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Harry Dashboard, pen-name of the Australian newspaper poet identified as James Riley (1795–ca.1860),[1] who also wrote under other pseudonyms including “Felix.”

Early years

James Riley (or Ryley) was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1795. In 1824 he was tried at the Old Bailey[2] in London for the theft of two shillings, convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation, arriving in New South Wales in August 1825 aboard the convict transport "Minstrel." Assigned to Rev. Thomas Reddall at Campbelltown as a labourer (though he was a clerk by calling),[3] and then to Major George Druitt at Mount Druitt, probably as a schoolmaster,[4] Riley was granted his Certificate of Freedom in 1831.[5]

Through the 1830s and early 1840s Riley published verse – mainly comic and satirical – in Sydney newspapers, either anonymously or under various pseudonyms including J. R., Dick Lightpate, A Child of Song, Owen Bulgruddery, Felix M’Quill, Caleb Menangle and Felix.[6] During this time he became associated with the Hume family, explorers and settlers of southern New South Wales. He was schoolmaster to the children of Francis Rawdon Hume (brother of Hamilton Hume) at Rockwood, Appin, and to the family of Hume relative George Barber at Glenrock, Marulan. Riley published several poems dedicated to Hume family members, most notably an elegy for Barber, drowned trying to cross flooded Towrang Creek in a winter storm in 1844,[7] and a lament for John Kennedy Hume, killed in a fight with bushranger Thomas Whitton in the streets of Gunning on 20 January 1840.[8]

Fisher’s Ghost

Frederick Fisher disappeared from his Campbelltown farm in June 1826. Foul play was suspected, and a police search led by Aboriginal tracker Gilbert finally found his remains in a boggy creek nearby. Fisher’s friend George Worrall was accused of his murder, tried and hanged in 1827. The affair was reported in the newspapers of the day,[9] but James Riley’s verse account was the first to introduce a new and sensational element based on local rumour: the appearance of the ghost of the murdered man on a Campbelltown bridge, pointing to where his body would be found. The story of Fisher’s Ghost continues to exert a fascination today.[10] Riley’s poem “The Sprite of the Creek!” first appeared anonymously in 1832[11] and again – this time with an explanatory letter and extensive footnotes – under the pen-name Felix in 1846.[12]

Felix’s comic verse

As Felix, Riley also produced comic verse, most notably two serio-comic epics, "The Luprechaun; or, Fairies' Shoemaker, An Irish Legend of '98"[13] and "Billy McDaniel; or, 'The Ould Fellow' Balked. An Irish Legend", an Asmodean tale in which Billy rescues a young bride at a country wedding from the clutches of the devil.[14] It is likely that Riley was also the "Felix McQuill" who wrote “The Luckless Journey; or, One Half Pint Too Much”, a cautionary tale set in the time of Governor Macquarie.[15] However Felix's crowning achievement was arguably the Humbuggawang Despatches, a series of prose and song satires on New South Wales politics of the 1840s and '50s, particularly the progressive causes of extension of the franchise, a halt to the transportation of convicts, separation from British rule and a federated Australian republic. The despatches are in the language (and eccentric spelling) of stockman-poet Tim Donohue, Felix's uproarious Irish-Australian friend, from the wilds of the Murrumbidgee River. The sporting and satirical newspaper Bell's Life in Sydney carried twenty despatches over the years 1847 to 1859.

The Gundagai flood

Riley’s most widely-known piece – and the only published one to which he attached his name – was “The Gundagai Calamity,” a lament for the destruction of the town of Gundagai in the Murrumbidgee River flood of the night of 24 June 1852.[16] It was written at Francis Rawdon Hume’s home Castlesteads, at Boorowa, only a few weeks after the events described. The poem would reappear regularly in NSW newspapers over the next eighty years.

Harry Dashboard

Around 1848 Riley adopted the pen-name "Harry Dashboard", a term he took from the board at the front of a carriage which shielded its occupants from the muck dashed up by the horses. Harry wrote comic and satirical verse from places in the Murrumbidgee region of southern NSW: Boorowa, Gunning, Bobbera and “Yassville” (probably an imaginary place in or near Yass), and his work appeared mainly in Goulburn and Yass newspapers. His subjects are sometimes local – the woeful state of the roads and bridges , the eccentricities of Brummy the coach driver, a mock ode for the local policemen – but the best are satires on colonial politics and prominent figures: the gold mania, Chinese immigration, speculation in railways, the absurd Bunyip aristocracy proposal of W. C. Wentworth, the demagoguery of John Dunmore Lang and sly digs at the work of Harry's poetical rivals Henry Parkes and Charles Harpur.

Riley’s last poem as Harry Dashboard was published in 1860.[17] His fate is not known with certainty, but the evidence of his former pupil Mary Bozzom Kennedy, daughter of Francis Rawdon Hume, suggests that Riley died "alone and friendless" around that year.[18] Despite the fact that his work was confined to the newspapers, Riley’s output shows him to be a fine humourist, an adroit rhymester and a sharp commentator on matters local and national. His work has yet to be properly recognised.

Selected individual works

Anonymous

As Felix

As Felix McQuill

As Harry Dashboard

As James Riley

References

  1. ^ Date of Riley's death is estimated - see Vening, p. 156.
  2. ^ The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, JAMES RYLEY. Theft: grand larceny. 2nd December 1824 (t18241202–5).
  3. ^ For background on Reddall see his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Riley's time with Reddall at Campbelltown would help explain his familiarity with the details of Fisher's murder.
  4. ^ Letter and poems from James Riley to Miss Reddall of Campbelltown, 20 December 1830, in Reddall Family – Papers 1808-1897, undated, State Library of NSW, A 423 (microfilm CY974), pp. 75-82.
  5. ^ Riley's convict years can be followed via UK Prison Hulks Registers 1802–49—Justitia Register 1803–36; "Free Settler or Felon" website at jenwilletts.com; NSW Convict Indents—Bound Indentures 1823–26; NSW Convict Musters 1800–49—General Muster, 1825; Butts of Certificates of Freedom, 1831, Dec; Sydney Gazette, 1 September 1825, p. 3, and 12 January 1832, p. 1; Sydney Herald, 16 January 1832, p. 4. His ship is generally referred to as "Minstrel (2)."
  6. ^ See Vening, pp. 143-4 for further details.
  7. ^ “The Horseman Who Faced the Storm” was printed in The Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature, 4 January 1845, p. 6, and republished twice in the Goulburn Herald: once (16 December, 1848, p. 4) attributed to Felix, and a second time (3 October 1860, p. 4) attributed to Harry Dashboard. A manuscript version, apparently in Felix’s hand, is in “Elegiac Pieces by Felix” in Hamilton Hume–Papers, 1840-1855, Ferguson Collection, NLA, MS 3575.
  8. ^ "Lines, Written as a tribute…to the memory of the late John Kennedy Hume, Esq…" appeared in the Australasian Chronicle, 8 October 1842, p. 1. A manuscript version is in "Elegiac Pieces by Felix," NLA MS 3575.
  9. ^ See, for example, The Australian, 11 November 1826, p. 2; 3 February 1827, p. 3 and 7 February 1827, p. 2.
  10. ^ See Further reading
  11. ^ Hill’s Life in New South Wales, 14 September 1832, p. 3 (with title misprinted “The Spirit of the Creek!”); full version with author’s corrections, 21 September 1832, p. 4.
  12. ^ Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 27 June 1846, p. 1.
  13. ^ Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 11 October 1845, p. 4; 18 October 1845, p. ?; 25 October 1845, p. 4; and 1 November 1845, p. 4. Reprinted in the Goulburn Herald attributed to Harry D––––, 10 and 14 March 1860, p. 4. Riley’s source was probably the second part of the story "Superstitions of the Irish Peasantry.–No. V. The Luprechaun," The Dublin and London Magazine, July 1825, pp. 195–7, which was reprinted in Sydney in The Currency Lad, 3 November 1832, p. 4.
  14. ^ Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 10, 17, 24 and 31 July and 7, 14 and 21 August 1847, p. 4. This is a retelling in verse of the tale "Master and Man" from Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker (1825), which was reprinted in the Sydney Gazette, 12 June 1830, p. 4.
  15. ^ Australasian Chronicle, 20 September 1842, p. 2; 22 September 1842, p. 1; and 24 September 1842, p. 2. See also Webby, p. 48 and Vening, p. 144.
  16. ^ Goulburn Herald, 28 August 1852, p. 6, and reprinted widely in NSW newspapers.
  17. ^ "The Horseman Who Faced the Storm", Goulburn Herald, 3 October 1860, p. 4 (a reprint of the poem by Felix which had appeared in the Weekly Register of 1845 and the Goulburn Herald of 1848).
  18. ^ Mrs. Mary Kennedy, "Recollections of an Australian Squatter's Wife, 1832-1912", State Library of NSW, A 2105, microfilm CY1338, Draft C typescript, p. 20A. See Vening, p. 147.

Sources

Further reading

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