Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- At Sea with Mrs Meredith
- What Mr Meredith asked the Ship's Owner about Dick
- Mrs Meredith looks about her
- Mrs Meredith and Hobart Culture
- Mrs Meredith and Hunting
- Flora and Fossil
- Mrs Meredith goes a-Gypsying and enjoys a Barbecue
- The Merediths attend a Ceremony
- Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
- You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
- The Call of the Genes
- Dear Mrs Meredith
- Dear Mr Simpson
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
Dear Mrs Meredith
from To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- At Sea with Mrs Meredith
- What Mr Meredith asked the Ship's Owner about Dick
- Mrs Meredith looks about her
- Mrs Meredith and Hobart Culture
- Mrs Meredith and Hunting
- Flora and Fossil
- Mrs Meredith goes a-Gypsying and enjoys a Barbecue
- The Merediths attend a Ceremony
- Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
- You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
- The Call of the Genes
- Dear Mrs Meredith
- Dear Mr Simpson
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
Summary
Saying I admire your work may sound
a corny way of opening but it doesn't mean
it isn't true. In any case
I know it's something writers like to hear.
I envy your fortitude, doughtiness that comes
with the philosophy that Life's a trial,
World a testing place, taking it on the chin —
that chancy voyage for a start,
main and mizzen top masts down. Then
there's your rascally (I mean it politely)
good humour, that bit about the centipede
scuttling off with a railroad rapidity,
the common bush track which wet weather beat
to a tenacious batter-pudding consistency;
not tomention your downright curiosity,
water-colourist concern with how things look;
and wanting to be liberal, to believe
in Progress or in the thing called Good
which ignorance and idleness alone impede;
not least your (I think that I can safely say)
woman's way of dealing with the world …
Going about like Adam, though,
conferring names on flora, fauna, settlements,
I'm not so sure you understood as colonising,
locating power, legitimising sovereignty, even if
you were generous enough to think the more
euphonious native names, Wollondilly, Wollongong,
Wooloomooloo, Illawarra, Maneroo, preferable
to English ones with their unfair comparisons
between the great and old, the little and the new.
Some things you were blind to. They went
halloo-ing after Abos, those horseback gentlemen
and wielding of the cat was far more liberal,
dear Mrs M, than you could be. Just think,
those convicts’ leg-irons half your comfortable weight!
Doubtless you knew but had your loyalties to weigh?
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- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 19 - 20Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999