True History of the Kelly Gang
From the title alone, Victoria-born writer Peter Carey’s seminal novel is casting a false trail; the act of documenting the ‘truth’, the fact, of the Kelly Gang’s origins and then the clan’s eventual downfall is left to the titular outlaw as he delineates his life to his then unborn — and fictional — daughter. Therefore, the truth of the story’s telling is, evidently, one of questionable biased. Beyond this, while written by the hand of Carey’s Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly the letters are collated by another’s: indeed, the epistolary form is an amalgam of thirteen parcels, charting Kelly’s life from his impoverished childhood in rural Avenel, Victoria, to his gang’s last stand in the siege of Glenrowan. However, Kelly is not the only narrator of the novel: to begin with, and serving as a prologue to Kelly’s testimony, there is an ‘undated, unsigned, handwritten account’ of the Glenrowan siege, on June 28th 1880 and then, as an epilogue, there is a ’12 page pamphlet’ accounting both the siege and Kelly’s execution, signed only with ‘the initials S.C.’. By bookending Kelly’s correspondences with testimonies written, either, by eyewitnesses or from the accounts of eyewitnesses, Carey formulates more than a mere autobiography, but, as the title suggest, a ‘history’ of Kelly himself. When amalgamating the parcels and the accounts, Carey has produced a memoir of Kelly from the hand of the outlaw himself and from those who were witnesses to his exploits, and yet Carey leaves the truth as something sort after rather than gained.
Despite Kelly’s pursuit of delineating his truth to the Australian public, Carey openly conveys such an endeavour as futile: the contents itself alone presents an evident detachment from Carey’s titular narrator and his perspective of the History of the Gang and the validity of his accounts; for instance, eight of the thirteen parcels begin with the third person pronoun ‘His’, as opposed to the expected ‘My’. It is a minor note which details the simple fact of the composition of Carey’s novel: the manuscript has been organised and arranged by an unknown editor. Prefacing each parcel is an inventory list, an evidence log, of what each contains, detailing the size of the page to the makeshift quality of Kelly’s correspondences. Beneath each is a concise summary of what Kelly discusses, as though the summary permits the reader a key by which to navigate each parcel. Again, the author is uncredited. Subsequently, and while written by Carey’s Kelly, the manuscript has been pieced together by another, and so a simple question is asked before the novel’s first sentence and again at the start of each chapter: whose history are we reading? This question, is to an extent, the irony of the title: despite asserting the truth, no single history may hold authority of another. Carey’s penchant for heteroglossia —the act of including multiple speakers to narrate a single story — within the work, lines the novel with an underlying sense of ambiguity: not only are we reading Carey’s fictional version of Kelly, but we are also hearing from multiple speakers. It is a muddying, if you will, which is noted within the final parcel of Kelly’s manuscript by the obsequious schoolteacher Thomas Curnow when he declares that history ‘should always be a little rough that way we know it is the truth’ and Carey himself seems to be a proponent of the tutor’s aphorism. It is point which is confirmed before the novel begins with the contents page reading as though a biography, and so, immediately, the author of Kelly’s often ebullient prose is, as is typical with historical accounts, often called into question.
As noted, the novel begins with an undated, unsigned, handwritten account’ of the Glenrowan siege, with Kelly initially subsumed by his own myth, ‘a creature’ with ‘nothing human’ about him. Here, within the eyewitness’s account, Kelly is seen as a hulking beast in his final stand against the Victoria authorities, reduced to the status of ‘it’. Indeed, Carey’s inclusion of the eyewitness testimony as a prologue serves to establish the mythical status of the ‘figure’ of Kelly, before dismantling it entirely to expose a simple scene: a father writing a letter to his then-unborn daughter. The myth encases Kelly within the account like the plates of his makeshift armour which, inevitably, came to define him. From this initial meeting with Kelly, arguably the most infamous encounter of the Gang, Carey then draws the narrative to the boon of ‘thirteen parcels of stained and dog-eared papers’ (48) which, once ordered by either Thomas Curnow or a descendent of his, formulate the narrative of Carey’s ‘history’ of Kelly. Ultimately, however, and while known in infamy as a notorious outlaw, a ‘horse-thief and murderer’ (418) no less, Kelly is portrayed, by Carey, as a father first and foremost, and is one desperate not to ‘lose’(384) his daughter in the silent intimacy between them and the furious dirge surrounding his name. From Kelly’s perspective as a father ‘the creature’ and ‘wild beast’ arrested at the siege is shown to be a portrayal foisted upon Kelly rather than an accurate distillation of his character. In truth, Carey’s persona of Kelly is one far removed from that of those who hunted the infamous bushranger, and is one which is created, paradoxically, by the outlaw’s fictionalised correspondences. The felon’s adept skill as a writer is surprisingly shown to be his defining, and most human, attribute.
Kelly’s voice is one deftly executed by Carey; from the opening line alone, Carey portrays Kelly’s endeavour to record his testimony as one, rather ironically, tethered to delineating the truth from the myth of his escapades for his daughter:
I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.
God willing I shall live to see you read these words, to witness your astonishment and see your dark eyes widen and your jaw drop when you finally comprehend the injustice we poor Irish suffered in this present age. How queer and foreign it must seem to you and all the coarse words and cruelty which I now relate are far away in ancient time.
Throughout the novel, and as the opening lines evidence, Carey’s omission of punctuation not only conveys Kelly’s limited education, but also reads as a stream of consciousness. Due to the extended sentences, Kelly’s voice can often seem rushed; as the bushranger’s account was one completed under the unwavering threat of capture and death, the rolling sentences adds credence to the ‘history’ and a level of ‘truth’ to Carey’s fictionalised account. Further to pace of the text, Carey’s use of polysyndetic listing, while, again, establishing Kelly’s little schooling and the harried composition under the risk posed by the police’s pursuit, also presents the influence of one text foundational to Kelly’s authorial craft: the King James Bible. Forever sworn upon by the denizens of the Colony of Victoria, Kelly’s use of the Bible, coupled with Richard Doddridge’s Lorna Doone and the sonnets of ‘master William Shakespeare’, permits the ‘unlettered man’ a voice. Within the text, therefore, Kelly’s frequent use of ‘and’ establishes an amalgam, of sorts, between the rapidity of Kelly’s pen and the text by which he has educated himself, and now, to an extent, mimics. Ultimately, Kelly remains resolute in his purpose: to discern the truth of his life. The outlaw’s frequent reference to the ‘words’ of the manuscript pertains to the central conflict within Carey’s work: who may declare what is truth? Indeed, despite his daughter ‘presently too young to understand’ her father’s work, ‘the coarse words’ which detail her family’s past is a form of inheritance, and the only form he may bequeath her.
As is documented within the excerpted paragraphs, Kelly’s prose is intimate and personal. While Carey references the Jerilderie Letter, written in 1879, in which Kelly notably outlined his self-vindication for his crimes, as a source for the novel, the author, in an interview with BBC 4’s Book Club, found the letter to be neither ‘personal’ nor ‘confessional’. In contrast to Jerilderie Letter, the novel seeks to imbue Kelly’s language with an affection unseen and undocumented through his ‘soap-box’[1], public prose. Carey, therefore, circumvented the only surviving historical account of Kelly’s voice through the creation of a silent addressee, Kelly’s daughter. With such an invention, Carey could then portray Kelly as a deeply reflective, considerate figure, and a far cry from Kelly’s angered self-portrait distilled throughout the Jerilderie Letter. It is a note highlighted within Carey’s interview with The Guardian, in 2001:
I first came upon the 56-page letter which Kelly attempted to have printed when the gang robbed the bank in Jerilderie in 1879. It is an extraordinary document, the passionate voice of a man who is writing to explain his life, save his life, his reputation. He wants us to see the injustice suffered by the poor farmers of North-Eastern Victoria. He does not paint himself lilywhite but he wants us to see how it was three policemen died at Stringybark Creek.
The Jerilderie Letter is a howl of pain. It sometimes sounds nuts then its author can also write: ‘If my lips taught the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, then my life will not have been thrown away.’ And all the time there is this original voice – uneducated but intelligent, funny and then angry, and with a line of Irish invective that would have made Paul Keating envious. His language came in a great, furious rush that could not but remind you of far more literary Irish writers.
Obs: How did you approach such a massive and mythic subject?
PC: When the time came for me to write the book, I never doubted how I should begin the job. For it was Kelly’s language that drew me to this story. In those eccentric sentences was my character’s DNA. I found the letter reproduced but I did not attempt to parody Kelly’s style. What I finally wrote grew not just from the Jerilderie Letter but my first 10 years of life which I spent in the very small country town of Bacchus Marsh. I once knew people who spoke more or less like Ned does in my novel. I could inhabit this voice like an old, familiar shoe.[2]
As Carey outlines, the prose of the novel is one inspired by, but not in parody of or beholden to, Kelly’s only surviving letter from his campaign against the police. Carey, here, acknowledges the craft of Kelly’s prose, defining him as an ‘original voice’ despite his message intermittently falling into a bitter contempt and being consumed by fury towards the authorities. The language of the novel, however, is derived more from Carey’s own personal recollections of the vernacular of his childhood within Victoria, for the letter, written by Joe Byrne from Kelly’s dictation, only records his life as a twenty-three year old outlaw; Carey’s expansive scope, on the other hand, encompasses Kelly’s short-life from childhood through to his execution: within the first parcel, Carey documents Kelly’s ‘Life until the Age of 12’, until Kelly’s last record of the manuscript upon the night of his capture, twelve parcels later.
Indeed, the scale of the novel highlights Carey’s impressive feat. Over the course of the first seven parcels, Carey details Kelly’s life with his sullen father, John Kelly; his family’s move to the district of Greta, and the land of Elven Mile Creek; his tutelage under the bushranger Harry Power; his incarceration, at the age of fifteen, within Benalla Barracks; his further criminal exploits with Power; his rising notoriety; his encounters with Bill Frost, and his mother’s other suitors; his involvement, or lack of, in the capture of Power; his conflict with the Quinns; and his sentencing to three years at Pentridge Goal for ‘horse-stealing’. Succeeding Kelly’s childhood and adolescence, Carey then documents the following six years of Kelly’s life as he assumes his mantel as the leader of self-titled outlaw tribe. Of the succeeding six parcels, one entry, excerpted from parcel twelve, perfectly encapsulates Kelly’s predicament and his surprising reasons for writing:
It is one thing to toil with your pen another thing entire to do it while you fight a war. In the autumn of 1879 I tried to once more write the 58 sheets stolen from me by the Gills I tore up pages then begun again by flooded creek by light of moon and when I had made such a mess my brain were addled I returned to this splashed & speckled history you now hold in your hand.
I had boasted I were a spider they could not stop me spinning but that were in February and by the end of March I had to admit I could not repeat what I previously done. My Jerilderie Letter were lost forever.
My daughter if I make mistakes of grammar now do not think yourself grander than your father but bear in mind the circumstances of composition in the autumn of 1879 Supt Hare & Detective Ward was always on our heels also those black trackers from Queensland was murderous demons they already butchered many men before they caught the scent of us.
April passed then come the chilly rains of May we rode at night & slept by day all the while enduring such inconvenience as diarrhoea fever thrown shoes faintheartedness the flattery of spies & known informers.
The June frost were early but there were still no word from Mary Hearn and Ellen Kelly were still interred inside her sunless cell no matter what vow I took. Ned Kelly were the most feared & famous outlaw in the colony but I cd. not get my mother an inch closer to her freedom.
I had abandoned the letter to the government. I would of give up this very history too but I knew I would lose you if I stopped writing you would vanish and be swallowed by the maw. I see it now I were 1/ 2 mad but each day I wrote so you wd. read my words and I wrote to get you born.
By the 2nd week of June I knew you must be arrived but no word come there was only frost & silence the southerly winds brought the lonely chill off the mountains at Bright & Mount Beauty. Dan caught bronchitis I lay my pen aside at last and bound up the pages in a parcel. When I tied the ribbon a great sadness entered like a worm into my heart.
Here, Carey’s portrayal of Kelly as a writer is perfectly encapsulated. Frustrated by his failings to rewrite his ‘stolen’ Jerilderie Letter, Kelly breaks from his celebrity as a spokesman of his gang, to write, privately, to his daughter. With the outlaw typifying his prose as being as continuous, and as natural, it must be noted, as the silk webbing of a spider, the language here is in complete contrast to his trickster public personae: over these seven paragraphs he voices his exasperation at the loss of the Jerilderie Letter; his fear of the ‘black trackers’; the gang’s struggle with sickness; and his helplessness at releasing his mother. This is the private voice of an exhausted Kelly, and yet there is a single line from within the excerpt which not only conveys Kelly’s depleted state at the time, but also the whole objective behind this ‘splashed & speckled history’:
I had abandoned the letter to the government. I would of give up this very history too but I knew I would lose you if I stopped writing you would vanish and be swallowed by the maw. I see it now I were 1/ 2 mad but each day I wrote so you wd. read my words and I wrote to get you born.
After detailing almost twenty-six years of Kelly’s life, Carey beautifully presents the central objective behind the History’s composition: for Kelly to tether himself to his daughter. Despite his lapses in grammar, note his slight-chagrin at his thought of his daughter thinking less of his prose, Kelly endeavours to reach his daughter. Indeed, the inclusion of numbers and the abbreviation of ‘would’ is further evidence not only of his informal register with his daughter, but also the desperation propelling his writing: the rapidity of his manuscript’s composition is in his need to speak with his then unborn child, and to keep himself with her, lest either be ‘swallowed’ by the furore enclosing him. There is a torment here leading Kelly’s pen which extends beyond a simple outcome of his minimal schooling.
Peter Carey’s staggering achievement lies not only in his ability to track a course through Kelly’s publicised and almost-mythical life, but also in his portrayal of a writer. As the novel’s reissued cover outlines, the mirrored image of Kelly brandishing his pistol and his pen establish the duaity of his character: the outlaw and the writer being at once ‘two sides of the same coin.’ Violence is an intermittent presence within the novel, from his brutal boxing match with the lumbering “Wild” Wright to the fatal events at Stringybark Creek, but it is not the linchpin of the novel. Kelly does not so much as elide his crimes but rather softens his retelling and account for the ears of his daughter. Carey’s purpose is not to revise nor rewrite Kelly’s life, but to produce a document, a perspective, which extends beyond the historical evidence. Therefore, to read the novel is not to read a True History, as was previously noted, Carey’s title-pages adorning each parcel, or chapter, highlights the posthumous composition of Kelly’s manuscript. What it is to read Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang is to read the personal writings of a divisive historical figure. What Carey has achieved is a distillation of a myth; the intention, here, was not to draw Kelly from the ‘maw’ of history, but to cast a version of his voice from the shrouds of the past.
With his creation of Ned Kelly, Carey has brought life to the outlaw before, ‘Such is life’, he is again lost. However, as the novel’s epigraph notes, ‘The past is not dead. It is not even past’, by reading and rereading Carey’s singular history of Kelly, he brings life to Faulkner’s poetic adage.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jan/07/fiction.petercarey
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jan/07/fiction.petercarey
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