LETTER IV.
Government House, Perth,
18th June.
It is actually a whole fortnight since my last letter, but you can hardly fancy how busy I have been. The big boxes arrived safely, and we have had such an unpacking and settling! Hanging up pictures, changing the furniture about in the ridiculous way one does in a new house, and finding out all sorts of pretty walks and views in the garden. It is really a charming house, and though it looks very large from outside, it is not really too big, even for our modest establishment. The rooms are of a beautiful shape and size, besides being very conveniently arranged; and the verandahs or cloisters, as they are called, give shade and privacy to the sitting-rooms, besides making a nice place to walk in of a wet afternoon. The garden is extremely pretty, with its sloping terraces down to the waters’ edge, of which the broad estuary of the Swan River makes a fine expanse. The river here is as wide as a lake, with low wooded shores opposite, and a ruined mill gleaming out from among the trees. Of a calm still day, when every leaf and twig is mirrored in the water, it is beautiful; but it often rises into quite big waves with white crests.
What I most delight in out of doors is a good-sized paddock, green with couch-grass which, they tell me, lasts all summer; nice stables and poultry houses stand in the middle of it, and there is lots of room for my cows and chickens and pigs. We must not expect many flowers in the garden, for it is midwinter; but quantities of geraniums are in blossom, and they seem to grow almost wild in this sandy soil, the violets too are in profusion, that delicious sort called the “Blue Czar.” The turf is very green, and I have already seen a great many different sorts of trees from different climates and places all growing happily together, such as oaks and oleanders, gum trees and olives, bananas and willows. There are also several large fig trees, as well as peach, apricot, apple, pear, and almond trees, and I am sure Louis will have what he calls “a good time” in the summer among the fruit.
I cannot find any raspberry, gooseberry, or currant bushes, but large beds of strawberries slope down nearly to the water’s edge; and I ought certainly to tell you about the long arcades of vines which stretch in every direction, quite bare at this time of year, except for a russet leaf here and there. The varieties of grapes growing all over the garden appear to be endless, trained on espaliers as well as over these long arcades; and I can see from my window clumps of bamboo, and big tufts of handsome pampas grass and of the New Zealand flax. It is all extremely pretty, and we are delighted with our new home, I assure you. There are nice walks too about Perth, if it ever comes to pass that I have time to go out for a walk, but as yet I am much too tired by the afternoon for anything except a cup of tea and a rest when it has grown really too dark to settle things any more.
I need hardly say that the very first place to be arranged was Louis’s little room next mine, and it looked as cosy and bright as possible by the time the travellers drove up, on a lovely sunshiny morning, about mid-day, three days after I last wrote. Happily the weather remained gloriously fine until they were safely housed here, and you may imagine how thankful I felt when I heard the wind and rain beating on the roof the very first night after they had arrived, and thought that my little boy was snug in bed in the next room. He and Catherine declare they enjoyed themselves immensely, driving slowly through the dense bush, only going 35 or 40 miles a day. They took nearly a week about it, stopping to lunch at mid-day out in the bush or forest, under the shade of the big trees, and lighting a fire to boil their potatoes or their kettle. This was half the fun to Louis, who declares he is now an expert bushman, and is always inviting me to come and “camp out” in the bush. They were under the charge of a police constable who drove, and who seems to have taken great care of them. Louis tells me, with breathless delight, of seeing kangaroos darting across the track, almost in front of the horses, and of flocks of screaming white cockatoos overhead, and of having himself dislodged an opossum rat from a hollow log, which he was turning over lest a snake should have taken up its winter quarters there. They did not start until after breakfast each day, and managed to get under shelter by the early dark evenings. Only once were they out after five o’clock, and then it was over a very bad bit of road, where the horses had to walk nearly all the way, so deep were the water-filled holes. I really believe Louis liked that belated bit the best of all the journey.
He was full of stories, as you may imagine, but the one you will like to hear is about the puppy, who also enjoyed the overland journey hugely. You must know Monsieur Puppy, unlike every other pug I ever heard of, is a capital ratter, and flies at everything he suspects of being a rat. One day they had stopped to lunch near a settler’s cottage, and whilst they were eating their cold pressed-beef and biscuit, a sow and a lot of baby pigs came grunting up to see what they could get. The pigs were very, very small and quite black. Puppy must have thought they were rats, for in an instant he had darted at them, seized one unoffending little pig by the back of its neck, and was shaking it violently. You can imagine the scene, can’t you? The old mother’s grunting dismay, the shrieks of the captured pig, and the squeals and rapid flight of the rest of the family. Nothing would induce the puppy to let go; even when the sow ran at him he merely took his victim farther off, and if he dropped the wretched little animal for a moment, it was only to seize it again in a firmer grip and shake it even more furiously. He could not understand what sort of rat he had got hold of, which screamed so loudly, and I am sure the pig could not think what strange wild beast had caught him. Louis and Catherine declare they could not interfere for the little pig’s protection, because they were laughing so much that they had no voice to call off Monsieur Puppy, and it was only the appearance of an old woman with a broom which persuaded puppy to let go. But he was very pleased with himself for a long time afterwards, though he evidently suspected there must have been a mistake somewhere.
We are having deluges of rain every day just now, and it is extremely cold, but I am much too busy to think about the weather, and we never can get enough rain here, so every one speaks of the wet weather as a “splendid season.” There are such quantities of things to do and to buy. For we seem to need everything all at once! Horses, cows, cocks and hens and ducks; but everybody is very kind in advising, and helping us to supply our needs. A thousand times a day Louis and I say, “Don’t you wish Guy were here?”—to see something specially delightful—but I can’t allow myself to go on thinking about that. Some day you will be with us we hope, and we must only look steadily forward to that happy time.
Louis has been reading the Swiss Family Robinson on board ship, and is very keen on carrying out their mode of life here. In fact he has cut down so many young bamboos to build huts, lighted so many fires in the garden, and generally done so much mischief that within three days of his arrival I had to pack him off to school. Fortunately the High School is a very good one, with a capital head master (curiously enough, a great friend of your former “Head”), and it is not too far off for the young pickle to walk up to school at nine o’clock every morning. It is generally raining when he ought to be coming back in the afternoon, and it is quite in vain that I send up an umbrella and greatcoat for him. He considers it much more delightful and “grown up” to start off in a pelting shower, dodge my messenger, and arrive at home drenched and breathless. One day he returned on pony-back, hatless, and holding tight on to the saddle fore and aft. He had begged for a ride from one of his schoolfellows, and the pony had galloped off as soon as Louis mounted. This was “scarcely wonderful,” as Alice says in Wonderland, for he had made himself a spur of a long orange thorn, and as he has never ridden in his life he had no more idea of holding in the pony than a monkey would have had. However, he was by no means daunted, and will no doubt try again very soon, in spite of my precautions.
We have given, and been to, a great many balls and dinners and pleasant parties of all sorts, but, although they were very nice and amusing to ourselves, still I fear you would not care to be told about them, nor would it interest you to hear about our excursions to Fremantle and Guildford, or about the visits to Schools and Orphanages which we have made; and I cannot yet tell you as much as you would like to know about the various football clubs or cricket matches. You must wait till summer for them, you know.