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'Dashed bad characters, if we only knew, says Despard, yawning. 'What do you say, Haughton? looking at Starlight, who was playing with his glass, and not listening much, by the look of him. In his latest novels Boldrewood reverts to his familiar themes.
In the Forest some of the most ancient and remarkable trees have borne for generations descriptive names such as the King and Queen oaks at Boldrewood, and the Eagle oak in Knightwood.
That the romantic life of this noted criminal furnished Boldrewood with some material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushranger is far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one.
Kingsley was more sparing in the use of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the younger writers are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may be considered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper to Hamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the story of the lost child.
Boldrewood has more than once insisted with evident pleasure upon the general good behaviour and manliness of the miners, and, having been one of those all-seeing autocrats, the gold-fields commissioners, he is an authority to be believed on the subject.
Most of the other writers who have contributed to the portrayal of a certain few aspects of Antipodean life have gone to London or elsewhere. Many years absent from Australia, they know little of its later developments. Boldrewood has spent a long and eventful life there. Of the southern half of the continent he must possess a specially intimate knowledge.
He is of a stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploits being often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense of reality is maintained. Starlight seems to be a compound of several characters. Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed with the dictum of Turpin, that it is necessary for a highwayman, at all events a captain of highwaymen, to be a gentleman.
The materials were surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature, and one which must endure. Materials there is no end to them!
Before her eleventh birthday she rode to hounds, rose before the sun to hunt the young fox-cubs in early autumn, and saw the stag at bay on the wild heathery downs above the wooded valleys that sink and fall below Boldrewood with almost Alpine grandeur.
I have the less need to expand further this inspiring section of my subject, seeing that I have been anticipated to some extent by a brother author, who, under the pseudonym of "Rolf Boldrewood," has presented to us, in lively and fitting style, a most charming picture of early colonial life, its pleasant hospitalities, plus the Attic salt of no small proportion of the bounteous tables.
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