by Elizabeth Lhuede
Another in our series of posts on authors with works published in 1924.
Beatrice Bevan (née Vale) was born in Victoria in 1876, the daughter of W M K Vale, sometime Attorney-General of Victoria. In 1901, Beatrice married the Rev. Hopkin Llewellyn Willet Bevan, and the couple moved to China, where the reverend was Principal of Medhurst College, Shanghai, from 1907-13. From there, and following the ill health of their only son, they moved to Gawler, SA, where Hopkin Bevan was appointed Congregational minister. According to Beatrice’s AustLit entry, the couple were very poor, but managed to send their son to university. After her husband’s death in 1933, Bevan lived with her son at Willard House in Adelaide and contributed verse to Adelaide newspapers and journals.
Described by Deborah Adelaide as a “writer of sentimental verse and of patriotic occasional poetry”, Bevan had a number of pieces published in 1924: a poem to welcome in the new year, an Easter poem, and one for ANZAC Day. She also contributed prose on “The prevention of crime” and “Temperance reform”. The poem “Zingaro”, which appears below, was published under her married name, “Mrs Willett Bevan”, the only non-occasional poem she published that year. Harking back to the folk song tradition, “Zingaro” employs the then-common trope of a child stolen by “gypsies” (also known as “Romany”). It’s interesting because although the use of the trope serves inevitably to reinscribe values now considered racist, the poem also demonstrates a sympathy which arguably subverts that view.
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ZINGARO
by Mrs. Willett-Bevan.
Fal de ral
For the open road.
For the friendship of all wild things,
For the smell of the earth
And the new day’s birth
And all that the new day brings
I.
My mother was lost on the moors one day,
(Fal de ral for the open road!)
And at dusk they had not found her.
But led by the glow of a campers’ fire
Where the gypsies grouped around her.
The people came, in the darkening night,
On the child asleep in the warmth and light
Of a gypsy’s cloak, and a gypsy fire,
And the gypsies guarding o’er her.
II.
But her father raged! Called the gypsies “Thieves!”
(Fal de ral for the open road!)
And shewed them his face ascorning,
Till an aged crone turned a flashing eye
And uttered a word of warning.
But the father, lifting the sleeping child
From her little nest near the red logs piled,
Cast a frown at the gypsy’s dusky face
And cursed her, root and branches.
III.
Then the women’s voice came in bitter wrath,
(Fal de ral for the open road!)
“We guarded your child from evil!
But your curse shall fall on the little one.
Since you call mine ‘spawn of devil.’ ”
And my mother grew to a woman’s height
With a haunting memory of that dark night,
When she wandered a frightened little one
To the friendly gypsies’ camping.
IV.
When I was born, ’twas a gypsy child,
(Fal de ral for the open road!)
Who was born of a milk-fair mother.
And in form and soul there seems nothing kin
To my sister or my brother.
For I was born, a brown Romany child
With a love of the road, and a love of the wild;
And I cannot live with my kith and kin,
And have never known a mother.
V.
She died at my birth! And the story goes,
(Fal de ral for the open road!)
That her face grew radiant, dying.
She lifted a hand to my dusky head,
Where beside her I was lying;
“O, the gypsy’s curse is now gone from me!
You were born to lift it! Unfettered, free.
May the good God keep you!” She stroked my head.
And the watchers knew her dying.
Fa! de ral
For the open road,
And the blessing of light and shade!
For the friendly beasts.
And my camp-fire feasts.
And all that the Lord has made!
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Adelaide, Debra. Australian women writers: A bibliographic guide (Pandora, London: 1988).
Beatrice Vale Bevan, AustLit entry. http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A10826 accessed 05/09/24
Bevan, Beatrice Vale, “Zingaro”, The Register, 28 Jun 1924: 5. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/57383313 accessed 05/09/24
Photograph of Beatrice Vale Bevan, care of State Library Victoria, photographer unknown; http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/399328; accessed 05/09/24
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Elizabeth Lhuede has a PhD in Australian Poetry from Macquarie University. In 2012, she instigated the Australian Women Writers Challenge as a contribution to overcoming gender bias in the reviewing of works by Australian women. More recently she has focused on bringing to light the life and works of forgotten Australian women writers.
