True History of the Kelly Gang (43 page)
He had no strength. His left arm was useless. He began to swing down
out of the stirrup but fell hard onto the ground. He walked painfully towards
his brother, no longer deigning to take cover or hide himself. He hammered
the butt of his revolver against his chest to let Dan hear him coming to the
rescue.
I am the b––––y Monitor, my boys.
But he was not the Monitor, he was a man of skin and shattered bone
with blood squelching in his boot. The Martini-Henry bullets slammed
against him and he was jolted and jarred, his head slammed sideways, yet he
would not stop.
You shoot children, you b––––y dogs. You can’t shoot me.
He fired, but he could not see to aim. He roared and raised his revolver
and struck it against his chest, the blows ringing with the distinctiveness of a
blacksmith’s hammer in the morning air.
Dan! Come with me, Dan. I am the b––––y Monitor.
But between him and Dan there was a small round policeman in a tweed
hat standing quietly beside a tree. It was plump little toads like him who had
fed off the Kellys for ever. He might as well have been Hall or Flood or Fitzpatrick,they had become the same.
Ned fired. Then the man dropped on one knee, raised his rifle and fired
two shots in quick succession.
Ned never heard the rifle fire but the first blow hit his right leg and he was
on the ground before he felt the deeper sharper pain of the second hit.
My legs, you mongrel!
And then they were on him like a pack of dingoes. They ripped him,
kicked him, cried that they would shoot him dead, and even while their
boots thudded on his armoured chest he saw his little brother standing on the
veranda. He was a Kelly, he would never run.
Ned Kelly would be spared the sight of Dan’s empty useless armour which
was raked from the ashes of Jones Hotel on Monday afternoon. It was his sisters, Kate and Maggie, who would be left to fight the police for possession of
the two black and bubbled bodies which had been found lying side by side in
the burnt-out hotel.
“The scene at Greta, when the charred remains of Hart and Dan Kelly
were carried by their friends, was perfectly indescribable,” reported
The Benalla Ensign.
“The people seemed to flock from the gum trees. They were
some of the worst-looking people that I ever saw in all my life.”
Thomas Curnow, meanwhile, was escorted by six policemen directly from
his cottage to the Special Train and from there he was taken to Melbourne,
where government protection was provided him and his wife for four more
months. This was curious treatment for a hero, and he was called a hero
more than once, although less frequently and less enthusiastically than he
might have reasonably expected.
If this lack of lasting recognition disappointed him, he never revealed it
directly, although the continuing, ever-growing adoration of the Kelly Gang
could always engage his passions.
What is it about we Australians, eh? he demanded. What is wrong with
us? Do we not have a Jefferson? A Disraeli? Might not we find someone betterto admire than a horse-thief and a murderer? Must we always make such
an embarrassing spectacle of ourselves?
In private, his relationship with Ned Kelly was more complicated, and
the souvenir he carried from Glenrowan seems to have made its own private
demands upon his sympathy. The evidence provided by the manuscript suggests
that in the years after the Siege of Glenrowan he continued to labour
obsessively over the construction of the dead man’s sentences, and it was he
who made those small grey pencil marks with which the original manuscript
is decorated.
12 page pamphlet in the collection of the Mitchell Library,
Sydney. Contains elements in common with the handwritten
account in the Melbourne Library (V.L. 10453). The author
identified solely by the initials S.C. Printer: Thomas
Warriner & Sons, Melbourne, 1955, the year following
Thomas Curnow’s death.
DEATH OF EDWARD KELLY
Colonel Rede, the Sheriff for the Central Bailiwick, was attended by Mr Ellis,
the Under-Sheriff, and presented himself at the door of the condemned cell
punctually at 10 o’clock to demand the body of Edward Kelly in order to
carry out the awful sentence of death. Mr. Castieau, the Governor of MelbourneGaol, had some little time previously visited the prisoner, and seen
his irons knocked off; and the necessary warrant being presented by the Sheriff, he tapped at the door, and the prisoner was made acquainted with the
fearful fact that his last hour had arrived. All this time Upjohn, the hangman, who was officiating in this horrible capacity for the first time, had
remained unseen; but upon the door of Kelly’s cell being opened, the signal
was given and he emerged from the condemned cell opposite, now occupied
by his first victim. He stepped across the scaffold quietly and, as he did so,
quietly turned his head and looked down upon the spectators, revealing a
fearfully repulsive countenance.
The hangman is an old man about 70 years of age, but broad-shouldered
and burly. As he was serving a sentence when he volunteered for this dreadful office, and as that sentence is still unexpired, he is closely shaved and
cropped, and wears the prison dress. Thick bristles of a pure white stick up
all over his crown and provide him a ghastly appearance. He has heavy features altogether, the nose perhaps being the most striking and ugly.
As this was Upjohn’s first attempt at hanging, Dr Barker was present
alongside the drop, to see that the knot was placed in the right position.
Upjohn disappeared into the condemned cell, and proceeded to pinion Kelly
with a strong broad leather belt. The prisoner, however, remarked, “You
need not pinion me,” but was, of course, told that it was indispensable.
Preceded by the crucifix, which was held up before him by the officiating
priests, Kelly was then led onto the platform. He had not been shaved or
cropped, but was in prison clothes. He seemed calm and collected, but paler
than usual, although this effect might have been produced by the white cap
placed over his head, but not yet drawn down over his face. As he stepped on
the drop, he remarked in a low tone, “Such is life.”
The hangman then proceeded to adjust the rope, the Deans in the meantime reading the prayer proper to the Catholic Church on such occasions.
The prisoner winced slightly at the first touch of the rope, but quickly recovered himself and moved his head in order to facilitate the work of Upjohn in
fixing the knot properly. No sooner was the knot fixed than, without the prisoner being afforded a chance of saying anything more, the signal was given;
and the hangman, pulling down the cap, stepped back and, withdrawing the
bolt, had done his work.
At the same instant, the mortal remains of Ned Kelly were swinging some
eight feet below where he had been previously standing. At first it appeared
as if death had been instantaneous, for there was for a second or two only the
usual shudder that passes through the frame of hanged men; but then the
legs were drawn up for some distance, and then fell suddenly again. This
movement was repeated several times, but finally all motion ceased, and at
the end of four minutes all was over, and Edward Kelly had gone to a higher
tribunal to answer for his faults and crimes. The body was allowed to
remain hanging the usual time, and the formal inquest was afterwards held.
The outlaw had requested that his mother might be released from MelbourneGaol and his body handed over for burial in consecrated ground.
Neither of these requests were granted, and the remains were buried within
the precincts of the gaol.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Paul Priday and Sam Carey, who accompanied me on my initial research trip to North Eastern Victoria; Laurie Muller and Richard Leplastrier, who were my companions and instructors on a later visit; and Esmai and Ken Wortman whose trust in me I have attempted to honour in these pages.
I owe a particular debt to these books: John McQuilton’s
The Kelly
Outbreak,
Kevin Passey and Gary Dean’s
Harry Power: Tutor of Ned
Kelly,
Henry Glassie’s
Irish Folktales,
Keith McMenomy’s
Ned Kelly: The
Authentic Illustrated Story
and Ian Jones’
Ned Kelly: A Short Life.
Of these, it is Ian Jones I am most particularly obliged to. It was to his works I turned, almost daily, when I was lost or bewildered or simply forgetful of the facts.
Many other people were helpful. Peter Smalley, Kevin Rapley, Diane Gardiner, Roland Martyn, Roy Foster and Evan Boland all led me towards information that had previously eluded me. Joe Crowley acted as my research assistant in Australia. Terry O’Hanlon applied a stern eye to matters agricultural. Sharon Olds and David Williamson read late drafts of the manuscript and contributed useful and constructive criticism.
I laboured for four exhilarating weeks in collaboration with my editor Gary Fisketjon, whose green spiderweb annotations (delivered daily by messenger from midtown Manhattan, or Franklin, Tennessee, or Adelaide, South Australia) sometimes precipitated a storm of silent debate but always, day after day, page after page, resulted in a tighter, truer, better book. Who says there are no great editors anymore?
Finally, my greatest debt is to my wife, Alison Summers, whose clear literary intelligence and flawless dramatic instinct illuminated and clarified a work that at times threatened to swamp and drown me.
PETER CAREY
TRUE HISTORY
OF THE KELLY GANG
Born in Australia in 1943, Peter Carey lives in New York City with his wife, Alison Summers, and their two sons. The author of six previous novels and a collection of stories, he won the Booker Prize for
Oscar and Lucinda;
his other honors include the Commonwealth Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
ALSO BY PETER CAREY
Jack Maggs
The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
The Tax Inspector
Oscar and Lucinda
Bliss
Illywhacker
The Fat Man in History
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JANUARY 2002
Copyright
©
2000 by Peter Carey
Map by James Sinclair, copyright © 2001 by Random House, Inc.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and
colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Carey, Peter.
True history of the Kelly gang / Peter Carey.
p. cm.
1. Kelly, Ned, 1855–1880—Fiction. 2. Bushrangers—Fiction.
3. Australia—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.3.C36 T7 2001
823’.914—dc21 00-042853
eISBN: 978-0-307-42983-4
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