Recollections Part 8

It is not unnatural perhaps that a man trained in English journalism and having worked in every grade of it should esteem it highly. But allowing all I can for personal prejudice and striving to look impartially upon it and its rivals, I am compelled to think it far and away the best in the world. In Australia the high traditions of the parent Press are preserved, and among many strange and novel and perplexing signs one can but gratefully and hopefully recognise the splendid enterprise and the lofty sense of public obligation which guide the youngest school of journalism in the world.

In one respect Australian journalism surpa.s.ses English. We have nothing to show which will at all compare with the _Australasian_ or the _Leader_; but it is easy to see that they and similar journals of other cities (which are all worthy of the same high praise) are established excellences to local conditions. These great weekly issues give all the week's news and all the striking articles which have appeared in the daily journals of which they are at once the growth and compendium.

They do much more than this, for they include whatever the gardener, the agriculturist, the housewife, the lady of fashion, the searcher of general literature, the chess-player, the squatter can most desire to know. They provide for 'all sorts of tastes and needs, and between their first sheet and their last, they render to their readers what we in England buy half a score of special journals to secure. The reason for their existence is simple. There is not population enough to support the specialist as we know him at home, and an eager and enquiring people will be served.

The first unescapable belief of the English traveller is that the Australian is a transplanted Englishman pure and simple. A residence of only a few months kills that notion outright. Many new characteristics present themselves. To arrest one of the most noticeable--there is perhaps no such pleasure-loving and pleasure-seeking people in the world. I wish now I had thought of securing trustworthy statistics with respect to the number of people who present themselves on the colonial racecourses within the limit of a year. It would be interesting to know what proportion of the population is given over to the breeding and training of horseflesh and the riding of races. The Melbourne people exult--and not unjustifiably--in the Melbourne Cup and on the spectacle presented at its running. That spectacle is quite unique as far as I know. Neither the Derby nor the Grand Prix can rival it for its view of packed humanity, and neither can approach it for the decorous order of the crowd. Is it Jane Taylor who tells the story of an English village?

I am not quite sure, but I remember the genesis. You must have a church to begin with. For a church you want a parson and a parson must have a clerk. From this established nucleus grows everything. In Australia they begin with the race-course. This statement is not to be accepted as a satiric fable, but as a literal fact. Nearly two years ago, travelling in the Blue Mountains--miles upon miles away from everywhere--I came upon a huge board erected in the bush. The board bore this inscription, "Projected road to site of intended race-course." There was not a house visible, or the sign of the beginning of a house, but half-an-hour later, in apparent virgin forest, I found another board nailed to a big eucalypt. It had a painted legend on it, setting forth that these eligible building sites were to be let or sold. The solemn forest stood everywhere, and the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the eligible building sites was the only evidence of man's presence. It was for the benefit of future dwellers here that the road to the site of the "intended race-course"

had been "projected."

Again there are more theatres and more theatregoers to the population than can probably be found elsewhere. The houses and the performances are alike admirable. Like the Americans, the Australians endure many performances which would not be thought tolerable in England, but they mount their productions with great pomp and luxury. Whatever is best in England finds an early rendering in the great cities, and for serious work the general standard is as high as in Paris or in London. The Princess Theatre in Melbourne has given renditions of comic opera which are not unfairly to be compared, for dressing, _mise-en-scene_ and artistic finish to those of the Savoy. The general taste is for jollity, bright colour, cheerful music. Comedy runs broader than it does at home and some of the most excellent artists have learned a touch of buffoonery. The public taste condones it, may even be said to relish it to _finesse_. The critics of the Press are, in the main, too favourable, but that is a stricture which applies to modern criticism in general.

There is a desire to say smooth words everywhere and to keep things pleasant.

Outside the southernmost parts of Victoria Australia has a climate, and the people can rejoice in midnight picnics. In the glorious southern moonlight one can read the small print of a newspaper. The air is cool after the overwhelming furnace of the day. The moonlight jaunts and junketings are characteristic and pleasant, and they offer an opportunity for the British matron who flourishes there as here--heaven bless her--to air her sense of morals in letters to the newspapers.

The creed of athleticism speaks its latest word here. The burial of poor young Searle, the champion sculler of the world, was a remarkable and characteristic sight. That he was a great athlete and a good fellow seems indisputable, but to the outsider the feeling excited by his early and mournful death looked disproportionate. Every newspaper, from the stately _Argus_ down to the smallest weekly organ of the village sang his dying song. He was praised and lamented out of reason, even for a champion sculler. The regret seemed exaggerated. At his funeral obsequies the streets were thronged, and thousands followed in his train. It was mournful that a young man should be struck down in the pride and vigour of his strength. It is always mournful that this should be so, but it is common, and the pa.s.sion of the lament provoked weariness. The feeling was doubtless genuine, but it might possibly have had an object worthier of a nation's mourning.

Another fine athlete and good fellow is Frank Slavin, the prize-fighter.

I have acknowledged a hundred times that I belong to a lost cause. My sympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring. Righdy or wrongly, I trace the growth of crimes of violence to the abolition of that glorious inst.i.tution. I want to see it back again, with its rules of fair-play, and for its contempt for pain and its excellent tuition in temper and forbearance. I am an enthusiast, and being almost alone, am therefore the more enthusiastic. But I grew tired of the wild exultation in Slavin's prowess, the mad rejoicing over a victory which meant less than it would have done in the days which I am old enough to remember. In Australia better be an athlete than almost anything, except perhaps a millionaire.

Take the average native and ask him what he knows of Marcus Clarke, of James Brunton Stevens, of Harpur, Kendal, or the original of Browning's _Waring_. He will have no response for you, but he will reel off for you the names of the best bowler, the best bat, the champion forward, the cunningest of half-backs. The portraits of football players are published by the dozen and the score, and the native knows the names and achievements of every man thus signalled out for honour. In England the schoolboys would know all about these people, but in Australia the world at large is interested. The bank clerk who has a recognised position in a football team enjoys professional privileges which another may not claim. His athletic prowess reflects upon him in his business. His manager allows him holidays for his matches, and is considerate with him with regard to hours for training.

From all this one would naturally argue the existence of a specially athletic people, but the conclusion is largely illusory. The worship of athleticism breeds a professional or semi-professional cla.s.s, but it is surprising to know how little an effect it has upon the crowd of city people who join in all the rites of adoration. The popularity of the game is answerable for the existence of the barracker whose outward manifestations of the inward man are as disagreeable as they well can be. The barracker is the man who shouts for his own party, and by yells of scorn and expletives of execration seeks to daunt the side against which he has put his money or his partisan aspirations. When he gathers in his thousands, as he does at all matches of importance, he is surprisingly objectionable. He is fluent in oath and objurgation, cursing like an inmate of the pit. This same man is orderly enough at a race meeting and takes his pleasure mildly there.

The barracker and the larrikin are akin. The gamin of Paris, grown up to early manhood, fed on three meat meals a day, supplied with plenteous pocket money, and allowed to rule a tribe of tailors, would be a larrikin. The New York hoodlum is a larrikin with a difference. The British rough is a larrikin also with a difference. The Australian representative of the great blackguard tribe is better dressed, better fed and more liberally provided in all respects than his _confrere_ of other nations. He is the street bully, _par excellence_, inspired to this tyranny by unfailing beef and beer. When Mr b.u.mble heard of Oliver Twist's resistance to the combined authority of Mrs Sowerberry and Charlotte and Noah Claypole, he repudiated the idea of madness which was offered as an explanation of the boy's conduct. "It isn't madness, ma'am," said Mr b.u.mble, "it's meat."

There is the true explanation of the larrikin. He is meat-fed and is thereby inspired with ferocity, Darwin, if I remember righdy, tells of a sheep which was gradually accustomed to a flesh diet. Its wool began to take the coa.r.s.eness of hair and the mild beast grew savage.

The fore-runners of the larrikin were never very sheep-like in all probability, for if one could trace his pedigree, it would in most cases be found that he is the descendant of the true British cad. But he has improved upon the ancestral pattern and become a pest of formidable characteristics and dimensions. The problem he presents has never been faced, but it will have to be met in one way or another before long.

The stranger is forced to the conclusion that magistrates are absurdly lenient. I recall a case of some few months ago where a gang of well-fed ruffians a.s.saulted an old man in Flinders Street, Melbourne. The attack was shown to have been utterly unprovoked, and the victim's injuries were serious. Three of the most active partic.i.p.ators in the sport were seized by the police and were each sent to prison for six weeks, A sentence of six months, with a brace of sound floggings thrown in, would have gone nearer to meet the exigencies of the case; but there is a widespread objection to the use of the cat, the argument being that it is wrong to brutalise these refined young men by its application. The same spirit of false sentiment exists in England, but in a less marked degree.

Crimes of violence are of exceptionally frequent occurrence and it is still felt necessary to punish rape by the imposition of the final penalty.

The democracy is determined to test itself completely and female suffrage seems to be within measurable distance. It is conceivable that it may have a refining effect, and that it may act as a curative, though the experiment is full of risk. The one-man one-vote principle, together with the payment of members of the legislative chambers, has not, so far, achieved the happiest conceivable results. The parliament of New South Wales is occasionally notorious as a bear-garden. The late Mr MacEhlone (who once informed the Speaker that, when he encountered outside an honourable gentleman, to whom the ruling of the chair compelled him to apologise, he would "spit in his eye ") has a worthy successor in the presence of a Mr Crick. Sometime ago Mr Crick was expelled by an indignant house, wearied of his prolonged indecencies of demeanour, but his const.i.tuency sent him back untamed and rejoicing--his mission being to prove that the Ministry was composed of thieves and liars. The miserable charges dwindled into nothing; but one at least of his const.i.tuents is persuaded that the debates, as printed in the newspapers, would lose so much of sparkle if Mr Crick were banished permanendy from the house that the breakfast enjoyment of the public more than atoned for his presence there. The women are notoriously deficient in humour, and it is possible that, when they come to vote, the reign of Mr Crick and his like will be over.

The best hope which lies before Australia at this hour is the federation of her several colonies. Her determination to keep her population European can hardly fail of approval, but the immediate work to her hand is to consolidate her own possessions. The attempt to find material for six separate parliaments in a population of three and a half millions has, it must be confessed in all candour, succeeded beyond reasonable expectations, but concentration will be of service. There will be a laudable rivalry between the colonies which will result in the choice of the fittest men, and a combination parliament will be a more useful and dignified body than has yet been a.s.sembled within colonial limits.

But this is one of the smallest of the results to be antic.i.p.ated. The ridiculous tariff restrictions which now hara.s.s individuals and restrict commerce will pa.s.s away and with them the foolish hatreds which exist between the rival colonies. At present if one desire to anger a Victorian he has only to praise New South Wales. Would he wound a Sydneyite in the fifth rib, let him laud Melbourne. There is a dispute pending about the proprietorship of the Murray River. It lies between the two colonies and New South Wales claims it to the Victorian bank.

When it overflowed disastrously a couple of years ago, an irate farmer on the Victorian side is said to have written to Sir Henry Parkes, bidding him come and pump the confounded river off his land, and threatening to agitate for a duty (by the gallon) on imported New South Wales water. The dispute is nothing less than childish, but I have the personal a.s.surance of the leading statesman of New South Wales that he is perfectly satisfied with the position. It is probable that he sees in the existing riparian rights a chance for a concession which may win concessions in its turn. The Victorians are imminently dissatisfied and would seem to have a right to be so. Federation is on all accounts to be desired, but it has yet to be fought for, and will only be gained with difficulty. Wise men long for it, but the petty jealousies of rival states will hold it back from its birth-time as long as delay is possible. How infinitesimally small these jealousies are nothing short of a residence in the land can teach anybody. Wisdom will have its way in the long run, but the belief of the veteran leader of New South Wales, that he will live to see the union of the Australian colonies, is a dream. It is a dream which only his political enemies will grudge him.

The wide and varied resources of the country, and the ups and downs which men experience, breed a merciless courage which in some of its manifestations is very fine. During my first stay in Melbourne the waiter who attended to my wants at Menzies' Hotel brought up, with something of a dubious air, a sc.r.a.p of blue paper, on which was written, "Your old friend------." I instructed him to show my visitor in, and a minute later beheld the face of an old companion, a little more grizzled and wrinkled than I had last seen it, but otherwise unchanged. When we had shaken hands and he was seated, I found that he was dressed like a common labourer; and in answer to my inquiry he told me, bravely and brightly, that he had fallen upon evil times. "I should like a gla.s.s of champagne, old man," said he when I asked him to refresh himself, "and a square foot will run to enjoy it." We talked away, and he told me of a history of success and failure, and at last he explained the purpose of his visit. He wished to hear the three lectures I was advertised to deliver, and he had come to ask me for a pa.s.s. "I shall not disgrace you, old boy," he added, "I have been down on my luck for a couple of years past but I am not going to stay where I am, and _I have kept my dress clothes_." I do not know that I ever saw a finer bit of unconscious courage, and the incident gave me a certain faith in the spirit of the colonies which has never left me. There is a gambling element in it no doubt but the ever present sense of hope is a great and valuable thing. It finds such a place in a new country as it can never have in an old one. The English gentleman who in England had fallen to be a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water would never have "kept his dress clothes." He would have known that he was permanendy under, but here the British pluck had rational hope of recovery, and on that rational hope survived and even flourished.

And this leads me back to that question of the self-confidence of the Australian-born colonial with which I started. Hope looks so sure, that what Australia wants and has not it seems self-evident in a little while she will have. And so she might if she would go the right way for it, and instead of keeping three-quarters of her spa.r.s.e inhabitants in towns, would take the work that lies before her nose and subdue the land and replenish it; and instead of shutting the gates deliberately on rival labour, would draw the stranger to her coasts and pour population on vast tracts of land which now lie barren and unproductive, but only wait for the hand of man to break into beauty and yield riches.

In a hundred ways timidity would have been criminal, but when one sees in what direction courage and hope have led the way, and to what effort they have prompted, a little over-confidence looks pardonable.

Everywhere the colonists have worked for the future. They have made railways and roads which will not be fully used for many and many a day.

Their public buildings are made to last, and are of dimensions n.o.bler than present needs can ask for. Generations to come will laud the wisdom and the generosity of the men of the last fifty years. In certain places there is an admirable spirit of emulation amongst private citizens who have set themselves to beautify the towns in which they live. This is very notable in Ballarat, where it has grown to be an excellent fashion to present the town with statues. Should that fashion continue and should the same spirit of local patriotism prevail, Ballarat may grow to be the Athens of the Southern Hemisphere. The plan is a little large perhaps, but it is in the colonial fashion, and one would willingly believe in the chances of its ultimate justification.

The unborn generations will have to thank their predecessors for some of the loveliest blessings of the world. Every town has its gardens, the property of the citizens. Those of Brisbane, Sydney, and Adelaide are extensively beautiful. But more beautiful than the grounds themselves is the inscription which I found at the gates of the loveliest of them all. I wish I had the _ipsissima verba_ of it, for it seemed to be characterised by an admirable simplicity and directness. The sense of it is this,--

These gardens belong to the public and the owners are requested to protect their property.

There to my mind speaks the true voice of democracy, and that inscription afforded me the pleasantest spectacle I saw in the course of my two years pilgrimage through the Australias.

CHAPTER XIV

Mr Rudyard Kipling and Bruggksmith--New Zealand--Its Climate --People--Fortune--Ned's Chum--Sir George Grey.

Whilst I was in Australia I found in the pages of the _Melbourne Argus_ a very remarkable poem and an equally remarkable prose story which had originally appeared in one of the great Anglo-Indian journals. They were alike anonymous, but it was quite evident that they came from the same hand. A few months later they were known to be the work of Rudyard Kipling; and when I returned to London the new writer was at the zenith of the literary firmament and was shining there like a comet. For the first few years of his career he looked inexhaustible, and whilst he was still at his most dazzling best, he produced a litde masterpiece of roaring farce which, for sheer broad fun and high animal spirits, surpa.s.ses anything else I know in English fiction. The story is called _Bruggksmith_. I myself read it and still read it with intense enjoyment, dashed with a very singular surprise, for the princ.i.p.al episode in that story had actually happened to me some years before Mr Kipling told it, and I had related it scores and scores of times in public and in private. I have a theory about this matter which I shall here make it my business to unfold. But I must first relate my own adventure. It was between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and I was dining quite alone in the Grand Hotel at Dunedin, when a stranger entered and took his seat beside me. I paid no heed to him at first, but by and by he laid a hand upon my sleeve and said: "I believe that you are Mr David Christie Murray?" I pleaded guilty and turning round to my companion found him to be a person of a sea-faring aspect with a stubbly beard of two or three days' growth. He was smartly attired in a suit of blue pilot cloth with bra.s.s anchor b.u.t.tons, and there was a band of tarnished gold lace around the peaked cap which he nursed upon his knees. His accent was of the broadest Scotch and his nationality was unmistakably to be read in his sun-tanned, weather-beaten face. It was pretty evident that he had been drinking, though he was by no means drunk. "I'm proud and delighted beyond measure to meet ye," he began. "I hope ye'll do me the honour to shake hands with me." He went through the ceremony with great apparent enthusiasm, and I had, indeed, some difficulty in recovering my hand from him. "I'm a ship's engineer,"

he went on, "and I can tell ye, sir, that for years past ye've been my treasured companion; through mony and mony a lonely nicht on the rolling ocean yer books hev been my treasured friends, and mony and mony's the time I've laffed and cried over ye. Mon, but I'm pleased and proud to meet ye--pleased and proud." I expressed my gratification at this statement as well as I could and he said, suiting the action to the word: "Ye'll not mind my ringing for a gla.s.s of whisky? I shall esteem it an honour to take a gla.s.s with ye and to be able to boast hereafter that ye once stood a drink to me." He got his drink and absorbed it gravely, with a wish that I might enjoy long life, health and prosperity. Now there was never a man who was better pleased than I am to learn that he has given pleasure to another by his work. I dare imitate the candour of Oliver Wendell Holmes and confess that I am fond of sweetmeats, but one can have too much even of sugar-plums, and I was getting a little weary of my friend's ecstatics when he began to change his tone. "Perhaps," he said, "ye won't think me impertinent if I say that your work is sometimes curiously unequal. Ye've written a lot in yer time that's very far from being worthy of ye. D'ye know that, now I begin to think of it, I'm inclined to fancy that ye're aboot the most unequal workman I've ever made myself familiarly acquainted with." He maundered along on this theme for two or three minutes and at last he clinched the nail. "A lot of what ye've done," he told me, "is the merest piffle, and if ye were to ask me for a candid judgment, I should say that ye've never written but one work which has really expressed your genius. I can't mind the name of it just at the moment, but there's nae doot at all about it; there's real power in it, there's plot, there's construction, there's style, there's knowledge of character.

Mon! it's a great book; I'll mind the name of it in a minute. Ay! I've got it--it's the only thing ye ever wrote that maks ye worth your salt as a literairy mon and the t.i.tle of it is _Lady Audleys Secret!_"

Now no man, neither Mr Kipling nor any other, could possibly have evolved from his imagination a story like that which had already, years ago, translated itself into fact. Mr Kipling is a man of such prodigious resource and experience that he is the last man in the world to accuse of a plagiarism. It is just within the bounds of possibility, of course, that he may have heard some version of my story, but the theory to which I cling is that there was, somewhere about that time, a Scottish ship's engineer who played off that particular form of humour on two writing men whom chance threw in his way, and that his victims were Mr Kipling and myself.

I was confidently a.s.sured in Australia that I might see New Zealand thoroughly in the course of a two months' trip, and when I set out to visit it, it was my purpose not to extend my stay greatly beyond that limit. In effect, I found a year all too litde for my purpose.

The physical aspects of the country alone are so extraordinary and delightful that a lover of nature finds it hard to withdraw himself from the influence of their charm. New Zealanders delight to speak of their country as the Wonderland of the South. They are justified, and more than justified. The northern island is an amazement, but its gruesome volcanic grotesqueries please less than the scenic splendours of its southern neighbour. The sounds of the west coast more than rival the Norwegian fjords. Te Anau and Manipouri and Wakatipu are as fine as the lakes of Switzerland. The forests, irreverently called "bush," are beyond words for beauty. A little energy, a little courage, might make New Zealand the pet recreation ground of half the world. The authorities are already filling its lakes with trout, and will by-and-by people its forests with game. There is a very large portion of country which, except for purposes of sport and travel, is not likely to be utilized by man. The lake trout grow to enormous size, and as they multiply, and food grows comparatively scarcer, they are learning to take the fly.

It was an understood thing for years that there was no sport for the fly-fisher with the trout at Wakatipu, but that theory has died out, for the very simple reason that the facts have altered. There is no reason in nature why an acclimatisation society should not succeed in a very few years in making the south-west portion of the middle island an actual paradise to the sportsman. It is the plain duty of New Zealand to invite the outside world to enter its borders, and, for once in a way, a plain duty is recognised. I shall remember, so long as I remember anything, the three avalanches I saw and heard thundering down the side of Mount Pembroke as I sat on a boat in the gla.s.sy waters of Milford Sound. In many and many an hour I shall see Wet-Jacket Arm and Dusky Sound again with their vast precipices, luxuriant forests, and rejoicing cataracts. I shall dream, thank heaven, of the awe and worship I felt as the steamer crept round the edge of Rat's Point, and little by little, one by one, the white wonders of the Earnslaw range slid into view, until at last the whole marvellous, unspeakable panorama stood revealed, a spectacle the world may perhaps rival elsewhere, but cannot surpa.s.s.

So long as I remember anything I shall remember a summer day on the banks of the Poseiden. I sat on a fallen log on the track which leads to Lake Ada; and the robins, in their beautiful fearless unfamiliarity with man, perched on my feet, and one feathered inquirer ventured even to my knee. The sunlight steeped the thick foliage overhead until the leaves shone transparent with colours of topaz and of emerald. The moss on the trees was silver-grey and vivid green, and there were fingolds of vermilion and cadmium, and scaly growths of pure cobalt blue; the most amazing and prodigious riot of colour the mind can conceive. The river ran below with many a caverned undertone.

In Sir John Everett Millais' latest days, I met him at a cricket match at Lord's, and made some attempt to describe to him the truly indescribable riot and glory of the colour of the New Zealand forests.

He turned to me with an odd mixture of petulance and humour and asked me: "Why the devil didn't you tell me all this when I could paint?"

I believe he was the only man alive who could have translated those splendours truly.

It is the desire of all good New Zealanders that the beauties of their country should be advertised. I offer this humble contribution to that end with a willing heart. I shall be thankful to my latest day to have seen those beauties which I have been able only to hint at. The traveller who misses New Zealand leaves unseen the country which, take it all in all, is probably the loveliest in the world. The climate varies from stern to mild. That of Auckland is warm and sluggish; that of Dunedin keen, inspiring. Situate midway between the two you find perfection. Napier will be the sanatorium of that side of the world one of these days. All over New Zealand one meets people who went out there to die, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, and who are living yet, robust and hale. The air is fatal to phthisis, as it is also in Australia.

The most terrible foe of the British race is disarmed in these favoured lands. Take it in the main, the climate of New Zealand is fairly represented by that of Great Britain. The southern parts remind one of Scotland, the northern of Devon and Cornwall. The variety of which Lesser Britain has so much reason to complain is absent. The British climate is idealised in New Zealand.

This fact alone is one of the utmost importance in the estimation of the future of the race. In similar environment the British people have already pretty clearly shown what they can do, and in New Zealand I found myself absolutely unable to trace the beginning of a variation from the British breed. Dunedin, allowing for an influx of Southern Britons, might be Aberdeen; Christ-church, population and all, might be planted in Warwickshire, and no tourist would know that it was not indigenous there. They call their local stream the Avon, and boating there some idle summer days, I easily dreamed myself at home again, and within bow-shot of the skyward-pointing spire which covers the bones of Shakespeare. It is, I believe, a fact that the stream is christened after another river than that which owes its glamour to the poet's name, but in a case of this kind mere fact matters little, and the inhabitants themselves are, for the most part, quite willing to ignore it.

It was in New Zealand that I made my first practical acquaintance with the stage. I have already spoken of that remarkable child actor whom I brought over to England and introduced to the London public in my own comedy of _Ned's Chum_. I saw him first in _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, and I expressed myself in such terms about him to his manager that I was offered a commission to write a play in which he should be the princ.i.p.al figure. I was making holiday just then, and having nothing to detain me, I anch.o.r.ed myself in one of the quietest places in the world and threw myself into my task with so much vigour that in a fortnight the comedy was completed, and within a month from its inception was produced at Auckland. Sir George Grey who was then, though he had long retired from office, the tutelary genius of the place, supplied me with the means for the production of such a stage illusion as can hardly have been seen elsewhere. The second act of the comedy was supposed to take place in the heart of the New Zealand bush. "That's a thing," said Sir George, "which no scene-painter's brush can imitate; you must have the real thing upon the boards." And straightway he gave me an order for the cutting down of any number of forest trees I might require in his own grounds at Cawai. How these were got into the theatre I do not remember, but the scene produced by their aid was the most perfect and beautiful I can remember to have seen. They were braced by invisible wires, and the severed trunks were concealed behind mounds of real forest moss and cart-loads of last year's withered leaves. There was an artificial waterfall on a level with the upper entrance and the back cloth conveyed the impression of an illimitable vista. As anybody may guess who has the slightest knowledge of work behind the scenes, the preparation of this spectacle and its removal necessitated two tediously protracted waits, but the audience appeared to think that the show atoned for tedium, and our only three performances in Auckland were an overwhelming popular success. The author--good, easy man--naturally attributed that success at the time to the charm of the comedy, but though that went well enough in other places later on, it never afterwards secured the same enthusiastic acceptance. It was the realism and originality of the forest scene which did the trick. Its glories were evanescent, and on the third night the characters, who had moved amidst all the splendours of full summer, were straying under brown and withered autumn leaves.

There are few of us who have not discovered that the affability of a distinguished man may be amongst the most disagreeable of all human characteristics, though when one encounters the real thing which has its root in nature and not in policy it is certainly amongst the most delightful. In Sir George Grey one knew it instinctively to be spontaneous; the man seemed to have been born out of his time; he was a survival from another age, In South Africa, South Australia and in New Zealand he proved himself almost an ideal manipulator of men, and wherever he went he reaped a harvest of personal affection. n.o.body meeting him without a knowledge of his record would have guessed that he was in the presence of a man distinguished alike as a diplomatist, a soldier and a scholar; he would have been conscious only of a singularly una.s.suming urbanity and charm. His manner with children was patriarchal.

I was strolling one day during my stay in Auckland with that child actor for whom I had written my comedy of _Ned's Chum_, when we met the ex-governor of the colony at the foot of Mount Eden, now a green turfed slope and at one time a volcano. "Look here," said the boy to the venerable welder of Empire, "you take my ball and see how far you can throw it uphill." "Certainly," said Sir George. He threw the ball to a considerable distance and it settled in a hollow on the hillside. The child raced after it, and before he returned the veteran statesman and myself had each forgotten all about him and were deep in the history of Auckland. By-and-by the young gentleman came back again and tugged at the skirt of the diplomatist's frock coat. "I've been standing up there," he complained, "for three or four minutes calling coo-ee, and you never answered once!" "Did I not?" the statesman answered, "now that was very wrong of me. You try me again and you will see that I shall not misbehave myself next time." The child sped away in pursuit of the ball which Sir George once more threw for him, and in a litde while we heard his call. The old gentleman responded to it and the boy came racing back to have the game repeated, and throughout the whole of our ramble which lasted for an hour or two, the game was carried on with a tireless persistence on the child's side and an unflagging patience on Sir George's. He was talking to me with great animation about the Maori legends which he had himself been the first to collect and translate, but he never neglected to respond to the child's call, and left him, I am sure, under the impression that he was the one person of interest in the party.

CHAPTER XV

The Dreyfus Case--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Opinion--Meeting at the Egyptian-Hall--Interview with Zola--Maitre Labori--M.

Henri Rochefort--Major Esterhazy.

One of my hobbies for the last forty years has been the study of character in handwriting. It is pretty much with the various forms of caligraphy as it is with the human face or with the human voice. The vast majority of faces that one sees are essentially commonplace, but each has somehow an individuality of its own. Handwriting has its physiognomy, and everybody who has been accustomed to a large correspondence knows how instinctively and unfailingly he recognises a caligraphy which has been presented to him only twice or thrice. It was as a result of my pursuit of this hobby that I first began to take a real interest in the Dreyfus case. When the first rough and ready facsimiles of the famous _Bordereau_ and of the authentic letters of Captain Dreyfus were published side by side, it struck me with an immediate amazement to conceive that any person who had given even the most casual attention to this study of handwriting could possibly have supposed that the various doc.u.ments had emanated from the same hand. The forgery of a signature is one of the simplest businesses in the world, but the truly deceptive forgery of a doc.u.ment of any length is an absolute impossibility--an impossibility as complete as would attend the continued personification of a dual character by the most skilful mimic under the observation of one who was able to maintain a sustained and microscopic examination of the two.

It was an article in the _Strand Magazine_ communicated by that eminent statistician, Mr Holt Schooling, which first enabled me to form a judgment in this matter, and until it and its accompanying photographs of original doc.u.ments were brought to my notice, I had taken no more than an ordinary pa.s.sing interest in the case. But since it had been decided, on the strength of an imagined resemblance between the handwriting of the prisoner and that of the author of the _Bordereau_, I had not a moment's hesitation in arriving at the conclusion that the charge against him was unfounded and absurd, and it seemed to me to be no less than a duty to bring other people to the conclusion which I so strongly held. It was not easy. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to me:--

"My dear Murray,--Its being a week-end will prevent my coming up for I have always several visitors. I hope when you can come down you will let me know. Very much interested in your views upon the Dreyfus case. I fancy that the Government may know upon evidence which they dare not disclose (spy or traitor evidence) that he is guilty and have convicted him on a bogus doc.u.ment,--Yours very truly,

"(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle."

For nine long days I went over the photographs of the authentic letters and the incriminating _Bordereau_ with a powerful magnifier, and in the end I succeeded in establishing no fewer than twenty-two distinct and characteristic differentiations between them. I had already entered upon the preparation of an alphabetical synopsis when I learned of the existence of that work of monumental patience and research which had been prepared by Monsieur Bernard Lazare of Paris, and a consultation of its pages showed me that part of the work I had undertaken had already been performed by Monsieur Gustave Bridier, an acknowledged expert in handwriting in Switzerland.