There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien sitting in an Irish pub deploring the lack of real characters in Ireland. Notwithstanding the lovely irony of that story, the prominent eccentric has declined in recent years, which makes Robert Holden’s collection of Australian characters, Crackpots, Rebels and Ratbags, extremely useful. Holden loves his subject, and that love is reflected in the book’s humorous style.
Part of the appeal of eccentrics lies in their naivety. The true eccentric (in proper Australian style) is not different for the sake of being different, but is genuinely apart. He or she (regardless of background) does not bung it on. Wannabes and posers need not apply. Some eccentrics struggle for recognition, and occasionally get it. Many of the eccentrics paraded here craved attention: Bee Miles, Percy Grainger, Manning Clark, Rosaleen Norton. Others had attention thrust upon them: E. W. Cole, Arthur Stace (the Eternity Man). It is often said that an eccentric is a rich lunatic, and Holden keeps returning to this theme.
In this collection, prime ministers stand proudly with bag ladies, professors and composers with the peculiar. Some eccentrics are so identifiable that they become part of the local landscape: E. W. Cole’s bookshop in Melbourne was visited by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and others; Eternity, Arthur Stace’s graffito, was so well known in Sydney that it was made the centrepiece of the 2000 New Year’s Eve fireworks celebration on the harbour. During their lifetime, you hadn’t seen Sydney if you hadn’t seen either Billy Blue or Bee Miles.
The chapters on Rosaleen Norton and Arthur Stace are superb. Norton’s sad decline from truly feared Satanist (who brought down no less a figure than Sir Charles Mackerras) to unintentional caricature is astutely handled. Holden manages to take a fairly mysterious phantasm, Arthur Stace, and put some skin and bone on the mystique.
The book has few flaws. Alfred Deakin’s spiritualism could have been examined further. A perusal of Al Gabay’s The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin would have strengthened this chapter. On matters spiritualist, Holden repeats the minor canard that Arthur Conan Doyle converted to spiritualism during World War I. He had been a committed spiritualist for many years before the war; the war (and the death of his son) merely strengthened his resolve and the public’s reception to his position. There are a couple of stylistic