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[Page 183]
June 28
Five of us sat down, and drank to "The Barstards of the World", and for an hour there was only tellings of stunts, and of happenings when the S.A. join us on the left Flank.
What a night: and now back here in a bloody office, where the men of the line are only mechanical figures, peopling our damned detail maps.
God, my only prayer is this: that the rumour of a Corps, only of Australians and South Africans is the reality to be.
On Sunday I'll to Borre, and know the Ambulance for a day again.
So today ends, but a memory will remain: tonight I have loved men more than things: for a while I forgot self and discontents, and lived in the minute, now back again to the old wonderings, the useless tortures and doubts.
The S.O.S. has gone up in the night, now the guns are awake.
June 29
Bulletin April 18, 1918
A Melbourne art show:-
The show of the Australian Arts Club is solid and decorous, except where Norman Lindsay hangs his sections of Girl. Norman is more gleeful than ever in his keyhole confidences. Also his color has become richer and more sensitive to the charms of flesh, and in pictorial description is like the purple vocabulary of a Huysmans or a Wilde. His etchings, "Don Juan in Hell" and "The Lady with a Fan," show that he has found another outlet for his pagan fancy. Lionel Lindsay's performances are mostly in water-color, but he has employed his needle on brother Norman's visage and ticked off the contours of a well-fed girl. Hans Heysen's worship for the Australian gum surges in rapturous mixtures of timber and sunlight, but he is just as entertaining when he changes the subject to a ploughman or a hilltop covered with sheep. W.B. McInnes has dyed the landscape olive-green and has covered some of the richest country with a sort of radiant gloom. Nevertheless the combined result is very high and adds extra celebrity to the exhibition. Etcher Sydney Ure Smith is the old taking Ure of wood and drawer of water in his studies of buildings and harborside wharves. W.J. Macnally has found the woodscape erecting itself into a series of triumphal arches, and relies on lavishness of detail to secure economy of effect. All the same, he is an improved colorist and would be a greater success if he took more risks in his choice of views. There is manifest quality in the seaside impressions of Elliott Gruner, but the ordinary bloke will consider that he is lending a new distinction to monotony. And really it looks as if he finds it hard to extricate his meaning from the swirling pigment. John Shirlow is stronger in etching facades than faces, whilst Percy Leason's art in "The Farm" is only colored photography. Albert Collins's temperament, which is subdued in the achievement of some enjoyable little landscapes, gets out of control in a bilious vision of a lady with a lantern. The Norman Carter panel is a moderately gifted summary of delicate times of day, most arresting in his sketches around the Kurrajong heights. James R. Jackson sprinkles sunlight on a couple of ladies without keeping the eye from wandering elsewhere. G.V.F. Mann's set of smaller canvases might be memoranda for larger productions, but they are all painted in a convincing manner. Lloyd Rees, J.D. Banks, the two Clints and H.M. Burton fill in the remaining wall space with some modest efforts.
234.
From Mother, Leon Gellert's "Songs of a Campaign" with Lindsay's illustrations, a pair of sox and a note with them from Jessie. After the bad paper, and cheap appearing books of England, this from Angus & Robertsons a book of delight, and a brief hurried reading of a few pages confirms the finenesse of the few read extracts in criticisms.
235.
All the old defense scheme maps are out of date, new schemes arrive today so there a commencing on new maps.
Scotts completed sketch of "Maps" disappointing: yet he has the details of the hut and the subject carries its own interest.