The Popular Defence of Chidley

Abstract

The appearance within the last few years of both a book and a play recalling the life of William James Chidley has resurrected, if not re solved, a number of questions about his career. Chidley's autobiography, edited by S. Mclnerney and published for the first time in 1977, is illuminating on the sex reformer's own life as well as on aspects of Aus tralian sexual and social life at the turn of the century. Readers of the autobiography will know that it says little about Chidley's last years, the years in which he achieved his notoriety; the crucial events are out lined in an introduction by Mclnerney while a more documentary account is available in Bill Hornadge's pamphlet Chidley's Answer to the Sex Problem.1 With considerable licence, George Hutchinson has recon structed Chidley's life in No Room for Dreamers, a play which had a very successful run in Sydney during 1980. In spite of its attempt to place Chidley in an Australian historical context, this play abstracted the sex reformer from his social milieu, to present his as an eccentric figure, out of place and out of time. It is Chidley's isolation which emerges from the play, not his manifold contacts with Sydney intel lectuals, socialists, feminists and with the more anonymous crowds which listened to him on the Domain or flocked to public meetings in his sup port in 1912 and 1916. It is this support which I want to explore in this article. Let us first recall, however, some essential details of the man's propaganda, the source of his notoriety. Beginning in Melbourne in 1911, and moving to Sydney in 1912, Chidley promulgated an 'answer' to the mystery of contemporary de generacy. Civilised society was essentially corrupt, dying rather than living; the evidence was to be found in the increasing incidence of disease, madness, crime and, from 1914, in the brutal spectacle of the war. The panacea for these troubles, so Chidley told his audiences, was to be sought in a return to the 'simple life'. It was not a unique call. Indeed, one of the state's foremost and respected social improvers, Dr Richard Arthur, was known at the same time for his advocacy of 'The Simple Life', the title of a speech in which he deplored the hungering for money, promoting in its stead a life-style which included much sun shine and a healthy diet. Chidley too looked to sunshine and diet, though his commitment was more extreme. Stressing the absurdity of European clothing in the Australian climate, he adopted for his own use a light tunic; opposed not only to meat but to a cooked diet of any description, he advised a sustenance of fresh fruit and nuts. To these prescriptions, Chidley added a third, and on this rested his reputation. Where Dr Arthur saw ill-health and degeneracy resulting from the abuse of sexuality, so too did Chidley. Arthur's solution to the problem of venereal disease was education for purity of life, the culti vation of 'heroic self-denial', especially in young men. His language was circumspect, however; in contemporary fashion, the details of sexuality were clouded in moralism and obfuscation. Chidley on the other hand