Miss Marian Marcus Clarke, daughter of the novelist, visited Parliament House on Tuesday afternoon, and was introduced to the Speaker (Hon. F. W. Coneybeer), who conducted the lady over the legislative halls. Miss Clarke, who was introduced to several members, was greatly interested in being shown the corner in the old Assembly Chamber where the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon sat in the sixties, before he took up his residence in Melbourne, and became the friend of her father. Marcus Clarke made the acquaintance of the poet at the Old Yorick Club. The novelist formed a warm affection for the poet, and they were much together. No one more deeply mourned Gordon's tragic end than Clarke, as was shown by the eloquent and sympathetic preface he wrote for the posthumous edition of his collected poems. The scenes of Gordon's Parliamentary days were pointed out to Miss Clarke by Mr. Fred Johns, who is fortunate in having for publication among his biographical memoirs the manuscript of a sketch of Marcus Clarke specially written for the Australian biographer by George Gordon McCrae, an intimate of Australia's greatest novelist, and the last survivor of the notable Melbournian circle which made the beginnings of Australian literature in the sixties.
First published in The Advertiser, 31 May 1916
[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]
