Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria Part 8

OLD COLONIST HONOURS.

Labours and honours opened at once. The day of my arrival I was to be the guest of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce for the honour of a dinner to their first President. My friend Mr. Cowderoy, the secretary, had telegraphed me to Hobart, in the hope that I might arrive in time to secure the dinner taking place prior to the Exhibition opening, with all its proposed engrossing after festivities. Mr. Robert Reid, whose acquaintance I had made at the grand Colonial Exhibition two years before, was now President of the Chamber, and received me most cordially. For the following day again there was the opening of the Exhibition, at which I was to march in the procession through the Avenue of Nations alongside of Mr. Francis Henty, now the sole survivor of the ill.u.s.trious brotherhood who founded Victoria fifty-four years before.

So far from antic.i.p.ating such honours, I had been preparing myself to plead, on any public occasion that might offer, the cause of the early pioneers; for although, as I proposed to put it, we were but the babes, and have since been succeeded by the men, we were surely to count for something, as without the baby there could never have been the man. But all fears on that head were promptly dispersed, and at every turn honours were poured out upon the "old pioneers" of the days of small things. I had repeatedly to confess, for myself as one of them, that it was a most pleasant and fortunate ACCIDENT to have been an early colonist.

But one disadvantage of these honours and attentions is that they are apt to excite the envy of your fellow-mortals. Human nature, even the very best, can never be perfect. My old friend James Stewart Johnston challenged my right to appear in the grand procession, where he and a good half-dozen other "old colonists" had equal rights. I replied soothingly, regretting that so glorious a band of early warriors, who had borne n.o.bly all the rough battle of early progress (how eloquent people can be in their own praise!) should not have been super-added to honour and adorn the procession. But this not satisfying him, I was driven to bay, and fired my reserved shot, to the effect that I was the only old colonist who had come twelve thousand miles on purpose to attend the opening. That shut him up.

THE SUBURBS.

A busy time of public entertainments followed, during the intervals of which I visited energetically persons and places of old a.s.sociation. The Melbourne suburbs were quite as surprising as the city itself. Almost countless miles of streets had taken the place of the country roads or mere bush tracks of my recollection. While I stood wondering at these changes, I had to regret that the old features had so completely disappeared that I was at home nowhere, save that in an otherwise entirely unrecognizable area there would still appear the old name, such as the Sydney, the Richmond, or the Toorak Road. I had to be content with this scant remnant of the past, and to begin acquaintance with an entirely new set of occupant streets and dwellings.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD TIMES.

Then I turned to the old and early friends of the past. Some of them kindly called; others, less able, I had myself to seek out. Thus I met, besides Mr. J.S. Johnston, already mentioned, Mr. J.A. Marsden, Mr.

Alfred Woolley, Mr. E.B. Wight, Mr. Damyon, Mr. Brahe, Mr. John Barker, Mr. R.W. Shadforth, the Messrs. Ham, and Dr. Black. Mr. Germain Nicholson, another old and worthy friend, was in Sydney, where he called for us, but we have not yet met. I found time to reach Sir William Stawell at his pleasant suburban residence at Kew, and was most agreeably disappointed to find the veteran head of the law very much more like his former self than report had accredited him. Another old friend, Sir Francis Murphy, I have as yet failed to meet, and also Mr.

David Moore. Mr. Francis Henty drove us to the St. Kilda-road to pay our respects to Mrs. Edward Henty, who pleasantly surprised us with as yet hardly the marks of age, and as though fully intending to see at least one generation more of the progress of the great colony which her departed husband had founded. Mrs. D.C. McArthur was still residing at Heidelberg along with her nieces, Miss Wright and Mrs. Were, the widow of my late old and intimate friend, Mr. J.B. Were. I saluted the former as the venerable mother of Melbourne society, and being thus one of her sons I claimed and exacted the full salutation of sonship. I claimed the same privilege from my other dear old friend, Mrs. A.M. McCrae, whom I found hardly changed, in vigour of mind at least, although now eighty-five years of age. Almost next door was Mrs. Henry Creswick, daughter of my old friend Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, of whom, as one of the very earliest, and only a few months behind Batman himself, I have already spoken. We enjoyed a chat over the very oldest Victorian times.

THE BENEVOLENT ASYLUM.

I had one opportunity of taking "old friends and fellow-colonists" in a wholesale fashion. The committee of the Benevolent Asylum complimented me by so pressing an invitation to visit an inst.i.tution which I remembered and was interested in from its first commencement, that it was imperative on me to find the time to do so. The spectacle was alike most edifying and most interesting. The inst.i.tution had enormously extended since my time, both in its accommodation and the number of its inmates. There were nearly 700 men and women, all of them helpless and dest.i.tute, and nearly all pa.s.sed into old age. Some who were paralyzed in their lower limbs, and unable to move about, were put out in a sheltered place in the sunshine, to busy themselves in various ways of their own choosing, and we particularly noted two rather pretty young women, whose lively expression of face indicated no lack of happiness, and whose neat and nimble fingers turned out quant.i.ties of daily work.

There was a considerable section of the blind, who were systematically treated, and had a library of their own. In one of the rooms were two dying men, one already past consciousness, the other still observant and even lively, but not expected to survive the night. Amongst so many and such aged people this sight was too familiar to greatly disturb the others. One of these was understood to be related to an English n.o.bleman, and had pa.s.sed through much adversity of colonial life. His face was still singularly indicative of the gentleman. Such cases are by no means rare in Australian experience.

Our inspection was completed by a view of the kitchen and larder, and the interesting spectacle of about 300 of the men engaged together under one roof at dinner, every one of whom revelled in solid beef to his heart's content. Included in their number were twelve Chinamen, who seemed as comfortably at home as any of the others, and whose presence, perhaps, helped to impress a Chinese Commissioner, who had lately visited the Asylum, and who had left his record in the visitors' book to the effect that such an inst.i.tution was an honour to mankind.

THE OLD MELBOURNE CEMETERY.

The old Flagstaff Hill and the old cemetery were two objects which I sought for on the earliest opportunity, and as the business day-time was so full of work, I took the early morning. The Flagstaff Hill I had soon to give up as quite unrecognizable under new plantations and roadways, but the cemetery, in its close vicinity, was much as I had left it, and there the old friends, albeit voiceless now, cropped up at every turn.

Let me select a few, commenting as I go along, and beginning with the earliest in date.

1841.

A series of the well-known early family of the Langhornes, some of whose members I often met. Let me begin with "The wife of William Langhorne,"

who died in this far back year, and end with Alfred, who used to amuse us all with interminable stories, who had a strikingly beautiful wife, and who died in 1874.

1846.

"The beloved wife of Joseph Raleigh, aged 32 years," whose funeral I attended, to be witness to the profound grief of the husband thus prematurely bereft of a wife who was, as I recollect, a rarely fine woman. Even Carlyle's indifference to "tombstone literature" might tolerate these lines, recorded on her monument, both for their own high quality, and as the eloquent expression of the heart of the bereaved husband:--

"Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee, For G.o.d was thy ransom, thy guardian and guide; He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee, And death hath no sting, for the Saviour hath died."

1846.

"Allan K. Renny, of Dundee, Scotland, aged 24." A remarkably fine young man, who died thus early, to the grief of all his friends. He was one of the staff of the Union Bank of Australia. Although the favourite of everyone, he retained his unaffected simplicity of manner and character to the last. He died of consumption, in the house of Mr. Ca.s.sell, who had invited him there when he took ill, in order that he might be better attended to. Ca.s.sell, James Gill, Alfred Ross, and myself took the last night of the dying lad in relays of three or four hours each; and when the last breath pa.s.sed from the fine young face, Mrs. Ca.s.sell, who stood by with the rest of us, and who had nursed him with the fondest mother's care, broke out into loud sobs of irrepressible grief. We decided upon a broken column as his monument--fit emblem of the life so early broken--and we settled his brief, simple epitaph, which Mr. Ca.s.sell drew up:--"Erected by his friends in this colony in testimony of esteem and regard."

1848.

"Edmund Charles Hobson, M.D., born 1814, died in his 34th year." The monument, erected by public subscription, commemorates also two sons and one daughter--all the family save one thus early carried off, for, alas!

the father, although of large and well-filled mind, was a man of poor health and feeble physique. Mrs. Hobson, our old friend, still survives, but is at present in England. I have already alluded to the Doctor and his high qualities.

1850.

"James Jackson, of Toorak, who died at sea, aged 47." This was Melbourne's greatest merchant of his early time, although he died at so early an age. His house at Toorak, or rather the second house which he, with his enlarging fortune, built there, but which he did not live to enjoy, was long the finest of the place, and served for some years as the Governor's residence. It supplies a striking ill.u.s.tration of the sudden needs of the advancing colony after its golden era. A prominent Melbourne trader had leased it at 300 pounds a year, but in the mid-term of the lease, a demand suddenly arising in 1854 for a Government House for Sir Charles Hotham, Toorak was sublet at 10,000 pounds a year. I recall the early, happy, Toorak home, where personal beauty in mother and young children lost its edge by being so common. The remaining family are now all in the old country. Mrs. Jackson still lives, the honoured head of a surrounding of descendants, which, to me at least, have been long past counting.

1850.

"Isabella, widow of James Williamson, solicitor, Edinburgh, aged 70."

This is the lady of whom I have already spoken, who gave up six fair daughters to the young settlement in its direst need, and who in turn have given to it multiplied sons and daughters.

1850.

"Edward Curr, aged 52. In your charity, pray for the soul of Edward Curr, of St. Heliers."

This is my old friend, the "Father of Separation" (from New South Wales), with whom I marched for years towards attaining that object. He was a proud man, who, with his vigour of mind and body, grasped his world with a firm hand, and was not, perhaps, of the humour to ask the help or prayers of anyone. But his church, by enjoining the above formula over its dead, had its own way of humbling even the proudest, whether the great or the small, the prince or the peasant. I was surprised to find that one who held so commanding a position in our young community should have been, at death, only 52.

He took the chief charge of the separation movement, if, indeed, it did not originate with him; but, sad to say, he died, at this too early age, just the year before the great object of his later life had been attained. In considering this question practically as a merchant, my view of the determining principle as to the mutual boundary line was that the natural tendency of the trading, whether it took the Sydney or the Melbourne direction, should decide. Thus the hoofs of the bullocks, whether they indicated the northerly or the southerly direction, would decide the contentious question. When I mentioned this point to Curr, who, curiously enough, had wholly omitted it from a very long list of "my reasons for separation," he saw at once its importance, and, in incorporating it in his list, remarked that it was worth all the rest put together. Whenever we sat together afterwards at a separation meeting, he would pa.s.s me the joke about the "hoofs of the bullocks"

deciding the boundary. Sir John Robertson has since told us that Melbourne missed its destiny in this fatal separation movement, for, had she remained within New South Wales, she would have been the capital of Eastern Australia. Well, that slap in the face to us is not altogether uncleverly or unfoundedly directed. The eventuality thus predicted for us might, indeed, have happened. And we, too, might have hesitated in our divisive course if we could but have foreseen two things: first, that the very next year Victoria should produce as much as fifteen millions of gold, and for some twenty years after between six and twelve millions yearly; and second, that our mother, Sydney, who had completely the whip-hand over us at the time, would have permitted us to use all our great resources in order to place ourselves, at her expense, the first in the race.

1853.

"The Honourable James Horatio Nelson Ca.s.sell, H.M. Commissioner of Customs, Member of the Executive Council of Victoria, born 1814. 39 years of age." I have already had to mention repeatedly one of my very best and most intimate friends. He died in November, 1853, while I was upon a Home visit. He left a message for me that he looked forward to resuming our most pleasant friendship in Heaven. What a reality of voice has this hope when it comes thus from the brink of the grave! What a strength of resistance to that tendency of modern science, which, as interpreted by some even of its greatest chiefs, is to abolish the hope of the life beyond the grave, and to cla.s.s us all with "the beasts that perish."

THE MELBOURNE RACES.

Those who delight in contrasts may follow me now to the Melbourne Races.

Although not, in any sense or degree, "a racing man," I could not forego this spectacle, so ill.u.s.trative of the socialities and general progress of the colonists. This was a considerable occasion, as there were about 70,000 present; but it was not the grand "Cup Day," an occasion which can muster 150,000. The grand stand here seemed to me, from my recollection, equal to Epsom and Ascot together. The racing was in admirable style, the horses generally taking hurdles and steeples without visible hitch in their pace. I used to have a racing theory which was confirmed here--namely, that the horse should never be allowed ahead, or at least for more than a yard or two, till close on the finish, because he thus loses the highest of the excitement, and is more amenable to fatigue. In one splendid race, of a dozen or more, on this occasion, one man, who came in far ahead at the first round, I predicted was to lose the race; and so it proved, for at the second and final round he came in only sixth or seventh.

THE HONOUR OF THE RAILWAY FREE Pa.s.s.

Sixteen days of Melbourne life had pleasantly glided away, and we must needs be off, because we had the rest of Australasia to see, and a very brief term for accomplishing so great a business. Honours had been heaped upon us. How we are to take it when we tumble once more to the common level at Home I hardly know or like to think about. One of the most gratifying of these honours was the railway free pa.s.s, which Tasmania first sent us, followed by Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland. Later on I was accorded, through Mr.

Labertouche's kind agency, the golden key or pa.s.s over the Victorian lines for life, which I was a.s.sured was my due as one of the original members of the first Victorian Parliament. From my old friend of nearly forty years standing, Sir Henry Parkes, I had a courteous note to the effect that our railway comfort should be looked after so soon as we crossed the frontier. The honour of these things is, by infinity, greater than the mere saving of money. This is to be literally the case, for our daughter is already counting up these savings, with the intention of claiming them for kangaroo and opossum cloaks and rugs.

ALBURY.

We took the day train to Albury instead of the through night mail, so as to see Victoria, and have a few hours to spare to see Albury and its great wine business. We paid our respects to the Mayor of Albury, Mr.

Mate, who, with Mr. Thompson, his son-in-law, showed us much attention; and we also inspected Mr. Fallon's great wine vaults, and tasted some excellent wine, including the pale, delicate tokay. Albury, with its population of 8,000, reminded me of Melbourne about 1845. There was an air of comfort and prosperity all about, and a leisurely way of it, which contrasted pleasantly with the hurry and bustle of larger places.

THE BRACING COLD ONCE MORE.

Transferring ourselves now to the night mail, and awaking with the broad daylight of a sunny morning between Ya.s.s and Goulburn, we looked out upon a country all white with h.o.a.r frost, while our carriage windows had an inside coating of ice. This recalled an inspiring discussion at the Chamber of Commerce dinner a fortnight before, on my introducing the question of the snow and the highest civilization it symbolized. I had said that Victoria as well as Tasmania presented the significant snow.

Mr. Service, the leader of the federation movement, alike intercolonial and imperial, corrected me by subst.i.tuting Australian for Victorian snow. But Mr. Macdonald Patterson, of Queensland, extended the snow line well over even northern New South Wales, as he told us of a heavy snowstorm he had encountered when travelling south from Brisbane, and which lay so thickly upon the ground as to tempt the pa.s.sengers to a vigorous s...o...b..lling, which latterly concentrated upon the railway guard for his grudging attempt to end the sport by ringing his signal bell.

But this snow and cold, however favourable to ultimate civilization, were by no means a pleasure just at the moment, and I had to put on the very warmest clothing I ever heaped upon me in an English or Scotch winter. Nor did I escape a severe cold withal, which is only now disappearing under the genial influence of the balmy air of Queensland, which, now as I write, comes to us off the land towards the end of our voyage from Sydney to Brisbane (19th-21st August). We are just pa.s.sing the South Queensland boundary of 30 degrees lat.i.tude, and as a few more hours will land us amidst troops of new friends at Brisbane, I expedite my work, fearing that, as at Melbourne, our brief s.p.a.ce of time will be otherwise occupied.

MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY.

Having just seen Sydney as well as Melbourne, I feel bound to give my impressions of both, which will, I think, be best and most briefly done in the form of a comparative sketch. I must premise with the remark that the great extent of both cities, the great and solid basis of trade on which they appear to rest, and above all the quick and ready step with which they apply to practical purposes the progress, mechanical or scientific, of our age, are beyond anything I had expected to meet with, well prepared as I had previously been upon the subject. Thus the electric light, electric bells, and other electric uses, the telephone, and the lift system, all seem to me in more general use than in London and our larger Home cities. The lift, for instance, is, as the rule, in every bank or other large inst.i.tution for the use of the staff or customers or visitors. It is certainly as yet the rare exception in such cases in London.

THE SYDNEY PRESS.

In Sydney I was first met by my old and esteemed friend the Honourable George Alfred Lloyd, who, besides many other attentions, took me to Sir Henry Parkes, with whom I enjoyed some interesting political and financial conversation. I afterwards met the Honourable Mr. Burns, the Treasurer, and discussed with him the prospects for consolidated Australasian three per cents--a prospect which, as he said, he feared might be still far off; owing to the perverse fancy of the other colonies to enter upon special protective systems of their own, which, after being established, they, or the interests protected, might not be disposed to give up even for the sake of a federated Australasia; next we called for one of our fellow-pa.s.sengers per "Coptic", Mr. Sidman, at the grand offices of the "Evening News" and the "Town and Country Journal", for one or other of which he had been editorially engaged.