Francis William Lauderdale Adams (27 September 1862 – 4 September 1893)[1] was a British writer ofanti-capitalist views.[2] Adams was a representative Britishfin de siècle figure whose time in Australia contributed to its radical nationalism of the period, socialist ideas and aesthetics.[3]
His health failing rapidly fromtuberculosis, Adams spent the winter of December 1892 to February 1893 inAlexandria. Letters are extant from this time that he wrote toWilfrid Scawen Blunt.[4] Adams worked on finishing a book attacking theBritish rule in Egypt.[5] Adams shot himself dead at a boarding house inMargate, England, on 4 September 1893.[6] He shot himself in the mouth during a severe tubercularhaemorrhage; he carried a pistol for this purpose. He was survived by his second wife, Edith (née Goldstone). It was anassisted suicide but she was not charged with any crime.[7]
He was born inValletta,Malta, the son ofAndrew Leith Adams FRS, an army surgeon and scientist, and his wife the novelistBertha Jane Grundy.[8][9] By 1878, when his father took up a chair inCork, and his mother had published a novel and was moving into magazine journalism, his parents may have separated.[10][11][12] The family home was inMaida Vale, London.[13]
After completing his education atShrewsbury School, Adams was in Paris from 1878 to 1880.[14] He served from 1879 as anattaché there at the British Embassy.[9] Not making his way into a diplomatic career, he then in 1882 took up a teaching position as an assistant master atVentnor College on theIsle of Wight for two years.[9][12]
John Sutherland states that Adams was estranged from his family by the early 1880s.[14] He was out of sympathy with his mother's lifestyle.[3] Tasker believes that he dropped thedouble-barrelled name Leith-Adams used by his parents as a "rejection of thegenteel".[15] His father died in 1882, and his mother married again, in 1883, toRobert De Courcy Laffan.[10][16]
In July 1884 Adams married Helen Uttley whom he knew from his lodgings in Ventnor; he had divided his time, some spent there with periods based in London.[12]
Adams joined theSocial Democratic Federation, aMarxist political party, in London in 1883, and took part inlabour organisation.[9][12] TheLabour Annual 1895 wrote that "E. London life burnt awful impressions on him."[17] His poem on theWest India Docks inSongs of the Army of the Night came with comments beginning "The spectacle of the life of the London Dock labourers is one of the most terrible examples of the logical outcome of the present social system."[18]
Adams was in Australia from 1884 to 1890, moving there with his wife.[22] They travelled separately, Francis Adams taking the clipperRodney in mid-1884.[12] He had work as a tutor on a station atJerilderie,New South Wales, but soon moved on toSydney; Helen had joined him there by early 1886. He dedicated himself to writing.[3] He contributed to periodicals, includingThe Bulletin.[23]
Later Adams was inBrisbane, where Helen died ofrheumatic fever after giving birth to a baby boy, Leith, who also died. Adams remained in Brisbane until the early part of 1887. From Sydney, he went on a sea voyage to China and Japan.[3] He remarried later in 1887.[24]
In the roles of supporters ofstate socialism and "labour polemicists", Adams andWilliam Lane of theBoomerang influenced later economic thought on the Australian left.[26][27]Sydney Jephcott, a friend of Adams, first encountered Lane while staying with Adams.[28]Mary Gilmore wrote in 1953 that Adams dominated the field of "revolutionary verse" in Australia in his time.[12]
TheLabour Annual mentioned Adams as a participant in the "great Australian strike".[17] It was defined by George Lacon James as a concerted campaign fororganised labour, "a trial of strength against shipowner, squatter, and employer of labour generally."Ada Cambridge, of radical views but not a socialist, analysed it as substantively "the Shearers' Strike and the Maritime Strike", begun by the shearers.[29][30][31] Since theLabour Annual gave the date 1888, a context for Adams's involvement is in Lane's political novelThe Workingman's Paradise (1892), of which "the first part is laid during the summer of 1888–89", ahead of the1891 Australian shearers' strike.[32]
Adams returned to England in early 1890.[3] He visited his mother, staying at theKing Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon where his stepfather Robert Laffan was headmaster.[12] As Mr. F. W. Leith-Adams, he was mentioned in a newspaper report of an "at home" event she held, on 12 July 1892.[35]
His health failing rapidly from tuberculosis, Adams spent the winter of December 1892 to February 1893 inAlexandria. Letters are extant from this time that he wrote toWilfrid Scawen Blunt;[36] Blunt visited Egypt, returning to the United Kingdom in May 1893.[37] Adams worked on finishing a book attacking theBritish rule in Egypt. He name-checked Blunt in it ("Mr Wilfrid Blunt, to whose writings I owe several suggestions").[38]
Adams shot himself dead at a boarding house inMargate, England, on 4 September 1893.[39] He shot himself in the mouth during a severe tubercularhaemorrhage; he carried a pistol for this purpose. He was survived by his second wife, Edith (née Goldstone). It was anassisted suicide but she was not charged with any crime. At the inquest, Margatecoroner Toke Harvey Boys[40] asked Edith Adams if she could have prevented the death. She replied in the affirmative, but said that to do so would have been the act of a "contemptible coward". Bernard Shaw subsequently took an interest in her.[41] The localmedical officer of health, Dr. Arthur William Scatliff, testified that Adams had already lost so much blood that death was inevitable.[42][43]
Adams published as a teenager, for example a story inEmily Faithfull'sVictoria Magazine, Christmas issue 1878, for which his mother also wrote.[46][47][48]
The Melbournians: A Novel (1892);[53] a society romance featuring a central female character and a democratically minded Australian journalist.[3]
Lady Lovan : A Novel (1895) (as by "Agnes Farrell")[54][55]
His novelA Child of the Age, a reworking ofLeicester, an Autobiography, was brought out posthumously in 1894 byJohn Lane, as the fourth book in the publisher's Keynote Series.[56] It describes the schooldays (at "Glastonbury") and struggles of a would-be poet and scholar, Bertram Leicester, with afin-de-siècle melancholy.[57]
Adams admired the work ofAdam Lindsay Gordon, writing on him in a piece inAustralian Essays.[59][60] Henry Salt writing in 1921 stated that Adams was more an authentic "Socialist poet" thanWilliam Morris, and linked him toJohn Barlas.[61]
InSongs of the Army of the Night (1888),[62] Adams displayed a deep sympathy with the downtrodden;[3]Samuel George Hobson called it "a passionate outburst of anger and yearning."[24] It has been seen as advocacy ofarmed struggle.[27] The first edition was withVizetelly & Co. A second edition was published in 1892 by William Dobson Reeves, formerly partner with Osborne Turner in Reeves & Turner. A further enlarged edition by Reeves in 1894 included an introduction and memoir by Henry Salt.[2][63][64][65]
Tiberius: A Drama (1894).[71] It was edited with an introduction byWilliam Michael Rossetti.[9] There was a dedication to "Harry Beardoe Adams, only brother, truest critic, dearest friend".[72]
The New Egypt: A Social Sketch was published after Adams's death in 1893, edited by John Wilson Longsdon.[73] Longsdon (1863–1945), a schoolmaster, acted as a literary agent for Adams in the United Kingdom, and later as hisliterary executor. He graduated B.A. atSt John's College, Oxford in 1887.[74][75][76]
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