Mrs. M
Page 27
The irony, of course, is that in my argument with Hughes’s vision I have focused on a socially narrow stratum of early colonial Australia, and neglected the blood and the gore, the pain and the suffering, that became the dominant metaphor for colonial Australia. Instead I tell the story of a woman who, if not an intellectual, was certainly cultivated and idealistic; in doing so, I have attempted to say something true about Australian history, or at least to challenge an abiding falsehood — the vision of the first gulag — with that of a social revolution. The moral largeness of that revolution — its true significance — has been occluded by the Satanic, Goyaesque vision of The Fatal Shore. The rather elaborate lies that unfold within the covers of this book are, at the end of the day, told in the service of this truth.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Aside from the many debts of gratitude owed to the living I am, of course, deeply indebted to the historical figures that live on in this story in altered form, particularly Elizabeth and Lachlan Macquarie. Michael Massey Robinson’s ode to the Macquarie Lighthouse is faithfully reproduced in Mrs M, but the satire read aloud by John Piper is largely invention. Threaded through the speeches at the climactic welcome party are some nods to Denis Diderot’s Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville and Nicolas Baudin’s December 1802 letter to Governor King.
Thanks to Chris Maxworthy, vice president of the Australian Association for Maritime History, for help with some maritime details, and Keith Vincent Smith for advice based on his deep knowledge of Bungaree and his time. Catherine Milne, who saw both a story of the heart and a novel of ideas in Mrs M, has been tireless in her support: astute, sensitive and wise. And in Scott (by name and nature) Forbes I have had a sharp-eyed and knowledgeable editor: il miglior fabbro. Thanks also to Alex Craig whose adroit editorial coaxing helped me to transform Elizabeth from a presence in a drama to a character in the round.
A special thanks to my wife Helen Anderson, who has lived with this project for many years, through all its twists and turns. She was, as she promised she would be, my secret editorial weapon as the tale became a manuscript and then a book. Her tears at its closing page, though I suspected at times they were shed out of relief, always buoyed me when the going got tough.
Mrs M has been completed as part of a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Technology Sydney, and Delia Falconer deserves a big thank you for seeing its promise earlier than anyone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUKE SLATTERY is a Sydney-based journalist, editor and columnist whose work appears in The Australian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review. Internationally he has been published in The New Yorker online, the LA Times, the International Herald Tribune, the UK Spectator and the US Chronicle of Higher Education. Mrs M is his fifth book, and his first novel.
COPYRIGHT
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2017
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Luke Slattery 2017
The right of Luke Slattery to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India
1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom
2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA
ISBN: 978 0 7322 7181 7 (hardback)
ISBN: 978 1 4607 0901 6 (ebook)
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Slattery, Luke, author.
Mrs M / Luke Slattery.
Subjects: Macquarie, Lachlan, 1761-1824—Fiction.
Macquarie, Elizabeth Henrietta, 1777-1835—Fiction.
Greenway, Francis, 1777-1837—Fiction.
Historical fiction.
Sydney Cove (N.S.W.)—History.
Cover design by Hazel Lam, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images: Woman and beaded engraving by istock.com; Aleurites moluccana, candlenut tree, by The Natural History Museum / Alamy Stock Photo; background painting Sydney from the North Shore Lycett, Joseph, ca. 1775–1828, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (ID: a928333)