But Not for Love: Stories of Marjorie Barnard and M. Barnard Eldershaw (1988)

This volume seems to have been the first fruit of a career spent in trying to keep returning these writers to the public consciousness. Robert Darby is the one keeping up the fight, but even he has now seriously diversified into other interests, though he appears to still be occasionally venturing into this territory. It was published the year after Marjorie Barnard died (and thirty-odd years after Flora Eldershaw's death). What is collected here is most of what was not yet in book form in their work in the short story. Barnard Eldershaw had planned a short story volume in the early 30s which was rejected around the traps of London. Barnard on her own published a magnificent one in Australia only in 1943, The Persimmon Tree, which Virago republished with a couple of extras thrown in in the 80s. An Australian publisher had planned another in 1949 / 1950, which also never eventuated. This volume collects most of what seems from research to have been the proposed contents of the two stillborn volumes, to complement the Virago reprint which was newly available at the time of publication. Darby gives a fascinating history of all the background of publication of various of the stories, why others were rejected, and, most importantly, the attitude of Barnard and Eldershaw to story-writing, and that of the literary world around them. It is astonishing how wrong a lot of people got these stories, including the authors - proof, if more were needed, that writers themselves are not always the best judges of their work from a public perspective. That said, Barnard always seems to have had a special place for the short story in her heart, and despite seeming to droop under the criticism of Vance or Nettie Palmer (for example), kept up her fascination with the form. Eldershaw, as usual, seems a far less easy-to-decipher individual. These stories have a lot of hurt in them, a stormy colour, and troubled contemporary settings which didn't sit well I'm sure with the more larrikinesque bush-yarn expectations of a good number of punters. That they portray the greeny-grey disturbed skies of modern 30s and 40s city life, and its concomitant nervous disorders and banjaxing frustrations, is what brought to them continual criticism of depressiveness, and is what now makes them so wonderful as a vision of alterity to the traditional picture. Add to that the particular and revealing talent of these two writers, who are still not accorded their due, and one has a book filled with rich layering and significance.

The Persimmon Tree and other stories by Marjorie Barnard (1943)

I am already a fan of Barnard, so reading this was well anticipated. I read the Virago 1985 reprint which includes three extra stories at the end, selected I'm thinking by Barnard herself. The remainder of her solo stories were collected together a couple of years later in another volume called But Not For Love. These twenty are typical of her, in that they cover the smaller themes in life, as they represent the larger. Thus a woman having a hairdo becomes a meditation on loss in relationships, whereby depression reigns until the 'armour for living' is back up to full strength; a redesign of the cafe of a department store which includes canaries in cages high above the eaters reveals out-of-place passion in the hearts of the little birds who sing intensely once the orchestra begins to play, striking the entire chattering cafe dumb for a few precious moments; the ribbing and jealous sidelong glances of a group of ferry-travellers on Sydney Harbour toward a fellow who is a regular belies the fact that the winner of a lottery is in fact his wife who can't cope with his rigidity and controlling behaviour, and who has packed ready to leave him when he gets home; a family goes ahead with holding a Christmas party and dressing a huge tree despite the loss of the youngest child very recently - the jollity is finally too much for the mother who, at the end of the night, goes upstairs and empties too many sleeping pills into her hand; in Vienna, during the 1934 uprising, a woman goes out for seed for her little bird who is still singing madly despite starving - caught in the ongoing melee, she is struck and slowly dies on the pavement, while her little bird slowly goes silent in her now deserted apartment. A couple of these stories deal with returns to family locations where a person has moved on while other family members haven't, or a new import causes ructions. All bar two are set in Australia. The other thing they do superbly in their love of simple detail is give a strong mental picture of the 1930s, when most, if not all, are set. The one detraction is minor: I think Barnard is at her best when she can cumulate power, meaning that her novels written with Flora Eldershaw are more regal and mythically flowing. But these are far from miserly in their impact as they detail the sadness and vulnerability of those who hope, the bitterness of those who've lost too much to, and the puzzlement of believers in the face of pitiless fate.

Commonplace Book

'...How could he ever explain to Helen the bleak reasoning that saved his own sanity and supported him while it did not comfort? This was the knowledge that to lose, to suffer, to die were as much a part of living, as natural, as birth and happiness. Men and women took on the human lot and when it could not be changed stood by it for the dignity and integrity of their souls...'

from Tree Without Earth, a story in The Persimmon Tree and other stories by Marjorie Barnard