The crazy final years of genius editor J F Archibald
'You will find when you try that the very work which you thought was killing you was really the only thing which kept you alive'
This is the sixth and final extract of chapters of my work on John Feltham (aka Jules Francoise) Archibald 1856-1919, founding editor of the Sydney Bulletin – one of the most popular newspapers in Australia’s history.
By DAVID MYTON
The years 1888-1901 were a golden time for J F Archibald and the Sydney Bulletin. Everything he did as editor worked – circulation soared, readership increased, and the newspaper’s political and social influence waxed brightly.
The London Times, then a powerful and influential newspaper, wrote how the Bulletin fanned the flames of a new spirit of Australia, nationalistic and republican in temperament, while embracing the needs of the workers of the bush:
“It is hard to over-estimate the extent to which this journal modifies the opinions (one might almost say the character) of its readers. Most Australian newspapers alter no-one’s opinion, being read only by those who already agree with them … The organ (real or supposed) of some ‘ring’ or clique is suspected; … The Bulletin is beyond suspicion in these matters; … its candour verges on the cynical, but the Australian has no objection to humour in his politics or grimness in his jests …”[1]
Archibald was a newspaper genius – the results prove it – but he was as prey to the peculiarities of human nature as the next person.
It began, slowly, in 1900. He was there in the office, subbing, editing, and encouraging his stable of journalists, writers and poets. His workaholic 14-hour day continued, but that in itself was a sign all was not well – and nor had it been for many years. “You will find when you try,” he said, “that the very work which you thought was killing you was really the only thing which kept you alive.”[2] He was “nervy, mercurial”,[3] appeared physically frail, and possessed a “restless temperament”.[4]
He continued to maintain his “French-Jewish” identity, which he had adopted as a young man. Although he was a married man, some acquaintances believed he was a bachelor. In the office, he was always anxious to get rid of visitors.
During his 26 years connection with the Bulletin no word about him had ever appeared in the paper, nor had anything been printed about him in any other paper without his consent. He explained:
“This was not so much to diffidence, it was rather from an accurate and sordid appreciation of the fact that … in this world it is only the unknown which is terrible. It is often the business of a newspaper editor to be terrible.”[5]
He envied men who were fat, believing their bulk equaled a kind of steadfastness. They were strong and full of endurance, whilst he was slim “meager [and] introspective”. Fat, he said, meant peace, sleep, self-forgetfulness and happiness. The “other thing”- his physical frailty - spelled “nerves and self-consciousness and misery … ether, opium, and all the hypnotic derivations of the aniline dyes”.[6]
There is a world of pain, anguish, sadness and mental distress in these few lines of candid autobiography. It took a lot of drugs to help Jules Francois make it through the night. It took a lot of effort for him to make it through the day, and this was beginning to tell by 1902.
As biographer Sylvia Lawson records, his “neurotic ill-health depleted his ability to work”. Rest and relaxation didn’t help and he “became pathologically restless and anxious”.[7]
He stepped down from the Bulletin and handed over editorship to James Edmond, associate editor since 1890. Relieved, he found a temporary burst of energy and gradually brought into being a magazine called The Lone Hand – the name he had originally wanted to call the Bulletin back in 1880, it being redolent of the lone gold prospector making his way in a life Archibald so admired.
Contributors to the first issue (first published in 1907, 116 pages of editorial, 64 pages of advertising, price one shilling) included artists Norman and Lionel Lindsay, D H Souter and B E Minns, writers Edward Dyson, Henry Lawson, Arthur Adams, Victor Daly, Louis Esson and Roderic Quinn. Clearly, some of the Archibald Midas touch still remained, although the brilliant journalist and editor Frank Fox helped him immensely.
The historian Frank S Greenop records that Archibald’s conception for the magazine was best understood by his desire that New South Wales should have a Minister for Red Umbrellas to take care of the gaiety and colour of life “and it was in this spirit, as a ‘substitute’ for such a Minister that the magazine was designed by the genius of the Bulletin”.[8]
However, before The Lone Hand hit the streets Archibald’s mental health problems became critical. From being depressed and barely working he suddenly exploded in a fit of activity centred on producing The Lone Hand. “His enthusiasm was tremendous,” recalled A. G. Stephens. “He enlisted all kinds of contributors … gave dinner parties at his own house to which the most miscellaneous guests were invited (whereas formerly he had rarely or never issued an invitation to his house) and generally displayed wonderful energy.”
He had episodes of mania, symptomised by an order for 100,000 pounds worth of printing machinery, which made business manager Macleod blanche when he saw it.[9]
Macleod sent two doctors to examine Archibald, and these induced him to come to a private hospital in Sydney “practically under compulsion, suggesting insanity”. According to Stephens, Archibald remained in the hospital for three weeks but then became “so noisy and generally outrageous that he had to be removed to Callan Park [Hospital for the Insane] as a certified lunatic”.[10]
As Macleod’s wife, Agnes Conor Macleod, put it in her biography of her husband, Macleod of The Bulletin: “A time came when it was no longer possible to leave Archibald to his own devices and he was put under restraint on the application of his wife in 1908.”[11]
Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, as it was known until 1914, was a relatively enlightened institution based in large and pleasant park-like surroundings in Lilyfield, in Sydney’s Inner West. Orchards were planted in the 1880s and pigs and cows were kept. Philanthropists donated gifts that included money, fruit, and animals such as kangaroos, wallabies, emus, parrots and cockatoos. The historian Stephen Garton records that in 1888 special cottages had been opened at the hospital to accommodate patients from the “better off classes” to which Archibald belonged.
Treatment may have included drugs such as chloral hydrate, potassium bromide and opium, and also hydrotherapy. Archibald would have been encouraged to take part in outdoor activities such a light manual work and sports including cricket.
However, against all expectations, Archibald left Callan Park in 1910, never to return. In 1914 he sold his share in the Bulletin.
The poet Henry Lawson said he regarded Archibald as one of the most far-seeing men in Australia.[12] The Bulletin always sought out and encouraged Australian writers, and taken their work in preference to any other.
“ The Australian atmosphere is in the Bulletin, and the Bulletin is the spirit of Australia,” said Lawson.[13]
Archibald’s wife, Rosa, had died in 1911. Had she been alive she may well have been glad that the Bulletin days were over, for her husband’s success had brought her little comfort beyond the material.
He spent some more time on The Lone Hand, then in March 1919 he applied for, and won, a subbing job on the new Smith’s Weekly. One of its founders, Claude McKay, recalled Archibald had told him “I want to see if the old mill can grist again.” They fixed him up with a table and chair and he was happy to wade through a pile of contributions. McKay said Archibald would tell them: “You get what you give. Print pearls and they’ll shower you with jewels. Print tripe and you’ll get an avalanche of it.”[14]
Aged 63, he worked at a furious pace until he became ill in August. On September 10 he died in St Vincent’s Hospital. He was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Waverley cemetery.
In his will – he left 90,000 Pounds, a considerable sum of money in 1919 – he provided for a fountain (the J F Archibald Memorial Fountain in Sydney’s Hyde Park) to be built by a French sculptor to commemorate the association of France and Australia in World War 1; and, most well-known, what became the Archibald Prize, to be given annually for the best portrait of an eminent Australian. Today, the Archibald Prize remains a major event in the art world calendar in Australia.
He also showed his generosity to his former colleagues by leaving a substantial amount to the Benevolent Fund of the Australian Journalists’ Association.
There is no doubt Archibald was a great editor. Everything he did for the Bulletin worked with results in the real world of increased circulation, readership, advertising yield, and more than 20 years of fame and influence. He paved the way for the punchy, controversial, opinionated journalism that we now take for granted.
[1] Quoted in Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1958, p271
[2] J F Archibald, ‘The Genesis of The Bulletin (Being the memoirs of J. F. Archibald)’, The Lone Hand, June 1907, p166
[3] Vance Palmer, National Portraits, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1940, p131
[4] Vance Palmer, The Legend of the Nineties, Currey O’Neil, South Yarra, 1954, p80
[5] Archibald, op cit, May 1907, p53
[6] Archibald, op cit, July 1907, p267
[7] Sylvia Lawson, ‘Archibald, Jules Francois’ in Douglas Pike (ed) Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 3, 1851-1890, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1969, p47
[8] Frank S Greenop, History of Magazine Publishing in Australia, K G Murray Publishing Co, Sydney, 1947, p216
[9] A G Stephens, ‘A Recollection of J.F. Archibald’ in Leon Cantrell (ed) A.G. Stephens: Selected Writings, Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1978, p423
[10] Ibid
[11] Quoted in Greenop, p217
[12] Henry Lawson, ‘A Sketch of Archibald’ in Leonard Cronin (ed) Henry Lawson: A Camp-Fire Yarn. Complete Works 1885-1900, Redwood Editions, Victoria, 2000, pp871-880
[13] Op cit, passim
[14] Claude McKay, ‘J.F. Archibald Was A Living Legend’, The Sunday Herald, November 23, 1952, p12