“I would give anything to have a Chinaman to teach my boys vegetable growing,” said the Principal of a Horticultural College near Melbourne to me some years ago. “But the Minister would never allow it, and if he did I should have the whole country about my ears.” He was right, for no freeborn Australian boy would tolerate for a minute being taught anything by an Asiatic. But are they right in this. One may perhaps despise certain traits in every race, in every phase of Nature even, but is that any proof that they have not much to teach us? And after all, as wise men of all ages have realized, it is from our enemies, not from our friends, that we learn most, and the Chinese native is after all perhaps a trifle older than the Australian—though you in my dear foster-country must really forgive me mentioning it.
Once I lived in a house where there was a dog kept named Turk, presumably a watch-dog, but only presumably so, for he would follow anybody, welcome anybody, and almost go into hysterics of joy at a word of favour even from the veriest sundowner. At the gate-house of the railway crossing near by dwelt a fat old Irishwoman with a brood of children, one of whom, little Jack, a most lovable rascal of some seven or eight years, made a regular practice of stealing Turk, bringing him back after several days, and claiming a reward for having found him—usually in the most unlikely places. First of all he was paid for his trouble with a shilling, then sixpence, then the reward dwindled to a penny or an apple, as we all began to realize how we were being had, though we still kept up the solemn pretence just for the sake of the amusement we got out of it. Little Jack was a born bragger. His great boast was: “We’ve been keepin’ gates fur years and years, ever since I wur quite a little chap; and we ain’t never ’ad our gate carried away, all the toime we’ve been at thur job. Why thur’s some as ’as thur gates carried away pretty near every week!” Jack had a great idea of fair play for everyone. Once he brought a very small brother with him, when he came to return Turk, and the master of the house took both of the boys into the orchard for the so-called reward. The tiny one, enchanted with the quantity of fruit, the pink-cheeked peaches and golden apricots, ran hither and thither ejaculating, shouting, and appealing for sympathy in his delight, till at last his elder brother, out of all patience with the constant interruptions to what the master of the orchard was saying, caught him by the shoulder, and, with a sharp shake, whispered hoarsely: “Can’t yer ’old yer jaw, an’ give the bloomin’ bloke a show.” It was his way of showing respect for his elders and betters.
Some time later I was away for several months, and on my return was met by a still older brother—with all Jack’s rascality and none of Jack’s lovableness—who was returning Turk, oozing with easy affection, after some days’ absence.
“Where’s Jack?” I inquired, not at all in the mood to waste pennies.
The boy’s eyes opened wide, with the peculiar hard stare of Australian youth. “Ain’t yer ’eard?” he demanded. “Our Jack’s drowned; we gets knocked out, an’ our Jack drowned the sime day. Australia goin’ ter ’ell, that’s wot it is.”
True enough the Australian eleven had lost the first test match of that season against the Britishers, and little Jack had been drowned in the river the very same day. What does the boy’s calm account of the two events show? An immense patriotism or a lack of natural affection. Neither the one nor the other, but simply and entirely that the very heart and soul of the Australian of to-day—even of the smallest larrikin—is completely engrossed with games and sport; not so much personal sport, such as hunting or shooting, but anything that brings with it a chance of gambling. If you walk through any wide bit of park land or open country near Melbourne, in some hollow or other—perhaps in many—you will chance on groups of men squatting on their haunches, with bent heads, engrossed in some mysterious occupation, while one of their number stands at a little distance on watch. If a policeman comes anywhere within sight the sentry whistles, and the men—or youths, as they mostly are—disperse aimlessly in every direction; hands deep in their pockets, hats on the back of their heads, complete vacuity on their countenances; for it is a “Two-Up School” that they have been forming, and Two-Up is illegal, though it is still played persistently in every quiet nook and corner.
Australians are born gamblers. It is in their blood, I suppose, like restlessness, for there are still to be found in Tasmania secluded spots in the middle of the forests, much like the old native “corroboree” grounds where cock-fights used to be held by the convicts in the early days, and every possible stake that could be mustered laid on the contending birds. Now the tiniest children bet, and bet on anything and everything, while the newspaper boys have a bit on each important race or football match, and an intricate system of gambling with cigarette cards. I think Melbourne is, on the whole, a very sober town—most extraordinarily so—considering the dry heat and the dust. Men go on the “bust,” and “paint the town red,” but there is very little of that persistent soaking that one meets with in London, where the drunkenness, particularly among the women, strikes me as more and more horrible every time I return there. I have been in Melbourne during elections, and high days, and holidays of all sorts, and have always been struck with the good-tempered sobriety of the people. During the five years, 1893–1897, which was a period of general drought in Australia, there was even a further decrease in drunkenness, people having no money, I suppose, for what out here they call “irrigating.” Now that good times have come again the convictions for drunkenness have, unfortunately, also increased. Still, though Victoria drinks more wine than the other States, she consumes considerably less beer and spirits than any, excepting Tasmania. While as for Denmark, which has been held up to her as a model, it consumes 2.54 of spirits per head to Victoria’s 0.67, and 20.6 of beer to Australia’s 11.92. Might it not therefore be suggested that some of the pats of butter, on which Mr. Foster Fraser lays such stress, may perchance have been seen—and counted—twice over?
By some irony of fate it seems as if the different vices and virtues in different countries are in the end pretty nearly balanced. England needs a society to protect the health and lives of its children from unutterable cruelties, though it holds up holy hands at the way an Italian treats his horse. It is shaken through its length and breadth at the idea of the Portuguese persisting in slavery, and yet when the women slaves of the North—who, naked to the waist, swing a heavy hammer at chain and nail making for ten hours a day—strike for a princely minimum wage of 2½d. an hour, the Board of Trade decides that they shall go on as they are for another six months—or, if they can be cajoled into it, for yet another six months—or eternity.
The people in Victoria are not cruel either to their children or their wives, even among the lowest classes, as they are in England. Ask anyone who has nursed in the slums of London—if you doubt this cruelty—how many of the women with cancer in their breasts owe it to their husbands’ playful habit of knocking them down and kicking them; or examine some of the reports of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Neither do the Australians, as a nation, ill-treat their horses or their cattle, or give way to the sexual excesses of the Latin races, but, on the other hand, they most certainly are inveterate gamblers; a far less repulsive vice than many, I admit, but all the same as far reaching as any in the trouble that it causes.
Every Saturday there are races somewhere within easy distance of Melbourne, and by tram and train, carriage and motor, people flock to them. It is part of their religion, their Sabbath falling on a Saturday, like the Jews.
Of course the Cup week in November is the high festival of the year, but the race for the Caulfield Cup runs it close. The Caulfield course is most beautifully situated in wide, open, common-like country, dotted with dark masses of pines, and fringed in the distance with blue tinted mountain ranges, while the air blowing from the sea, across the almost untenanted land, is extraordinarily clear and exhilarating. Then the race is run at the very apex of spring, and the day is as inevitably fine as the week of the Agricultural Show is inevitably and hopelessly wet. Everybody dons their best and newest clothes, the men for the most part showing their sense of the festive season by the exuberant colouring of their socks, which, like the burnished dove, of which Tennyson speaks, shows an even livelier purple than usual. The Australian men do not, as a rule, dress well. If they are commercial or intellectual their clothes are too loose; if they are sporting they are too tight, with overmuch of “fit” and not enough “cut.” But they make up for it with their waistcoats, and socks, and ties. I remember once being at a seaside picnic where there was a beautiful youth in a pale grey suit; his straw boating-hat was bound and banded with mauve, his tie mauve, his shirt a paler tint of the same, his socks a discreet violet. In clambering about the cliffs a bramble impertinently ripped a long tear in the nether part of his nether garments; but he bore it with the sweetest equanimity, in the full knowledge that his under-clothes, thus inadvertently exposed, were also mauve—of the palest tinted silk. It is rather the same with the women. They are very dainty in all the accessories of the toilet, colouring, and trimming, but they do not pay as much attention to cut and material as their English sisters; which is perhaps why they look infinitely better in the summer than the winter, while the girls in white muslins, and silks, and flower-trimmed hats that one sees at the Cup or a Government House garden-party are very hard to beat.
There is an idea that the Australian women’s complexions are not good, they themselves being the first to rave about English roses; but I think their complexions are exquisite, though far more delicate in tint, and perhaps not of so lasting a quality as those seen at home. Still the Melbourne girls resemble the English girls infinitely more than do their Sydney sisters, who are more exotic and altogether fragile in appearance.
New fashions come in slowly and dubiously, for the people luckily possess a strong sense of the ludicrous, and are very much afraid of being made to look foolish, some snapshots taken of the wearers of the hobble-skirt at the last Cup sealing once and for all its inevitable doom.
To this day I smile at the remembrance of the one and only true Directoire costume which ever graced a Melbourne racecourse—worn as it was by a beauteous, though unorthodox, lady—I believe on the Oaks day, the most exclusive and smart day of the whole Cup week. The dress was slit up one side in true Directoire fashion, showing a length of shapely leg well to the knee, and—or so some whispered—a jewelled garter. When scandal reaches a certain point it becomes almost fame, and certainly that particular lady on that particular day was the most discussed person in Australia; her name and that of her protector being on everyone’s tongue.
It was the year in which Lord Nolan won the Cup. He was a complete outsider, and nobody had the slightest idea that there was any chance for him. Just before the race a man belonging to our party came up to me, and advised me to put something on him; for he had got a tip that he was bound to win. But I was adamant. I very rarely bet, and I never win if I do; while it takes such a terrible amount of hard work to make any money that I dare not risk losing it.
I shall never forget the excitement of that race. Opposite the Grand Stand—where the Government House party is always enthroned among a perfect flower-garden of gaily-coloured frocks—and another small stand, over the far side of the course lies the hill, where people do not have to pay any entrance fee, while they have a most perfect view of the races, so that whole families camp there day after day. One could see the people plainly through a glass as Lord Nolan began to gather up the course in his stride, and it seemed as if the whole hill-side shook and swayed with the wild excitement of the swarming masses upon it, while a roar rose on the air like the sound of an inrushing tide upon the shingle. People on the lawn beneath—with all its roses, a mass of quiet and delicate beauty—began to run, mostly backwards and forwards in sheer excitement, waving programmes and shouting. The first round the occupants of the Grand Stand kept quiet, a sort of thrilling quiet—then they arose, and shrieked and waved, just like the crowd on the hill. A little way off I heard a woman’s voice rise to the highest note that I should think possible for any human throat to compass, and remain there, vibrating in a long-drawn out scream, while a well-dressed man in front of me kept tearing at the lapels of his coat, and calling out “My God! my God! my God!” at the top of his voice.
The whole stand seemed to sway. Everyone was shouting wildly, while more wild and amazing than all was the atmosphere of utter savage abandonment, as if for the moment the garment of civilization were literally ripped from hem to hem. I do not think I screamed, but I know my hands and feet were stone cold, while my cheeks flamed, and I felt as if someone were pouring icy water down my back in one small continuous stream.
“There’s a cool hundred for me—whoever would have thought it!” said my companion when it was all over, trying to speak indifferently. “Come along and have some tea.” And I went, regretting my strength of mind too deeply for any words—even more deeply next morning, when I fared forth, prepared at least to get a little change and amusement out of life by paying my debts, and had my bag cut off my wrist by some thief, unnoticed in the jostling of the crowded street; so losing alike my hardly-earned money and my belief in the beauties of self-denial.
Flemington racecourse—where the Cup week is held, and many lesser races run throughout the year, and which covers an area of 301 acres—is most beautifully kept, and in some spirit of alliteration is almost as famous for its roses as its races. I never saw such standards, arches, bushes of them as there are, all aglow with colour. In front of the Grand Stand and the smaller stand is the lawn, as smooth as a billiard-table, and affording a splendid show-ground for the women’s dresses. To the right, beyond the Grand Stand, is the paddock, and the ground where the less wealthy people are massed, shot through by the smart costumes of those who penetrate there from among the more select, to have a look at the horses, and so on to the betting paddock, where numberless bookies congregate, shrieking themselves hoarse. The crowd is simply gigantic—and well it may be, seeing that not only is pretty well every soul there from within easy reach of Melbourne, but all who can afford it—sometimes by means of a year’s strenuous saving—from other States and up-country districts. But though the actual size of the crowd is perfectly amazing to any newcomers, who have heard much in regard to the scanty population of Australia, what is even more amazing is to see so enormous a concourse of well-dressed, thoroughly prosperous-looking people; for though individual toilettes may not reach to the same high pitch of extravagance and costly beauty as they do at Ascot, the average is very much higher; shop-girls, servants, mothers of large families, factory hands, and sempstresses alike all having embarked on something new for this great festival of the year.
Cup day at Flemingtun Racecourse, Melbourne
Generally speaking, it is the New South Wales people who—apart from the Victorians—have flooded Melbourne during the Cup week, with the addition, after a good season, of a fair sprinkling of Queenslanders. But this last racing festival has been marked by a quite new influx of South Australians. Of course, some of the very wealthiest have always come up for the week; but the ordinary South Australian farmer is a slow, steady-going person who does not take any risks. Lately, however, the system of close culture, which he has practised with the greatest possible success, and a series of magnificent seasons, have not only given him a feeling of security, but have rendered him so prosperous that he and his family have flocked to Melbourne for this year’s sport with light hearts and full pockets. The New South Wales man would venture if he had as much as his train fare, and trust to luck to get back again, but one may feel sure that the South Australian is conscious of a solid balance at the bank before he will come so far away from home for his amusement, nothing showing the difference in the character of the people of the Australian States so plainly as the way in which they take their pleasure. In itself the very fact that there were some 150,000 people at the Cup this year is a very fair sign of the country’s prosperity—150,000 well-dressed and keenly alive people, all intensely alert and charged with the nervous energy that is such a characteristic of their race, all hanging like one, with heart and soul and the stored-up excitement of days and hours, on the result of two and a half minutes: no wonder that the very air seems charged with electricity so intense that the only possible relief is to be found by forgetting that we are the civilized product of an artificial age, and by yelling as a savage or a child would yell.
All the shops, excepting the tobacconists and confectioners and restaurants, are shut on Cup day, which is, indeed, a national holiday, and rather amusing efforts are made by the religious authorities to get their flock out of the way of temptation on such a day. One year, I remember, there was a large Sunday-school picnic at a public park some three miles from Melbourne, under the command of a portly Church of England dignitary. All through the earlier part of the day he was bland and cheerful, though occasionally absent-minded. About five o’clock, however, he became distinctly restless. He walked up and down the park gravely discussing the affairs of Church and State, but I observed that each turn landed us distinctly nearer to the fence abutting on the public highway, while again and again he paused to take out his watch and glance at it with an air of elaborate carelessness. As dog-carts and traps of all sorts—buggies they are called here—began to rattle along the road from the direction of Melbourne it became very evident that my companion was, as they say, “talking out of the back of his head,” while constantly interspersing his remarks with ejaculations regarding those misguided souls who had by that time lost their little “all,” or been precipitated, by their unholy gains, further than ever on the downward grade. At last he could bear it no longer, and with a decided step, which absolutely disregarded my mischievous attempt to turn, reached the fence, and hailed a passing vehicle: “Hey! hey! You there! who won the Cup?”
He might just as well have said “How did it go?” or just raised his eyebrows, with an interrogatory glance, for anyone in Australia that day would have known what he meant, or merely have kept silent and waited for the gratuitous information to be tossed to him. I did not dare to ask, but I wondered then—and have wondered since—what he “had on.” Something considerable—and misplaced—as I should guess by the expression with which he received the reply.
Everyone goes to the theatre the evening after the Cup race; at least, everyone who has any money left, or can find even standing room. The plays produced during this famous week are usually of the lightest description of musical comedy, or at the Royal and King’s the most sensational melodrama; the managers seldom taking the trouble to stage their best play, for people will go whatever happens to be on, while they are too completely in the humour to have a “good time,” or too sleepy after long days spent in the open air, to be severely critical.
Though the totalizer is not legal in Victoria, and the State does not stand to make anything by the betting, 10 per cent. being deducted from the proceeds where it is in use—7½ for the State and 2½ for the race-course expenses—still it gathers in a matter of some £5,800 a year from licence fees and the percentage of legitimate receipts, the annual sum payable being 3 per cent. on a gross revenue over £1,500, 2 per cent. under that sum, and nil on anything less than £600.
The Melbourne people are inveterate theatregoers, everyone, even the artisan and his wife, regarding a visit to the play as a fitting ending to their week’s work; so that, though the theatres are always well filled, they are literally crammed on Saturday nights. The people are very particular, and they will have their plays well dressed, and well staged, and played, but all the critical faculty begins and ends with the audience, for the papers—both daily and weekly—seem to be absolutely lacking in any powers of discernment or courage, being far less exacting, indeed, than the veriest larrikin among the gods.
It is curious to note the different classes of people that are attracted by different plays in Melbourne; the people with the money—evidently here as elsewhere—not being the people with the intellect or taste. Plays like the “Merry Widow” or the “Dollar Princess” fill the stalls and dress-circle to overflowing; but for more serious comedy, or for Shakespeare’s plays, the bulk of the audience is to be found patient and watchful in the cheaper parts of the theatre, and it is extraordinary what patience these people will show when it is a question of procuring a good place to see any special play or actor.
When the adored—and rightly adored—Nellie Stewart returned, some two or three years ago, from a prolonged absence abroad, her admirers began to take their places on the theatre steps for her first evening’s performance at about midday—and consumed sandwiches for their lunch. All through the afternoon they waited, persistently cheerful and good-tempered as an Australian crowd usually is. About five o’clock Miss Stewart could stand it no longer, and ordered the doors to be opened, when the wearied but indefatigable “first nighters” flocked thankfully into the pit and gallery. But this was not all. Realizing the hours that must still pass before the people could get a proper meal, she ordered tea, bread-and-butter, and cakes from the nearest caterer’s, and fed the waiting multitude liberally. Is it any wonder that so warm-hearted a woman should be adored as she is, as much for her nature as her art. There was a collection of coppers among her guests, I remember, and someone slipped out and bought a huge floral trophy for their hostess, which I am sure meant more to her than all the many elaborate bouquets she had ever received. It is things like this that mark the essential “humanness” of people in Australia and help one to realize the warm heart beneath the curt off-hand manner.
The actress in Australia, if she touches the popular fancy, is simply overwhelmed with flowers, and I never saw such wonderful bouquets, such intricate and glowing baskets, and harps, and crowns, all bedecked with immense streamers of wide satin ribbon, as are heaped round the feet of a popular star in Melbourne; and not only flowers, elaborate boxes of “lollies,” also, and jewels, the summit of originality being lately reached when a flower-bedecked crate of tiny yellow chicks was handed up over the footlights; though this was closely rivalled by a popular actor being presented, some time ago, with a medley of gorgeous socks.
The Melbourne maiden frankly loves a successful actor, particularly if he be handsome in addition; and is no more ashamed of this taste than of one for Paris frocks or sweetmeats, trailing him about after her with as much naïve pride as she would a real lace flounce or any other new importation. I do not think the Melbourne men run after actresses much; they are too busy, as a rule, and girls of their own class are sufficiently bright and smart; but an actor is asked out to tea, and fêted and entertained to an unlimited extent, which, I suspect, accounts for the smug self-satisfaction of most of his kind after a few months in the country, the partiality they arouse being quite frankly shown, as are all other sentiments and proclivities.
The Australian audiences are for the most part clean-minded, and there is little encouragement given to the problem play out here. Frank vulgarity the people can understand and laugh at, as they did for so long at poor George Laurie’s delightful absurdities, but for the stuffy atmosphere of “double entendre” they have no time; while they are frankly disgusted at many of the plays that appeal to the English, and I do not believe for a moment that productions such as I have seen in London, adapted—and badly adapted, too—from the French, would have the faintest success in Melbourne. There is only one music-hall, “The Opera House,” as it is misleadingly called, or more familiarly, “Rickard’s.” Most nights there are a couple or so of good turns on here, usually by some imported star or trick artist, who comes rather late in the evening; but the whole affair is very dull in comparison with any European show of the sort, and overhung with a rather gloomy air of middle-class propriety. Melbourne boasts of but few gilded youths, not sufficient to make any show of; while, though the “demi-mondaines” certainly do patronize “Rickard’s,” they are studiously quiet, both in dress and demeanour. I suppose there is vice enough in Melbourne, as there is in any other town, but it certainly does not “glitter,” and for the most part the seats of this one variety show are filled by bourgeois families, of intensest gravity and decorum, which is curious, for, on the whole, the Australians seem to take their pleasure—and in Melbourne even more so than in Sydney—with a sort of jollity that is essentially youthful. This spirit of youth I attribute to the open-air conditions of most forms of amusement—cricket and football, racing, boating, and picnicking—while, with a climate warm enough to enjoy themselves in such a way, and with a summer-heat that is neither relaxing, nor sufficiently overpowering to forbid physical exertion—I believe that all these people, as long as they continue to take their pleasures in such a wholesome fashion, will still keep themselves free from the worst sort of dissipation.
Next to racing I should certainly place football first in the popular affections, particularly among the lower classes. During the season the whole talk on the trams, or in the trains, is on that one subject, “Well, who won?” or “How did it go?”—being the inevitable question asked of the grip-man, by everyone who boards a tram coming from the direction of any of the suburbs where there has been a match. At first you are puzzled by the gratuitous bits of information the conductor deals out to you with your ticket, or your neighbour, out of sheer philanthropy, beguiles you with, the information often being rendered all the more puzzling by the fact that many of the localities from which the teams hail bear famous names.
“Did you hear Balaclava’s won?” or “Windsor’s clean wiped out” or “Mentone”—in which the final “e” is not sounded—“has been knocked to bits!” Gradually, however, one gets to adapt one’s mind to the new conditions among which one lives, and realize that if the people are discussing “Burns” on the trams, it is not the poet nor the politician; it is the prize-fighter; while any unknown name which strikes your ear—and which, from the way it is uttered, you might make sure belonged to some all-powerful politician, at least, is probably that of the latest hero who has kicked a goal or won a race.
The Melbourne men work hard enough when they are at it, but once free of their offices, they are like boys out from school. They do not talk shop, they do not even think of it; and at one o’clock on Saturdays I believe it is only by some stupendous effort of will that—as they flock out from chambers, offices, and counting-houses, off to a cricket or football match, race-meeting, or golf—they desist from throwing their hats in the air and shouting from sheer delight.
It is strange that, in the face of all the indomitable pluck and light-hearted gaiety these people show, that their literature should be permeated with that uncouth melancholy which gives other nations so false an idea both of the country and the people.
“Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in sorrow
What they teach in song.”
Shelley says; and perhaps this is most truly the case in Australia. That it is not prosperity, wide sheep-runs, good seasons, horse-racing, and theatre-going that has produced the literature of the country, but loneliness of heart and soul; the terrifying size of the country; and poverty and misunderstanding.
Literature began early in Australia. Among the first writers Barron Field—whose name, particularly in conjunction with his book, “The First-Fruits of Australian Literature,” touched Charles Lamb’s whimsical humour to such a delightful issue; C. H. Harpur, who struck a typical Australian—if not a particularly musical note, despite the fact of being hailed as the Australian Wordsworth; John Dunmore Lang; John Farrell; and Matthew Flinders—whose every word should be read for the sake of the character, personality, and achievements of the man who wrote it, and the direct, tense style of his sturdy prose.
Arthur Lindsay Gordon is still the most widely read and quoted poet in the country, yet, though he had a great feeling for and knowledge of Australian life, he was, in his appearance, in his ways, and his outlook, to the very end, most essentially an Englishman; though, perhaps, on the whole, he saw and realized more of the character of the people and the aspects of the country than one who had always been familiar with it, just as any artist is more successful in drawing a face which he does not know too well.
Still, it was as one who has deliberately observed a country and adapted himself to its life and needs that Gordon wrote. There were no pre-natal and unrealized impressions at work before the birth of his Southern muse; it was all conscious and intentional.
On the other hand, Henry Kendall was innately Australian—the first, and as yet the greatest, of her true poets. He was saturated with the spirit of the place long before he ever wrote a word, before his childish fingers could hold the pen; perhaps, even, before he ever saw the light of day. He read English poets with avidity, and yet he judged them by his own involuntary standards—the standard of one for whom Nature wears a completely different face from that which she shows to those whose childhood has been spent among English meadows and woods. And because he was so true to himself and his country, and because his art was so simple and so sincere—and he wrote from his very heart and soul—if for no other reasons, Kendall’s writings can never fail to be dear to the best of his countrymen; deserving, indeed, to be far more dear than they have yet become. The verses on the death of his little baby-girl, Araluen, might have been trivial, even mawkish, if it were not that their heartbroken words ring with such truth in our ears that we cannot fail to know that the poet is not writing about what he saw or heard, but what he felt, wrung to the soul, as he already was at the time that those lines were written, by poverty, by shame, and sorrow.
Nowadays the Australian poet has but little excuse for melancholy, though he still seems to be “saddest when he sings,” unless he happens to be affecting a Kipling-like jargon. That is why his sentiments do not ring so true as they might do—as true as in the days when his life in the New Country was so bitterly hard and barren, and when such horrors as that murder of the colonists by blacks—which led Kendall to write “On the Paroo”—could stir a poet’s soul to a finer frenzy than any merely personal suffering.
“The wild men came upon them like a fire
Of desert thunder; and the fierce, firm lips
That touched a mother’s lips a year before,
And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,
Were hewn like sacrifice before the stars,
And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,
And falling leaves and solitary wigs. . . .. . . .
“Turn thyself and sing;
Sing, son of sorrow. Is there any gain
For breaking of the loins, for melting eyes,
And knees as weak as water?—Any balm
For pleading women, and the love that knows
Of nothing left to love?”
Compare this, which is very typical of Kendall, with the following, as completely typical of Gordon:
“Here’s a health to every sportsman, be he statesman or lord;
If his heart be true, I care not what his pockets may afford:
And may he ever pleasantly his gallant sport pursue
If he takes his liquor fairly, and his fences fairly, too.”
And yet a hundred copies of Gordon’s poems will be sold to every half a dozen—or less—of Henry Kendall’s.
Later on, among other worthy followers of Kendall, Boake—another truly Australian poet, of whom great things might have been expected save for his early death—left at least one masterpiece in “Down where the Dead Men lie”; while Victor Daly and Harry Lawson have both done memorable work, no one having more completely got at the heart of things, at the spirit of the Bush, and the soul of the bushman—ay, and of the swaggy, too—than has the latter.
Lawson is not in the least dazzled by the melodramatic aspects of the country, the beautiful wild young man type that Gordon depicts, the dark and daring braggadocio. Indeed, he speaks with the bitterest scorn of those who use their art to immortalize.
“The gambling and the drink that are their country’s greatest curse.”
But in the pathos and the humour of the commonplace his genius burns clear, with rare glimpses of a spiritual insight far above that gospel of mere revolt with which so many of his fellows are imbued.
Another Australian favourite is A. B. Paterson, whose “Man from Snowy River” has met with such immense success—a success that is not for a moment to be wondered at, for if his poetry is not of the highest type, Paterson paints the Australian Bush with such truth and vigour and such true affection, that, to those who dwell in the cities, it is like a veritable breath of the wild open country and the wild free life.
“For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know:
And the Bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him;
For the murmur of its breezes, and the river on its bars;
And he sees the vision splendid, of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.”
Australian writers up to the present time seem to have been at their best in verse, and after that in short stories, Lawson’s collection, published under the title of “While the Billy Boils,” being hard to beat, particularly the stories of “The Bush Undertaker” and “The Drover’s Wife.” But it yet remains for a great Australian book to be written, and for the undoubted latent talent that certainly exists to establish itself by some more solid effort. Perhaps one of the most vivid works that has ever appeared, regarded as a true product of this country, was “My Brilliant Career,” by Myles Franklin, which, in spite of its crudities and egotism, gave rise to a hope of great things from the same pen, particularly as it was written when the authoress was only seventeen years of age; but nothing more of any note has appeared, and one fears that it was only a case of another meteoric flare. Among other more or less well-known writers Marcus Clarke was English; Mrs. Humphrey Ward left Australia when she was a small child; Mrs. Campbell Praed, Mary Gaunt, Guy Boothby, were all born in Australia; but it is for the most part in England and of England that they write. Of course, there have been, and are now, many lesser lights in addition to those of whom I have written. Among them Roderic Quinn, Brunton Stevens, and Rolf Boldrewood, who has in his own particular, obvious fashion—or, at least, in his one famous book—reached as high a level as any. Yet it is in the future that we must still seek for a sustained work of fiction, worthy both of the people and the country, a book at once as true and simple as “Marie Claire,” or Yoshio Markino’s “A Japanese Artist in London,” of which every line of writing tells as delicately and yet vividly as does each touch of his magic brush. America seems to have taken to fashioning her literature with a crimping-iron and “sheer-lawn,” while Australia hacks hers out with a billyhook from back-block and Bush. Still, there is something between the two, as perhaps Mrs. Æneas Gunn, among all the writers in this new world, has been the only one as yet to discover.
In art as in literature there seems to be an idea that crudity is strength, even at times a real brutality, as in much of Norman Lindsay’s clever work. Though it is little wonder if the Australian artists feel, as well as paint, with a sort of ferocity, seeing that art is about the last thing which appeals to those who are in the position to buy pictures; and, if they do buy, they want size, they want show, something “pretty,” and highly coloured, and smoothly finished; while it remains to the eternal credit of the artistic fraternity that they certainly do not pander to this demand, even if they go too far in the opposite direction. The trustees of the public galleries seem to try to elevate the masses by leaving their own artists severely alone, and spending enormous sums on pictures that are undoubtedly “caviare to the general,” Melbourne being far worse than Sydney in this respect, one of its most recent acquisitions being an ineffective and rather colourless Watteau, for which the trustees paid £3,125. Meanwhile the prices offered to local artists are often little short of ludicrous, the £100 paid to George Lambert for his picture, “The Shop,” which was lately hung in the Victorian Artists’ Exhibition, being regarded as something quite abnormal; while Mrs. Ellis Rowe’s wonderful collection of paintings of native flowers went begging for years before they were ultimately purchased by Sydney.
It is odd that a country so frankly egotistical, so frankly immersed in all that is new and fresh, should allow its money to be spent on pictures which must represent—to 90 per cent. of those who see them—nothing more than a mere name. It is, indeed, as odd a contradiction as is the alacrity with which titles are seized by the representatives of this people, who so greatly pride themselves upon their democracy.
Only a few years ago a really very large sum was spent upon a Corot for the Melbourne Gallery, “The Bent Tree.” Crowds flocked to see it, because it was the thing to do; but from the remarks I heard several times as I stood near it, they were only asking each other in sheer bewilderment, “What came ye out for to see?” very little admiration being expressed, save for the frame. Still, it is now only a matter of time, I really believe, until someone will find leisure to rebel against spending so much on a style of picture that is supposed to mould the tastes of the people—quite erroneously, for we are but little influenced by what we do not understand—and paintings which show an art as beautiful and more vital, and more comprehensible, to the people will be insisted on; for each year shows the Australians rebelling, with a greater persistency, against the adaptation of themselves to past ideals, the pouring of new wine into old bottles.
Australia has not yet produced any great composer; and yet it has gone far, and will go still farther, in the musical world, fresh young talent passing over to London or Paris almost every year to complete its training; while the number of beautiful voices that a further opening up of the country, and further facilities for recognition and teaching, will bring to light, can scarcely be over-estimated. The Australian’s ordinary uneducated speaking voice is curiously harsh and raucous. But, in spite of this, the percentage of singing voices is wonderfully high, owing, perhaps, to the light, dry atmosphere and the absence of fogs; while I believe that the best way of improving the natural intonation will be found to be by teaching singing more carefully and consistently in elementary schools, and thus bringing out all that is best in the children’s voices.
Mr. Marshall Hall, who was formerly Professor of Music at Ormonde College and the head of the Conservatorium, is the ruling spirit of the musical world in Melbourne, in spite of having completely shocked the Nonconformist conscience of the town by his somewhat erotic writings and the liberty he took in managing his private affairs for himself—the difficulty always being that nobody is supposed to have any private affairs out here. Still, in the end, people’s love for the beautiful music that Mr. Hall made for them triumphed; and at his fortnightly concerts, held during the winter months, the Town Hall is usually crammed, for it is not only what he does himself that is so wonderful, but what he manœuvres his supernumeraries into doing. Here for a shilling—the highest-priced seats are only three shillings—one can slip off the cares of the world for three hours on a Saturday afternoon, and, freed from all the petty obligations of life, listen to some of the best music in the world. All honour to those who have found the best and held to it, and even imbued the rich people in Melbourne with the idea that there is something higher in life than racing and football-matches; or, at least, that it is “the correct thing” for them to “patronize” such concerts and help on the expenses by taking the dearest seats. The money is the same; while for the encouragement of the performers there are always the rows and rows of ardent, enthralled listeners in the shilling seats.
People at home do not know the true meaning of the word “loneliness,” and we often hear English labourers and their wives talking of isolation, when there is a church and village only a couple of miles off, or other cottages and farms, at any rate, within walking distance of them. Indeed, we are, in general, so used to living closely huddled together that we get scared when we are alone in any large open space, with no single sign of humanity, fenced and cultivated land or smoking chimney within sight. The less educated people are the more awful this loneliness seems, till the wild cliffs of Cornwall and the moors of Yorkshire and Devonshire become to their distorted fancy fearful and pixie-haunted places. And yet even the loneliest of all these lonely spots is densely populated in comparison with the country districts in Australia where one meets with people who have lived all their lives as much as 200 miles away from any town or railway-station, and with children, and even grown-up men and women, who have never seen any white person outside their own families. If you can imagine that,—imagine that there are women who have never seen how other women dress or do their hair, and young men who have met not a single person of the opposite sex beyond their own mother and sisters; whose stores are brought to them by bullock-waggon or team from a far-distant town, having themselves never even seen a shop-window; who receive no letters because there is nobody to write them; who would not know if the whole of Europe were convulsed with war because they see no papers; who have no knowledge, no aspirations, no hope, simply because they see no outside person whose life they may compare with their own—if you can imagine this, I say, and all that it means, then you may realize a little what true loneliness is.
To be able to ride mile after mile, day after day, and see no living soul; to know that nothing can happen beyond birth and death, rain or drought; to live only with animals, and with two or three of your own kind, whose every vice and virtue, expression and thought you know as well as you know the nature of your own sheep and cows; to be a man or woman, with all the strong passions and instincts of your sex—all the stronger from the fact of living so perpetually among animals—and yet with no chance of honourable marriage before you; no games, no society, no diversion, no possibility of any change: if you could only realize it all—you women gossiping over your gates through the long summer evenings in England, with your children playing before you in the road; you men gathered round your village club or public-house fires, on cold winter nights, grumbling about the weather, discussing the news of the day together, walking home through the village, flinging a “goodnight” on this side and on that; all of you living your human, homely lives; every boy and girl with a sweetheart to walk out with on Sundays; and the squire and the parson at hand if you are in trouble, and a club doctor within reach if you are ill.—If you could only realize what it means, this awful loneliness of the far places of the Empire, you might be a little more contented with your own lot, and have more respect for the men and women who have fought through such frightful conditions, who have kept themselves and their children clean and sane, and with it all, helped to the making of a new nation.
The question of eugenics is a difficult one for a mere scribbler to touch upon, but it seems strange that a people which is endeavouring so strenuously to keep itself entirely white—realizing fully the danger of mixed marriages—has not also realized more completely the grave danger arising from intermarriage—and worse—among these isolated families, [232] and the appalling percentage of lunatics which it produces.
All this is but part of the crying need for closer settlement; it is also a proof of what I mentioned in my last chapter regarding the accommodation needed for agricultural labourers; the irrigation which will make closer settlement a possibility, and—conversely—the closer settlement which will make irrigation practicable. Still, I believe that married men with families, and not stray bachelors, are the people needed in the agricultural districts, or, to go even farther than this, little colonies of people from the same country, county, or village; while, on the whole, it is more in Southern France, Italy, and Spain, than in England that suitable families, with some knowledge of working in hot, dry climates and of the possibilities of irrigated land, are most likely to be found.
People, at home, attempt to judge Australia as they judge some people. “Oh, all the Smiths have tempers!” they will say, and imagine that thereby they have disposed in half a dozen words of twice as many individualities, and root and branch of the entire Smith family, whose characters may be as divergent as the points of the compass; and:—“Awful place for drought, isn’t it?” is the almost inevitable question asked when I have mentioned Australia; usually followed by the remark, “Awfully hot, too.” Size means nothing whatever to such people; if they have any idea of any variety of climate in Australia, they think that it must be “cooler up north,” quite ignoring all that they have ever heard of Queensland and the Northern Territory, which alone covers 523,620 square miles. Victoria is the smallest state in Australia; still, it contains, roughly speaking, 87,884 square miles and an extraordinary diversity of climates.
About eight years ago I met a Victorian schoolmaster whose little boy of seven had never seen rain; and shortly after that another who lived in a district that was under snow during the greater part of the year. There are dense forests—notably those in the Western districts, where the trees grow so closely together that the people spend their lives in a sort of semi-twilight: while the mud is so deep along the forest tracks that they have to do all their travelling on horseback; and their carting by means of sledges, the runners of which will slide along over the top of the mud instead of sinking and sticking in it as wheels would do. Once I was staying with some people near Camperdown whose parlour-maid hailed from the depths of the forest, some thirty miles away. An afternoon a week off to see her parents was out of the question, but occasionally she had a couple of days’ holiday, and then thought nothing of the thirty miles or so on horseback each way. Though to my English mind it seemed an odd way for a parlour-maid to take an outing. And such an immaculate parlour-maid, too! waiting at table in such a neat black frock, with such snowy apron and cap, that it was difficult to realize her rising at dawn and riding off cross-legged on the wiry little steed, which the servants had for their special use, into the mysterious twilight of the forest.
In sharp contrast to such places as this is to be found the bare, sun-baked, torrid region of Mildura, a place where at one time there were more aristocrats to be found than in the whole of Australia; Englishmen of good families having flocked there, some for the sake of health, some attracted by the wonderful fruit-growing capacities of the place. I remember one beautiful young man “batching” there for years—cooking his own dinner, doing the house-work, such as it was, washing up the dishes and working meanwhile like a fury on his little fruit farm—who would come down to Melbourne for the Cup looking as if absolutely fresh from Bond Street. He went home for a trip not long ago, and when he came back amused me very much by a description of a dinner which his people had given by way of welcoming him back. He was a gay person; he had been interested, and amused, and stimulated to talk by the evident interest everyone showed in his adventures, and still talking and laughing, not thinking what he was doing, as the ladies rose to leave the table, from the long force of habit he began to collect the dishes and plates, to scrape them, and pile them one on the top of the other, under the very eyes of the amazed butler and his minions.
Loading fruit on the Murray at Mildura
The first settlement of Mildura, which is on the border of Victoria and New South Wales, was in 1884, the settlement being run and the first irrigation scheme inaugurated by the famous Chaffey Brothers. In 1887 the Chaffey Brothers Company, Limited, was formed, and recognized as supreme until 1895, when the place was taken over by the Mildura Irrigation Trust. The population, which, when the first census was taken in 1891, was 2,321, has now increased by another 5,000, and may well go on increasing, for Mildura is in a thriving condition. Very nearly all the dried fruits which come from Victoria, and the greater part of the canned fruits also, have been grown in Mildura, which is very certainly the garden of the garden State. In 1908 the value of the fruit exports of Victoria—nearly all of them from there—amounted to £153,062, the dried raisins and apricots alone being worth £84,627; Mildura’s one rival in this respect being Renmark, in South Australia, Mildura heading the lists with sultanas and other raisins, and Renmark with currants and other dried fruits. Still, in 1908, dried fruits were imported from overseas to the value of £99,518, and fresh fruit to the value of £107,666, so there is still an opening for “noblemen’s sons and others” in Australia. Among these, men with the right sort of wives will certainly prove of the most value to the country; though I would not wish to be as invidious as the lady whose advertisement I once read in the Melbourne Age, and who proffered herself as prepared to fill the post of housekeeper to a “bachelor or gentleman.”
Australian scenery has earned for itself the title of “melancholy,” and in places this can scarcely be wondered at. One can well realize the feeling of depression and foreboding that is produced by the wide stretch of unhumanized country—covered for the most part with a short khaki-coloured grass, and rendered spectral and unreal by the white ring-barked trees that dot it—in the mind of people fresh from the lush greenness of Devonshire, or the closely cultivated land of the English Midlands; crossed and recrossed as it is with flower-decked hedges; cut up into little compact, sheltered fields; having nothing in common at all with those vast paddocks, the stretch of which is scarcely broken by the wooden posts and wire which separate them from each other at the distance of many acres.
That there are numerous districts such as these in Australia I must confess, though far fewer in Victoria than in other States; while it seems to me that the very last adjective to be applied to the landscape around Melbourne is that of “melancholy”; if one must use a hackneyed phrase, “smiling” would be far more to the purpose.
Take the train from Melbourne and drive out to St. Kilda, the Brighton of Melbourne; there is nothing to depress one there—plenty of trees, blue sea and sky, crowds of well-dressed, cheerful people: Jews—Jews in plenty—yet not the Jews of the poorer quarters of London or other European towns, but prosperous, well-dressed Jews that are a credit to any country.
Then change from the cable to the electric tram, and go on to the bona-fide Brighton and Middle Brighton. There is the remains of a swamp at one side of the line, it is true, but that is being drained and made habitable as quickly as the work can be done, and already there is a fringe of houses among the trees at the edge of it nearest to the sea, while at the other side rises a soft green mass of tree-decked undulations, dotted with clusters of pleasant villas.
Once Middle Brighton is reached there are trees either side and prosperous houses standing in wide gardens; the brilliant blue sea to the right, a couple of hundred yards from the line.
Then, again, take the train and go farther along the coast, to Hampton, where the Ti-trees are a study in themselves and the grass above the cliffs sheeted with yellow Cape-weed during the spring months.
Then take another short train-ride, or walk to Sandringham, with its fine club-house and beautiful undulating golf-course; to Mentone; to Frankston; to a dozen other places, all within an hour’s journey—or but little more—from Melbourne. Or stay a week at Mordialloc, with its exquisitely appointed little hostel, reminiscent of all the best in our old village inns at home—a peaceful, shady place this, with a long arm of the sea winding for miles inland, dotted with white-sailed pleasure-boats, or bright green tubs, in which misanthropic fishermen sit smoking, day after day, as they watch their float—the only melancholy note in the cheerful scene.
Or break away inland on to the high, bracing, open country around Oakleigh, with the blue Dandenong Ranges in the distance, and many acres of market-gardens, from which a long procession of carts trail down to the Victoria market three times a week—at an hour when all the lights of the town are still burning, to be met returning again as the inhabitants of the suburbs flock in to their work—laden high with manure from the city stables, on the top of which, more than likely, the wearied-out husbandman is sleeping peacefully, while the horses make their decorous way homeward, with a wise air too dependable to be described as human. Where there are no market-gardens on the heights there is rough common land, white with heath and kindred shrubby plants, while across the open country there blows such an air—clean, and clear, and invigorating. Still farther on the line runs right up into Gippsland, the black, luscious soil of which grows the finest grass in Victoria, a paradise of a place, where drought is hardly known—a district showing, indeed, only one blot on its scutcheon, and that—shared by almost every other dairying centre, and the work of man and not of Nature, who has, indeed, been bountiful to Gippsland—the terrible overworking of the children by their parents, in the greed for quick gain and dislike of paying out any money in wages, which is such a crying disgrace to the country.
Children, who often have three miles or more to walk to school, are expected to be up at four in the summer, and but little later in the winter, and milk ten or twelve cows before they start off on the long tramp to their legitimate day’s work. To the young Gippslanders the cow seems indeed an awful and all-devouring Moloch, eating up alike their youth, their hours for play, their strength, and vitality. I once had a most charming girl, the daughter of a prosperous Gippsland dairy farmer, as a sort of general household help. She could not touch milk—she could not bear the sight of it. If she brought me a glass of it on a salver, I have seen her throat swell and the tears come into her eyes in her effort to keep from retching. She was very pretty and refined, and her people were well off; but every day, almost ever since she had been able to reach the cow’s udder, she had milked from ten to fifteen cows, morning and evening, till—luckily for her—body and soul had alike rebelled. Her parents considered it most derogatory that she should be working with a stranger for a fixed wage; but she declared that she would do anything rather than go back to the farm, where her two little brothers of ten and twelve were already doing their share of the milking, each morning before they went to school and each evening after they returned. That the brains of children so overworked cannot be of much use to them during their school-hours is beyond a doubt; and that their physique suffers equally with their intelligence is clearly shown by the stunted and jaded little old men and women who fill the benches of the preparatory schools in the dairying districts.
Quite the most beautiful piece of country within easy reach of Melbourne is, to my mind, to be found along the Healesville line. By the time that Croydon is reached, one hour only from the city, the scenery becomes completely rural. Here at least there is not the faintest hint of melancholy to be seen. The lie of the land is delightfully undulating. At every turn of the line one catches sight of compact little orchards, and gardens, and prosperous homesteads. There are trees everywhere, and peeps of the clear blue of the Dandenong ranges between them.
It is indeed all “a dimplement of ups and downs,” a prosperous, smiling land. In the early spring, when the orchards are out, and hillsides and valleys are white with plum-blossom, and the wattle runs a line of pure yellow along every hedgerow, rioting out in places, from sheer exuberance of growth, into veritable forest trees, each like a bouquet of yellow bloom; then, indeed, there is little of sadness to be seen, and if any is felt, it is but that we cannot renew our youth in common with Nature.
From Croydon upwards the valleys grow deeper, the hills higher, the paddocks wider; the whole country less snug and compact. One passes vineyards, the largest belonging to Victoria’s adored Madame Melba; and beautifully fenced and kept pasture-land, part of the estates of the prima donna’s father, Mr. Mitchell, famous not only for his daughter, but—quaint enough contrast—for his pigs and his bacon factory. The trees are big here, and cast wide-stretching shadows, beneath which the cattle congregate during the heat of the day. How I wish I could paint the landscape! It is all a study in pastel tints, with none of the crude primary colours seen in tropical regions, no vivid scarlets or emerald greens. The distant hills are grey-blue, the middle distance a brownish-blue, the fields, even in spring, of a yellowish tint, save where they are blotted by velvety shades. The gum-trees, here in the open, are very large and beautifully proportioned, with their huge limbs growing to within four feet or so of the ground; and the foliage is grey, or golden, or brown, or shaded with madder tints—but never an absolute green; while over all hangs for the most part a delicate shimmer of heat, the colour of the palest blue larkspur.
Finally, as you disembark at Healesville Station the arms of the hills enfold you, while in every direction around you swell the bosoms and shoulders of them, deep with massed trees. The township itself is clean and cheerful, yet inclined to stuffiness; so one hires a horse and buggy and drives farther afield up the mountain-side, or else adventures one’s life in the public motor—which has replaced, within my memory of Australia, the tranquil old coach—and starts away up over the Black’s Spur, along a road which follows the actual track made by the aboriginals in those days when they divided the forest ranges among themselves—the opossum, the native bear, and kangaroo.
Better abjure the motor, though—it is a brute—and, waiting until it and its smell are past, hire a couple of horses at the hotel and drive up the mountain far enough in its wake to be able to forget it.
The road is wide, and for a while it runs along comparatively level ground, in one place crossing a bridge, and passing a wilderness of overgrown gardens, where some earlier settlers’ dwellings must have been, and where there is still a lilac-bush that blossoms bravely each spring, and pink monthly roses, and clumps of fuchsias, a few rough broken walls and a blackened hearthstone—a melancholy sight this, that all the gallant gaiety of the flowers fails to modify.
Then the road begins to wind steeply upwards, up and up. Every now and then one catches the delicious sound of running water from the jealously guarded stream that helps to supply Melbourne. As the forest grows more dense the trees rise higher and higher in their efforts to catch the light, their white-skinned forms hung with long, russet-tinted rags and tatters of bark. Such trees! One’s eye follows them upwards with a feeling that is little short of worship—not for the trees themselves, though one might adore worse gods, but for the something pure and elevating to which they seem to lift one. Surely no cathedral ever built with hands could be so sacred or awe-inspiring as this sanctuary of the woods, with its tapering white pillars, some as much as 300 feet in height.
Far above one, on the right as one winds up the tortuous road, tower these giant gums, their very roots adapting themselves to the steep graduate; those on the highest part of the slope short and sturdy, stuck out like feet at an acute angle to the trunk. The tap-root thick and straight, and the roots on the lower slopes long and slender like ropes, while beneath them flourish a mass of saplings and tree-ferns. To the left one looks down on a sea of green, out of which the tallest of them stretch white arms, and now and then, as the road turns, one catches a glimpse of more mountains, blue with distance; or a stretch of hillside where the trees have been stripped by fire, or ring-barked, and stand all naked and ashen white, strangely glacial in appearance, against the blue background.
Over the mountain is “Lindt’s,” where the motor disgorges its passengers for a couple of hours or more before the return journey. There is no need, should you wish to go there, to waste your breath in explanations to anyone around Melbourne; you have simply to mention the name, and they will all be ready to tell you the distance and the way to reach the place. It is a boarding-house, such as in England we could never even imagine, built all on one floor, with many meandering passages and odd corners, the whole structure having spread gradually to supply the demand made upon it. But, after all, it is not an ordinary boarding-house, and it is not an ordinary hotel, though as many as twenty casual guests will often lunch there on a fine day, while a number of the best class of Melbourne people stay there from Saturday till Monday, or even for the entire summer holidays; though, to my mind, in the winter—when the big wood-fires are all burning and the forest shivers around it—there is a more subtle delight to be found in the place; besides, though high, it is sheltered from the coldest winds, and it is glorious to feel fresh and vigorous enough for real long walks. Still, it is not the scenery, the giant gums, and tree-ferns, the mountains, and the peep between them of an immensity of distance—no words can ever describe the all-exquisite blue of the distance in Australia—that makes the place so distinctive, for there are other spots as favoured. It is Lindt himself, the great man, the mighty talker. He is so vigorous that he must be moving and talking the whole time, and he moves in a large breezy way; while he talks—well, he talks like nothing in the world so much as Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.” For years he lived in New Guinea, and has some of the most beautiful photos I ever saw taken there by himself. He will show them to you—he will show you anything, including his own heart—I do not know that he would not even show you his bank-book.
The coming of the motor every day is either a tragedy or a comedy to Herr Lindt; it is quite enough, anyhow, in the play of the emotions that overflow on to you from “mine host” to make an entire drama.
Each midday when he goes down to the gate to await the arrival of this chariot of fate, it is heralded by a sort of Greek chorus, in which all the parts are taken by Lindt, at one moment a pæan of hope, and at another a dirge of despair. As the motor rounds the last corner—even if you are some yards away up the rustic steps which lead to the house and cannot see it approach—a subtle but distant change in the atmosphere tells you in a single moment whether the luncheon-table is going to be full to overflowing or graced only by a bare two or three beyond the resident guests. But deep as Herr Lindt’s feelings are, they do not long remain too deep for words, and if the worst has happened, the storm bursts in a torrent.
“Nobody coming!” he will cry, as if the expression of his grief was literally squeezed out of him by some internal agony. “Nobody—nobody—One gentleman and a female—and the driver! O mein Gott! mein Gott! Ach Gott in Himmel what have I done to be thus ruined? Ach! tut! one mann mit a female, and dinner ready for twenty! It is mein death, mein ruin!”—and the huge man will almost weep with sheer disappointment.
Sometimes, out of mischief, I would remind him: “I am here, Herr Lindt; you have me, you know.” And this was always the last straw. He was too uniformly courteous to express his opinion as to what I might amount to as far as money went, but you should have seen the look that he would cast on me as he opened the little gate, with all the air of a fallen monarch, to the one or two passengers that the motor had brought to him. Still, in general, he was the most genial of hosts; no trouble was too great for him to take for the comfort and amusement of his guests. Besides, he is the Lindt of Lindt’s! He has created Lindt’s, adapting one of the most beautiful spots possible to human needs; not merely the needs of food or shelter, but that other need which we all feel—for a flavour of personal liking and interest that will hold us, even when the best scenery in the world seems but dust and ashes.
An alternative of Lindt’s—and in some moods, also in some company, a very seductive one—is afforded by supplying oneself with a luncheon-basket, and driving in the motor merely to the summit of the hill, then camping till it returns. The spot to choose is just where the clear waters of the reserve pass at a distance of some fifty feet below the road, separated from it only by a steep bank and a thick belt of tree-fern and forest myrtle—another tree like the Ti-tree most absolutely Japanese in form, every curiously twisted bough soft and grey with lichen. The stream is looped here, and there is a little plateau of the greenest moss—real green this time—within the arm of the loop, on which to build one’s fire, kindling it surely and quickly with what is called “bull’s-wool,” the thick, dry fibre, like fine cocoa-nut matting, which forms the hair shirt of the gum-tree between the white skin and the cream and green and madder-tinted bark.
Billy-tea—the leaves thrown into the billy while the water is boiling fast and furious, just before it is lifted from the fire, then let stand till they have settled—is like no other tea in the world for aroma and flavour. A hint of the wild has somehow become imprisoned in this domesticated beverage; it is impregnated with the scent of the gum-trees and a species of smokiness that is somehow delicious, and, above all, it is hot and fresh, a drink fit for the gods—though by no means to be wasted in libations—the blue smoke of the fire, rising so steadily to the still bluer sky, forming the incense of this woodland communion. Chiefly I remember the thinnest slices of ham—at such picnics à deux—and brown bread-and-butter, carried in the true wanderer’s fashion—a solid wad cut out of the brown loaf and a small pat of butter inserted, then the bit of bread that has been removed cut to a thin slice and replaced on the top—an altogether ideal arrangement, as in the hottest weather the butter kept cool and firm, while even if it did melt a trifle, it would only melt into the bread, and none be lost. All this, and that divine beverage, and the clear racing stream at our feet, and the ferns and the trees all about us. I would draw you a little map of it—but we must each find our own way to Paradise, and I would hurry no one, for, after all, we cannot live our lives out in such a delectable place; while, when once it is passed, there is one oasis the less on the desert way.