much hope of success”. However, there is no evidence that he assisted his wife’s sister; nor that she exploited his name in placing her work.
Because of Australia’s origins as a penal colony, crime content figured in its literature from the beginnings. Generic crime fiction form, as found in Force and Fraud, came later. Content and form only began to coalesce in the 1850s, the era of the sometimes lawless goldrushes, when interest in Australia was an intense, auctorial selling point. Expatriate John Lang (1816–1864), the first Australian-born writer, combined crime matter with the detective in his novel The Forger’s Wife (1855), set in convict-era Sydney. The novel was vigorous and realistic, most notably in the character of the thief-taker (bounty hunter and proto-detective) George Flower, based on a real-life Sydney identity, Israel Chapman. However, the work was more of a picaresque adventure than a formally structured detective mystery; Flower getting his results by guile and violence rather than deduction.
On 26 January 1865 the first known Australian example of the detective story appeared, published in the supplement to the provincial Hamilton Spectator. ‘Wonderful! When You Come to Think of It!’ was a sprightly parody informed by Poe, with a detective fiction fan becoming an amateur sleuth. The author was named as M. C., whom Nan Bowman Albinski has identified as almost certainly the teenage Marcus Clarke, later to become famous with His Natural Life. Clarke owned detective story books, and in the original serial version, his novel had the murder mystery structure. “Wonderful” was followed by another newspaper story: “Experiences of a Detective” by E. C. M., narrated by a police detective, though less lively work.31
These works had no apparent influence on Force and Fraud. It was a genuine original, well ahead of its time and literary context. Nor was it apparently her first publication, as she was cited as the author of Edith Travers (as yet untraced).
The novel was the lead serial in the first issue of the Australian Journal: a Weekly Record of Literature, Science and the Arts (2 Sept. 1865). The magazine was closely modelled on the London Journal, also a fiction magazine, but with a difference – its major subject matter was crime. As such, it reflected not only a national preoccupation, but also the experience of the first editor, George Arthur Walstab, a former policeman.
That Force and Fraud opened this new venture indicates that Ellen Davitt was a staff and star writer. Consequently the AJ worked her into the ground. The novel was followed by two more, and a novella, all published in the first year of the journal. This formidable output meant quantity over quality. Only the debut is republishable, as a work which she had the time to craft, and even probably revise. One serial, Black Sheep, was so hastily written that the main character had two different names. Continuity errors can occur in serials, where early drafts get published without the chance of revision. Indeed, Force and Fraud’s lawyer Argueville first appeared as Arqueille.32
Force and Fraud’s narrative begins with a murder, and ends with the solution – plus a romance added to the plot. Modern readers will note that it lacks a hero-investigator, but at the time that narrative mode had not gained genre dominance. An alternative model equally existed, splitting the role of detective among various characters. It can be seen in works such as Wilkie Collins’ 1860 The Woman in White; and even as late as Fergus Hume’s 1886 The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, the best-selling detective novel of the 1800s.
In Force and Fraud, the investigators include a lawyer, the feisty heroine Flora, and a Scottish shepherd. But there is equally a cast of those seeking to obstruct justice and impede the investigation, as with Frances Trollope’s Hargrave.
Ellen Davitt used her knowledge of art in the depiction of hero Herbert Lindsey. Much of her Australian experience is reflected in Force and Fraud. She had closely observed country townships, and bush homesteads. Her depictions are vividly realistic, adding to the novel’s credibility. One scene, a charity bazaar held at the Melbourne Exhibition Building, was drawn from life. In 1856 such a bazaar was held, and Ellen Davitt presided over the stall of the Commissioners of National Education.33 Not many writers would have used such a domestic, indeed female scene in a crime novel, nor used it to introduce a vital if rather unprepossessing clue. Moreover, the dramatic near-shipwreck on Kerguelen’s land had actually happened to the Davitts.
Anthony Trollope was not a fan of literary puzzles, unlike his mother. “I abhor a mystery,” he wrote, adding that he had “no ambition to surprise” the reader. He refused to construct his plots in great detail before actually writing his novels. In this attitude, he differed from his sister-in-law.
Force and Fraud, a novel whose title is explained in the final sentence, was clearly plotted intricately beforehand. Ellen Davitt understood the importance of clues, of mining the text with details, initially insignificant, that later become vital. She was also adept at red herrings.34
Her other efforts for the AJ tend towards melodrama, although her last serial The Wreck of the Atalanta (1867) had mystery elements. The AJ described it as “certainly the happiest effort of MRS. DAVITT’S pen, and we promise our readers a rich treat in its perusal”.
To a modern reader, though, the serial is interesting largely for its sympathetic portrayal of a battered wife. It is otherwise flawed, its mystery plot lacking the finesse of Force and Fraud.35
Subsequently, Ellen’s name began to disappear from the magazine. She had always proudly signed her works ‘Mrs. Arthur Davitt’, ignoring the Victorian convention that women should publish anonymously. Her contemporary on the AJ, the remarkable police procedural writer Mary Fortune, always used a pseudonym. Ellen’s stories now gained the byline “by the author of Edith Travers, etc.”
Such happened with ‘The Highlander’s Revenge’ (AJ, 31 August 1867). This story is included in this edition as a crime, rather than mystery story. It was the best of her short stories and a significant early fictionalisation of European atrocities against Aborigines. Possibly the editor thought the bloodthirsty matter was unsuitable to appear under a woman’s name.
Almost certainly Ellen had met an eyewitness to the 1840s massacres in the Gippsland region; identifiable here from the details, such as the cannon loaded with glass, and the role of Scots settlers, who having been dispersed from their homes via clearances, were singularly keen in inflicting the same upon Aboriginals.
‘The Highlander’s Revenge’ comprises two stories, a memoir of genocide, and the reaction to it from an audience; yarners around the fire in a bush hotel.
The convention of oral narratives, as with the Canterbury Tales, was used in contemporary Australian writing. One instance was the pseudonymous ‘William Burrows’ whose 1859 memoir, Adventures of a Mounted Trooper in the Australian Constabulary was published in London by Routledge, Warne, and Routledge. Another appeared in the Christmas 1865 issues of the AJ, at a time when Ellen was a major writer for the magazine. It seems likely the ‘The Highlander’s Revenge’ was written for the series, and possibly rejected as too strong meat.
It is interesting that part of the story was reprinted in the Gippsland Times (10 Oct. 1867, 4); the incident described being apparently recognisable. Missing are the worst of the atrocities, and the frame story, which shows the audience reaction. The listeners range from supportive to being utterly appalled; bloodthirsty to anguished white liberal, in our terms.
What was Ellen’s position on the issue? In this subtly-nuanced story, watch how the murder of the speaker’s uncle is paralleled with the treatment of an old black man; a point at which the speaker seems to lose all vestige of his civilisation. She first engages reader sympathy and then lets the narrator’s own words damn him utterly, a powerful act of alienation. A very sophisticated writer can be seen at work here.
This skilled story apparently drew little attention; the Gippsland reprint apart. After 1868 it is impossible to trace Ellen’s publications, although in September 1869 her name appeared in a list of contributors to the AJ. She may have continued writing anonymously, or working as an editor, for on an 1874 application form she coyly stated her profession as “Connected with literature”.