was unveiled on 11 May 1934 in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

In her Christmas Message of 1992, after a particularly trying year for the Royal Family, Elizabeth II quoted from one of Gordon's more famous poems ("Kindness in another's trouble, courage in one's own.."), but did not mention the poet's name.

Dingley Dell, Gordon's property and home from 1862 to 1866, is preserved as a museum and a conservation park. The museum houses early volumes of his work, personal effects and a display of his horse riding equipment.

In 1970 he was honoured on a postage stamp bearing his portrait issued by Australia Post.[1].

Publications

Poetry

• The Feud: A ballad. Mount Gambler, SA: Laurie, Watson, & Laurie, 1864.
• Sea Spray and Smoke Drift. Melbourne: George Robertson, 1867.
• Ashtaroth: A dramatic lyric. Melbourne: Clarson, Massina / Sydney: Gibbs, Shallard, 1867.
• Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes. Melbourne: Clarson, Massina, 1870.
• Poems. Melbourne: A.H. Massina / London: Samuel Mullen, 1880.
• Poems. Melbourne: A.H. Massina and Co., 1893. London: R.A. Thompson, 1894.
• Racing Rhymes, and other verses (selected by T.O. Guen). New York: R.H. Russell, 1901.
• Poems. London & Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1912.
• Poems: Including several never before printed (edited by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen). London: Constable, 1912.
• Poems (edited by Frank Maldon Robb). London& Oxford, UK: H. Frowde / Oxford University Press, 1912.
  • Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1946.
• Poetical Works. London: Ward Lock, 1913.
• Sporting Verse. London: Constable, 1927; New York: Scribner's, 1927.
• Australian Poems (edited by Charles R. Long). Melbourne & Aukland, NZ: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1933.
• The Laureate of the Centaurs. Melbourne: Gordon Memorial Committee, 1936.
• Bushland Ballads and Galloping Rhymes. Adelaide: Rigby. 1975. 
• Selected Poems. London & Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1979.

Collected editions

• Reminiscences and Unpublished Poems (illustrated by John A. Cummins). Sydney: Somerset, 1894.

Letters

The last letters, 1868-1870: Adam Lindsay Gordon to John Riddoch (edited by Hugh Anderson). Melbourne: Hawthorne Press, 1970.

Other

• The Lindsay Gordon Birthday Book. London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock, 1914.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

A Song of Autumn - Adam Lindsay Gordon

• List of Australian poets

References

• Dingley Dell, home of Adam Lindsay Gordon. Department for the Environment. 1978. ISBN 0-7243-5431-X. 
• Hutton, Geoffrey (1978). Adam Lindsay Gordon - The Man and the Myth. London: Faber & Faber. 
• Kramer, Leonie, 'Gordon, Adam Lindsay (1833-1870)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4, MUP, 1972, pp 267-269. Retrieved on 24 December 2008.
• Serle, Percival (1949). "Gordon, Adam Lindsay". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogG.html#gordon1. Retrieved 2008-12-24. * Brian Robinson (ed) (1973). Adam Lindsay Gordon. Melbourne: Sun Books. 
• Sladen, Douglas (ed.), The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, London, Constable & Co., 1912
• This article incorporates public domain text from : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, Dent; New York, Dutton.

External links

Poems

• Gordon in The English Poets: An anthology: "The Sick Stockrider," "How We Beat the Favourite," "Whisperings in Wattle-Boughs"
• Gordon in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "{http://www.bartleby.com/246/1174.html How We Beat the Favourite]," "The Sick Stock-Rider," "Valedictory"
• Gordon, Adam Lindsay (15 poems) at Representative Poetry Online.
• Adam Lindsay Gordon at PoemHunter (68 poems)
• Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–1870) in the Australian Poetry Library (76 poems)
• Adam Lindsay Gordon at Poetry Nook (126 poems)

Books

• Works by Adam Lindsay Gordon at Project Gutenberg

Audio / video

• Adam Lindsay Gordon poems at YouTube
• Adam Lindsay Gordon at LibriVox

About

• Adam Lindsay Gordon in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Gordon, Adam Lindsay (1833–1870) in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
• Adam Lindsay Gordon Commemorative Committee Inc. Official website.
• Adam Lindsay Gordon in the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature.
• Adam Lindsay Gordon in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-1921).
• A. (Adam) Lindsay Gordon (1833-70), Brighton Cemetery.

Etc.

• Dingley Dell Cottage and Museum at Port MacDonnell, SA