The book famously arose from a debate about what drew youngsters to reading. His buddy Bertram Stevens stated that children adored fairies, but Lindsay said that they desired food. The volume that resulted was glossed as detailing the “Walks, Talks, Travels, Exploits, Fights, Stratagems, and Sing-songs of Bill Barnacle (a Sailor), Sam Sawnoff (a Penguin), and Bunyip Bluegum (a Native Bear), told in prose and verse… and illustrated in 100 pictures,” according to publisher Angus and Robertson.
At the core of it all is Albert, the Puddin’, of whom Bill informs the astounded Bunyip, “me and Sam have been eatin’ away… for years, and there’s nary a scar on him.” Lindsay properly assessed the attractiveness of a “cut-and-come-again” pudding, particularly one that switched from steak-and-kidney to plum duff with a whistle. However, the popularity of The Magic Pudding may be seen as evidence of Stevens’ claim, given Albert’s wilfulness, which is generally associated with elves, sprites, and similar creatures.
When Bill and Sam explain to Bunyip why they have “this wonderful Puddin’,” they tell him about their shipwreck on an iceberg. There, an obese cook named Curry and Ice prepares “in a phantom pot/a large plum-duff an’ a rump-steak hot,” but refuses to share it with his starved shipmates.
Bill pauses his song in the middle. “There’s a stanza missing here,” he writes, “due to the difficulties of explaining exactly what happened when me and Sam uncovered that cook’s dishonest character.”
The Puddin’ isn’t having it. “I had my eye on the whole thing,” he says, “and it’s my view that if he hadn’t been so round you’d never rolled him off the iceberg, because you and him were both shouting out, ‘Yo heave Ho’ for half-an-hour, with him attempting to grab on to Bill’s beard.”
Albert’s malice (“He’s that cunning, attorneys couldn’t handle him!”) creates nearly as much problems for the Pudding proprietors as their apparent adversaries, Watkin Wombat and his pal, “that snooting, snouting scumbag, the Possum.”
Given that the government censor regularly banned his work for obscenity during the twentieth century, Norman Lindsay may appear to be an odd creator of a cherished book for youngsters.
When the conservative Argus analysed his 1930 work Redheap, for example, the critic concluded that “all the characters are distorted and some of them are bestial.” These animals wallow in the muck until the book concludes, following a series of horrible occurrences.”
Norman joined his elder brother Lionel in Melbourne’s bohemia as a teenager, the offspring of one of those remarkable families gifted with several talented members (think of the Mitfords or Pankhursts). They were so impoverished among the city’s young painters in the 1890s that a member of one of the city’s larrikin gangs once bailed them up, wanting to know how these “artists” so effectively evaded employment.
Lindsay supplied The Bulletin with jingoistic drawings depicting evil Huns, pacifists, and socialistic shirkers throughout the war years.
When Bunyip sings the national anthem in the novel, Watkin Wombat is forced to remove his belltopper for fear of being judged disloyal. The ruse shows the stolen Puddin’ resting on Watkin’s head, but it also harkens back to 1918, when Billy Hughes’ administration imprisoned a slew of “disloyalists” under the War Precautions Act.
Later, a judge presiding over a trial of Puddin’ thieves in Toolaroo refers to another character as “an unadulterated Jew.” It’s a reminder of Lindsay’s connection to some of his era’s nastier biases, as does his representation of koalas, bandicoots, and other native creatures roaming across a terrain as wholly white and solely male.
Lindsay’s generally disastrous love for Nietzsche, Wagner, and comparable intellectuals, on the other hand, lends The Magic Pudding its particular sensibility.
A cinematic version was made in 2000, with John Cleese supplying the voice of the Puddin’. According to IMDB, the plot revolves on “an old man, a young anthropomorphic koala, a South Pole penguin, and Albert, a magical sentient walking and talking bowl of pudding with an attitude… seeking for the koala’s missing parents.”
Lindsay, on the other hand, portrays Bill as a brawling sailor with Sawnoff Sam as his violent sidekick. The Penguin advises Watkin Wombat (who is limping) at one point:
I have no qualms about fighting the stupid when they deserve it.
Or don’t attempt to pipe your eye, or I’ll flop it with my flip.
Bunyip, on the other hand, is fleeing his Uncle Wattleberry, who is irritated by the older bear’s flowing whiskers. Lindsay’s scorn for wowserism and milksop Christianity is expressed via the characters. They like the basic joys of eating, singing, and fighting, and they are ever watchful against anyone who would take their Puddin’ by force or cunning.
They exist in the moral universe of any younger sibling who is concerned about a brother stealing the dessert. The book, in fact, oozes a child’s unashamed glee in wordplay, rhyme, and badinage. Bill, in particular, foreshadows the famed Captain Haddock of Tintin fame by several decades.
“Of all the cockeyed tinker’s swivel-eyed, up-jumped, cross-grained kids,” he says to a bad-tempered bird, “if hitting parrots on the beak wasn’t too painful for enjoyment, I’d land you a sockdolager on the snout that’d put you out till Christmas.”
Lindsay’s serious art hasn’t aged well, with many of his once-controversial paintings appearing strangely comical to modern eyes. However, his wonderful paintings for The Magic Pudding brilliantly portray the amusing nastiness of his characters. We recognise the swag-carrying Parrot as a shady boozer, but he’s still a real bird.
The novel concludes with the Judge clouting the Puddin’ thieves with a bottle of port while singing, “As I find tremendous satisfaction/Hitting anybody who/Can supply such distraction/Why, I’ll take a go at you.” The Puddin’ owners live in a tree belonging to a “grave, elderly dog named Benjimen Brandysnap,” with Albert caged in “a tiny Puddin’ paddock” from which he can hurl unpleasant remarks at those passing by, a practise to which he is particularly prone, the narrator notes.
Albert, happy birthday! May you be able to continue “throwing bits of bark at the cabbages and pulling faces at the small pickle onions to make them squeal with horror” for another hundred years or more!
• HarperCollins is now publishing a 100th anniversary edition of The Magic Pudding. The State Library of NSW is hosting an exhibition of original drawings from The Magic Pudding through February 24, 2019.
