Aidan de Brune

(H.C.Cull)

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Article published in The West Australian, 29 April 1933

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EDITORIAL NOTE

The story that Aidan de Brune tells in this article about his own life before he came to Australia is fabulatory. For the real story, read the Afterword to this book, which contains a fully-researched description of the author's life and works.

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FIFTY-FOUR years is a long way to look back upon, to a little village some few miles outside Montreal where, I am informed, I was born. I have little knowledge of the event, and but little more of the long trek to Zululand, where my father escorted his family when I reached the mature age of four years. More distinctly, I remember my Zulu play-fellows, and the long, long trek to Cape Town, where I was sent to school, at the age of nine.

A family council, when I reached my fourteenth birthday, decided that I would be an ornament to the priesthood, and I departed for London, en route for Maynooth.
At that time England and the United States of America were awakening to the new journalism, under the respective guidances of Harmsworth and Hearst. I was attracted, and a great longing to tread the inky way possessed me. In consequence, I stayed in London, completing a sketchy education at night schools and haunting the newspaper offices or the city by day. To my gratification—and the surprise of many of the major journalists of that period—I developed a flair for the trade, and within a few months found I could earn bread at it, with an occasional flavouring of cheese and jam. Short story writing had long attracted me—my first fiction story had appeared in a Cape Town newspaper before I reached eleven. In London I found corners in magazines and journals open to my efforts, and this editorial encouragement had disastrous effects on my future—I determined to be an author.
I started a "magnum opus'" and—to buy paper and ink— cultivated sensational love-story writing in periodicals of the Family Herald Supplement type. On the outbreak of the Boer War I found I had sufficient money in the bank to pay my fare home—to South. Africa. A fight has always attracted me, and amid the wide-spread battleground of South Africa I found adventure sufficient for an ordinary lifetime.
I returned to London with a 100,000 words novel on the war—but publishers are always unkind, even those of the present century. My arrival in London was only the jumping-off place. The United States of America was an alluring vision on the horizon—and I strode for the foot of the rainbow. I landed in New York with exactly nineteen shillings and three-pence in my pocket; a great belief in my own powers; and a store of imagination that won me past the very lax emigration laws of that period. Followed a period of wandering up and down a country then in the making—and almost as big as Australia. I worked at anything that came to hand—and, when work failed to materialise, characterised as the perfect hobo. Even to-day I remember what particularly hard boot-leather was provided for the train-guards. And all this time I was writing stories and articles—and all the time editors and publishers were filling the U.S. mails with my returns.
By the time I had reached twenty-five I claimed to have the largest and most varied collection of "The editor regrets..." in the known world. Still, I would write. Chance gave me the opportunity to practise journalism, and for a time I walked the streets of big cities, a full-blown reporter.
Again the wide spaces called—I think it was a minor revolution in Panama. Anyway, I went south to see Spanish America. Some hundreds of days of wild adventures—the nights spent in scribbling; and I woke up to the fact that some thousands of dollars had accumulated in New York to my credit. I was a capitalist!
Naturally, my first thought was to see the world—up to then I had only partially surveyed Canada, South Africa, England and the United States. The Orient called, but I had no intention of wasting money on fares. In 'Frisco a friendly master mariner offered to ship me before the mast of a befouled, much-wandered cargo-boat, and I jumped at his offer before he had time to get sober. Then I learned something of the Pacific, as a sailing-pond, and a good deal of the many and varied nationalities it contains.
While at Singapore I said good-bye to the vessel, but forgot to take farewell of the captain. He didn't trouble to find me—I suppose because I had forgotten to collect wages owing me.
Deciding to explore China, by good luck I came into the graces of a high official of the Empire. With him I visited large tracts that country then unknown to white man. Back to the United States, my head filled with facts and fictions, determined to settle down and become a respectable member of society.
By the time I reached New York again I had less than a dollar in my pocket. Two days spent in examining and approving the alterations made in the city during my absence, and I bethought myself of the treasury—and the hotel bill that was steadily mounting. Full of thought, I wandered down to the doors of a well-known publishing house —and hesitated. What had I for sale? It took more than two hours, pacing the block, to frame a satisfactory plot for a serial. Then I chose an editor—and bearded him in his lair. How I put it over, I don't know; but I do know that I came out of that building with a commission to write a fiction serial then only existing in my mind—and, what was more to the point, with half payment for the story in my pocket. That story was written in thirteen days—I'm always fond of unlucky thirteen—and I was up 250 dollars. Then and there, on a busy sidewalk, during the busiest hour of the day. I elected myself serial-writer for the great United States of America—and up to a certain point I made good on I my self-election.
Through all the earlier days of my life I had been fascinated by crooks—although at that time I was not using them as material for stories. Opportunity offering, I obtained a place on a newspaper, developing a flair for crime investigation (of the newspaper kind).
Now followed some years of peace, my days being devoted to journalism and my nights to fiction-writing. Just about the time my banker recognised my entry to his establishment with a welcoming smile, I broke down in health. Eighteen months of neurasthenia; more than half that time helpless on a bed.
American doctors sent me to England. There the fraternity declared me a hopeless case. Perhaps to get me off their hands with the least trouble, they decided that my only hope was a voyage to Australia. Hospital attendants carried me on board ship, but at Port Said I walked ashore to see the sights. By the-time I reached Fremantle I had decided there was still room in this world for me. I looked at that western capital and decided that the country was good; also that doctors were darned bad guessers.
The wander-lust urged again, and for quite a time I travelled most of the southern parts of the continent. Then came the War and I joined, to my ability, in the Great Adventure. Again back to Australia, with an earnest desire to see those parts of it I had previously missed. At that time certain gentlemen were forming the Sydney Daily Mail.
One day I wandered into Mr. Gay's offices and announced that I proposed to walk around Australia—and would he pay for articles on the trip? Mr. Gay was blunt. First he told me exactly how many kinds of fools I was to think of such a trip, then came to an agreement with business-like promptitude. Within a few hours I had gathered together what I thought necessary for an 11,000 miles trip, and had left Sydney.
Two and a half years later I came to Sydney again, having in the meantime visited nearly every port on the extensive coastline. More to the point, I had proved possible a trip quite a number of Sydney wise-heads had declared to be sheer suicide.
My literary work? Well, about fifty to sixty serials, under various nom-de-plumes in London and New York— some dozen of them only appearing in book form. Not until I had completed the walk around Australia and had settled. down in Sydney again did I attempt to make use of my partiality for crooks and their works. My first story on these lines was Dr. Night, published in the World News.
Then followed The Carson Loan Mystery, published by the N.S.W. Bookstall Co. Ltd., of Sydney. A little later the Daily Guardian, Sydney, ran The Dagger and Cord as a serial, and immediately it ended in the newspaper Messrs. Angus & Robertson, Ltd., published it in book form. Then, in the columns of the Daily Guardian followed Fingerprints of Fate (published by Angus & Robertson, Ltd.. under the title of The Shadow Crook) and The Little Grey Woman. Since then I have devoted myself more particularly to serial writing, under my own name and nom-de-plumes, totalling in all fourteen stories. My amusements: Two absorbing ones. Writing mystery stories and barracking Federal politicians to foster a national Australian literature. The first easy; the last apparently very difficult.