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Gippsland, Victoria. He threw himself energetically into work, producing poems,ballads, stories and articles.During this burst of creativity Esson also produced his fIrst plays, the work forwhich he is now remembered. Two very different dramatic works came out at aboutthe same time. In 1911 he published a volume of three one-act plays whichdemonstrate clearly his early attempts to follow Yeats' advice. One of them inparticular, Dead Timber, is an extraordinarily gloomy picture of life on a smallselection, with the hostility of the land manifesting itself in the emotional turmoiland defeat felt by an unnamed Farmer and his family. The gloom of the play isa quality which Yeats had not included in his advice. 'Write country comedies', hehad said. The other two plays are colourful vignettes of life in the slums of Melbourne.Esson referred to these plays as 'no more than studies, but they suggest the wayI wish to write. '9The other play which he wrote and produced at this time was a political comedy,The Time is Not Yet Ripe, which even then he was describing in letters as 'five yearsold in style' and which he came to dislike for the rest of his life. It represented forhim, with its wittily cynical dialogue and sophisticated social style, everything whichhe was trying to avoid.By 1914 Esson's faith in the importance of strictly local material was growing.Writing in the Bulletin he was calling for good bush plays, and was quoting withapproval a remark by Havelock Ellis, that 'it is only by being national that onebecomes international.'10 Esson wrote a particularly virulent attack on the Sydneyplaywright Arthur Adams, for writing the English-inspired drawing-room comedywhich Esson loathed:In an authentic Australian play there should be a real atmosphere - some space andsunshine, wild nature or primitive character; something with a cow in it would have beenmuch better; closer to the earth and reality. IIDeep down Esson did not really believe that the earth was the reality which hewas interested in, but he had convinced himself, for the moment, that it was. Atthe same time he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the realities of thesociety he was living in. He became unhappy and antagonistic towards Australianmiddle class suburban life, which he saw as philistine and restrictive of the artisticspirit. Beneath this dissatisfaction lay a considerable element of self-doubt. As DavidWalker has written,Behind Esson's attacks upon the mediocrity of Australian society, his growing contemptfor ideas and his preference for life itself, lay a deeper self-distrust rooted in his middleclassorigins in a colonial cuiture. 12The man who believed, in theory, that 'Australia Felix' represented the spirit offreedom and revolution throughout the world actually felt at this time that Australiansociety was weakening his powers of imagination and cramping his work. He wantedto escape. In 1915 he attempted to enlist but was rejected because of his poor health.In 1916 he once again set sail for the other side of the world, to seek inspiration.It is significant that at fIrst he went to New York, the centre of one of the newyoung cultures which were his models of nationalist art. He found it disappointing,and concluded that America was 'the least artistic country in the world', and writingto his friend Palmer that he was 'staggered at the low standards of even the educatedAmerican. '13 So it was beginning to seem that only the old world would do. Fatefully,in New York he met Padraic Colum, the simple poet of the soil with his roots inpeasant Ireland who had ended up a literary fIgure in New York. Esson was headingin the opposite direction, in more ways than one.He arrived in London at the end of 1917 and immediately started to settle intoWESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 37