MIA > Archive > Hyndman > Adventurous Life
In 1868 my friend Boyd Kinnear stood as an out-and-out Radical candidate for Fifeshire, and I went up to stay with him at Kinloch to help him if I could and at any rate to see the fun. Sir Robert Anstruther was the Tory candidate and I don’t think Kinnear, who won the seat afterwards, thought he had much chance this time; especially as he took the high and mighty line of pure conviction and would allow no canvassing at all. But he made a very good fight of it and told the electors a lot of truths, the greater part of which they have never yet accepted.
And here for the first time I made the close acquaintance of two Scotch marauders who have since invaded this nation to a fine tune: whisky and golf. The game, which I investigated on the famous St. Andrews Links, was, I was informed, intensely exciting, and many of my countrymen now think so. To my mind it combines boredom and complications in about equal measure, and for development of human mendacity, uncouth technicalities and bad language, it transcends any diversion I have yet encountered in any part of this planet. A returned golfer is more addicted to exaggeration, to phrase it mildly, than a returned salmon-fisher; while a lot of golfers together are the most unbearable “shop”-talking miscreants who ever destroyed rational conversation and rendered digestion impossible.
But whisky. Do you like whisky? If you say you do, I am bound to take your word for it, as a matter of politeness; but I shall firmly believe all the same that you drink it out of deference to some Cabinet Minister or to ingratiate yourself with a leading editor – all of them being Scotchmen at the hour that now is. It is inconceivable to me that anybody can really like the stuff. Taste, smell, effect on the health are each and all enough to warn the judicious from having anything to do with such a direful liquor. But it has come South with a vengeance, and now all over Europe men and even women absorb the pestilent liver-congesting decoction called whisky-and-soda. I first made acquaintance with this pernicious intoxicant, as I say, at Kinnear’s, and in my Southron ignorance partook of it in the wrong way. Whisky, hot water, lemon and sugar: this was the headachy compost hospitably recommended to me by my Scottish entertainers. I was provided with the materials, a big glass, a small glass and a ladle. It was this ladle that caused my unforgettable discomfiture. I had mixed my liquor with moderation in the big glass, the smaller I took to be intended for very modest drinkers. I then saw at once what the ladle was for: it was meant to convey the toddy to my mouth. I therefore began solemnly to pour ladleful after ladleful down my throat with this convenient implement, when suddenly Kinnear called to his brother, half choked with laughter, “Look at him, Charles, only look at what he is doing”; whereupon they both laughed in unison to my chagrin and abasement. The ladle was only intended, it seemed, to take the grog from the bigger to the smaller vessel. But, however mixed or however swallowed, whisky is a most wretched tipple and I could only wonder how Kinnear, whose choice in wines was always admirable, should allow his nationality to beguile him into consuming this baneful spirit as if he liked it. Tuberculosis and cancer, appendicitis, lunacy and liver complaint have all spread with most malefic energy since whisky became the vogue south of the Tweed.
But even golf and whisky could not lessen my admiration for the beauties of St. Andrews or my enjoyment of the rude humour of a Scotch parliamentary election, with its fierce heckling and its well-educated ruffianism. Did you ever see a crowd of Scotch electors spit on their opponents? I did. In Principal Tulloch and Professor Spencer Baynes of St. Andrews, however, Kinnear had two most capable and interesting supporters. They used their eloquence and persuasion for the time being in vain; but rarely have two abler men left the library and the lecture room to take part in a political election. Tulloch, in particular, was a man of remarkable parts, and his personal appearance – he was strikingly like the most widely accepted traditional portrait of Jesus of Nazareth – added weight to what he said. Baynes, on the other hand, was of lighter mould and I wondered how he had come to be Professor of English in a Scotch University and editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He and Francis Pigott, Examiner of Plays, had been great friends in London as journalists. Baynes was at this time full of good stories about Pigott and himself, and an anecdote he told of Pigott’s greeting to Herbert Spencer when that philosopher first began his great book is worth repeating.
Baynes and Pigott were living together and both were intimate with Spencer, who not unfrequently called at their rooms. This he did a day or two after the publication of his prospectus, or syllabus, or summary, of what he proposed to achieve in his philosophic and scientific survey of sociology and the universe generally. Pigott was writing at a table when Spencer came in, and Baynes went forward alone to greet him. Baynes congratulated the philosopher heartily on the great effort he was about to make, said it was one that was well worthy of his life’s work and added that if there was any man living who was capable of adequately covering so wide and difficult a field, he was the writer specially qualified for the task. When Baynes had finished Pigott arose and going up to Spencer said, “I quite agree with Baynes, you will certainly carry out your magnificent programme and, exhausted with your successful labours, will retire to your rest. This will be the epitaph we shall have inscribed upon your tomb: ‘In seven days the Lord made the earth and on the eighth Herbert Spencer wrote it down’.” What Spencer replied to this is not on record. He had no marked sense of humour and took himself very seriously indeed. Talking one day with Huxley on man and life he said: “All that can be done is to make a mark on one’s time and then the end.” “Never mind the mark,” replied Huxley, “a push is enough.”
Kinnear polled but 700 votes at this election, and this result gave me an abiding contempt for our whole system of electing candidates for the House of Commons. There was no comparison whatever in point of ability and character between himself and Sir Robert Anstruther: yet the latter won by an overwhelming majority. Proportional representation I can understand and appreciate, even a plebiscite on great issues is a convenient way of averting a dangerous political conflict, or even of preventing civil war; but a rough-and-tumble factionist appeal to a limited electorate, jerrymandered up into constituencies varying for an equal number of members from 1500 to 50,000 voters, in which the result is decided by considerations entirely remote from the real vital interests of the people, and is largely influenced by the amount of money spent, is a system of pseudo-democracy which might easily in stirring times bring the whole nation to ruin. At this period, though only, as I have already admitted, a mere political Radical I saw these defects clearly enough. But I was not at one with Radicals on all points. Thus in this same year I expressed myself strongly, contrary to the then prevailing opinion among both Liberals and Conservatives, in favour of a close federation of our democratic Colonies with the Mother-country and, although our Australasian colonies will be far more difficult to defend in the future than in the past, and all our colonies certainly take a most selfish view of their relations to us, I am of the same opinion to-day.
Though I had made a little journalistic and literary reputation since the Italian campaign I was still drifting rather aimlessly about, amusement having quite as much to say to my life as writing or study. Not that I am quite sure that the ordinary beaten track of the public school or the tutor, the University, the Church, or the Bar is quite the course best suited to give a man an understanding of the world, or to develop such faculties as, perhaps, unknown to himself, he may possess. However that may be, when I had had two years of London life, of the mixed sweets description I have more or less fully recounted above, I was, or I imagined myself to be, in impaired health. So in February 1869 I sailed on the old Roxburgh Castle of Green’s Line to go to Australia, for a prolonged tour through the Colonies and the United States.
We took one hundred and four days from land to land. The only incidents of importance at sea, says Landor, are the sun rising and the sun setting. I remember a little more than that about my voyage out to Melbourne, and three solid weeks frittered away in the doldrums on the Equator I shall never forget. I began to doubt whether we should ever get any farther and feared we should stay there, like the luckless victims of ships in the Sargasso sea, until, food eaten up, water given out, a whole ship’s company of rawboned starvelings would throw themselves in despair to the attendant sharks. However, everything has an end, even a voyage on the Roxburgh Castle, and almost to my surprise I arrived in Hobson’s Bay in the same year in which I started. I was at once proposed as a member of the Melbourne Club.
I have always remembered my sojourn therein, off and on for two years, with the keenest pleasure. I became very intimate with many of its members and I saw from the first, what not a few Englishmen coming out to the Colony failed unfortunately to recognise, that, before the gold fever and spirit of adventure drew them out to Victoria, many of these habitués had seen and enjoyed pretty nearly all that was to be seen and enjoyed of European Society. To hear young visitors, newly landed, talk down from the height of their superior knowledge and experience to men such as Standish, Capel, Agnew, Candler, Gowen Evans, Bunny, the Finlays and others was really very amusing; though the awakening of the cleverer of them to the facts of the situation, after a few nights of conversation in the smoking-room, was sometimes a little distressing. A study of the characters of Australia of that day has never been adequately done. At most sketches here and there have given a faint idea of the interesting personalities who built up these white Colonies, now doomed, I fear, to pass, in the not remote future, to a very different race.
A very amusing instance of unintentional lack of good manners and its rebuke occurred in the smoking-room of the Melbourne Club. Wood was then becoming scarce in the colony of Victoria, and only one large wood fire was kept up in the club – that in the smoking-room. Round this fire, naturally, there was every evening a large gathering, the fire itself being the centre of the semicircle of members seated chatting. It was, of course, regarded as very “bad form” for any one to stand in front of the fire, except for a minute or two, as in this way sight of the glow was shut out from all the rest. However, one evening a newly arrived stranger from home, who afterwards proved to be a very nice fellow, took up his position before the blaze, and, turning his back to it, entered into the general conversation. There he stood. Nobody liked to say anything to him, though, of course, there was a certain feeling of resentment at his behaviour. All waited. Nobody moved, and the talk went on. At last one of the oldest members of the club, Dr. Candler, solemnly rose, cutting his tobacco for his pipe in the hollow of his hand, as is the custom of pipe-smokers in those parts, and rang the bell. The waiter came. “Waiter,” said Candler, “bring some more wood.” The waiter went out and returned with two huge billets, which he put on the fire after he had carefully raked it down, the young obstructive having moved to one side in order to enable this be done. When the waiter withdrew, however, he resumed his place and stood there as before. Within a few minutes the fire had got very hot, and then Candler rose again, with the same solemn air as before, and once more rang the bell and gave the same order to the waiter. This time the waiter, who probably saw the fun of the thing, returned quite laden with large logs, of wood, raked down the fire and put them all on. Still the young man returned to his post. We others found it very difficult to keep our countenance. But now the heat became too great even for him, and his clothes were scorching. He therefore moved away, and then at last a quiet laugh went through that assembly.
I have been a great deal about the world and I have moved freely in many societies, but I have never lived in any city where the people at large, as well as the educated class, took so keen an interest in all the activities of human life, as in Melbourne at the time I visited it. Art, the drama, music, literature, journalism, wit, oratory, all found ready appreciation. The life and vivacity .of the place were astonishing. Its only drawback was rather neatly expressed by the brother of Bernal Osborne, who held some British appointment in the metropolis of Victoria. Asked how he liked Melbourne he replied, with the drawl that was habitual to him, “Immensely. But don’t you think it is a little far from town?”
I had come out to Australia for my health and to see something of the Colonies. I began the latter diversion by staying up country with my Trinity friends, the Finlays, at Glenormiston. The story of how, being fully entitled to the possession of that “run,” their father and themselves eventually tossed up for it against their malversating Scotch agent and won it, though, by a curious arrangement on the part of their partners, the Gladstones, cousins of the G.O.M., the agent had two throws to their one, is quite an interesting little episode in colonial life which might be worth telling if space permitted. Suffice it to say, that a property worth some £200,000 passed “by the hazard of the dice” into the hands of the rightful owner. Many years afterwards my friend Steuart Gladstone told me what fools he thought his family had been not to take up the same line as the Finlays, instead of trusting to the honesty of a wily old Highland shepherd who had feathered his own nest beautifully at their expense. At any rate, I had a very pleasant time on one of the best runs in Australia: hunting kangaroo, rounding up cattle, shooting snipe – for which alone Australia was well worth discovering, seeing that they are as big again and to the full as toothsome as our home-grown variety; and also with the Robertsons, the two famous Oxford oarsmen, shooting rabbits at Colac.
Those were the days when bushrangers were still plying their vocation and rabbits literally overran the country. I went out, I say, with one of the Robertsons to shoot the latter. A bootless pastime, and, as I soon discovered, a horribly dangerous one. All the bushrangers that ever infested the back country would not have scared me so completely as did that morning’s work. We went down, in order to find more rabbits, close to the Colac Lake. But where there are rabbits in Australia there likewise are snakes. Snakes! I never saw so many snakes before or since. And deadly reptiles too. The diamond snake, the whip wake, all sorts of snakes, most of them poisonous. Robertson had on a pair of snake-proof trousers. I hadn’t. I shot more snakes than I did rabbits and then, I am not ashamed to say, I cleared out fast as I could go. No more snake and rabbit sport for me after that experience. I can imagine nothing more terrifying than to indulge as a pastime in walking through short scrub, beset with reptiles as poisonous as cobras on every hand, and expecting each moment to tread on one of them and feel his fangs embedded in your calf. It was admitted afterwards that I ought not to have gone where I did in my ordinary apparel. I should think not. If Robertson is still living and reads these lines I hope his conscience will smite him, and that he will dream he has a whip snake up his leg.
It was here, at Glenormiston, in the rich Camperdown district of Victoria, that, as it seems to me now, I first began to grasp in earnest the communal theories which I have since understood more completely. I never could endure the idea that the land of a country should belong to a mere handful of people whose forbears had obtained it either by force or fraud, or who bought it from those who had thus acquired it. In Europe, however, there was some historical ground, if not excuse, for this illicit appropriation. In Australia history had not begun. Yet here, riding about the country, I found interlopers called squatters, far more dangerous and iniquitous in their social depredations than the outlaws who held up Cobb’s coaches and robbed banks, who had, with the assent of a legislature completely under their control, grabbed vast areas of land by absurdly cheap purchase, or still cheaper perpetual lease, which made them in reality masters of the well-being of the entire agricultural community. They had, to use their own phrase, “picked out the eyes of the country” by buying at a low price those portions of the district which commanded the water-supply and the communications and, being thus lords of all they surveyed, the surrounding acreage they used for cattle-ranches. The Camperdown district was rather an exception to this system, as much of the land was so good as to be worth buying out and out at the low price of £1 an acre, and holding on to until population and general development increased the value ten, twenty, or a hundred-fold.
I am bound to say these same squatters treated personally so well that, as a mere passer-by and stranger in the land, I felt scarcely justified in attacking them. One fine night, however, at the Finlays, as luck would have it, the conversation turned upon the landownership of Australia and I blurted out, with the imprudence which I have assured by all my friends, in confidence, is prevailing characteristic, that the squatters of Victoria, however pleasant individually, were, as a some of the most nefarious land-grabbers that had ever afflicted a community, and I went on to that if I had the power I would expropriate whole lot of them without further ado. Hence arose a dire contention, and I was accused, quite justly, of abusing the rights of hospitality by bringing up such an indigestible topic in so repellent a form immediately after dinner. That I did not dispute. But we were in for the argument, and argument went on.
On the general issue I thought, and I think, I the best of it; but that would not itself have brought even one of the fifteen squatters carousing and smoking happily round that table over to my side. Happily for me there was a hideous example close at hand. The obnoxious landowner was a miscreant named Manifold, I believe. He was a miser, a sweater, a curmudgeon, a landgrabber of the most unpleasant description, and he owned in fee simple fully 50,000 acres of the very finest land in the district: a much larger area than was possessed by any squatter at the table. “Do you mean to tell me,” said I, with all the fervour of righteous indignation, not difficult to feel and express on a matter that did not personally affect myself, “do you mean to tell me that you uphold proceedings of old Manifold, who has got some or sixty thousand acres of the very finest land in this neighbourhood, who doesn’t till it, or improve it, or cultivate it, and absolutely cheats his stockmen out of their wages whenever he can? Is that the sort of landownership you, as honourable men, would sustain and perpetuate? You know as well as I do that old Manifold uses his land to support his politics” – he was a member of the Legislative Council – “and his politics to uphold his land. He has never done any good to any living being. Yet there he sits like an incubus on his fifty thousand acres, waiting until you other fellows, with higher conceptions of life, make his property worth millions by your efforts.” Well, what with playing up old Manifold for more than he was worth, and putting forward in all sincerity the interests of the whole community and their children after them, as of far more importance than the enrichment and aggrandisement of a very small class, I actually succeeded in getting several of these squatters to agree with me. They even insisted upon putting the question of the resumption of all the squatters’ land at a fair remuneration for improvements and time and energy spent on them to the whole of our party. Of the fifteen squatters present, seven voted for this resolution and eight against. And so to bed, a defeated but not a discouraged propagandist.
The following morning one of those dramatic little incidents occurred to which a disputant is inclined at the time to attach too much importance. Among the most vigorous of my opponents before we retired was a local squatter, Mr. Shaw, known by everybody as “Tommy” Shaw. I was deeply engaged in replacing the tissues exhausted by debate with a thoroughly good breakfast – no boiled tea and damper in that bush! – being chaffed a little the while by other breakfasters on the results of our discussion of the night before, when “Tommy” entered. He came straight to where I was sitting, and without even saying good-morning, delivered himself thus: “I have been thinking carefully over what you were saying last night, Mr. Hyndman, about the private ownership of vast acts of land by squatters, and I have come to the conclusion that you were quite right.” Thereupon a roar of laughter and protest rang round the table. This change of opinion on the part of Mr. Shaw gave me the majority, as I hastened to point out. The minority at once started a subscription to insure my deportation from the colony as a person too dangerous to be allowed to be any longer at large. I heard of Tommy Shaw many years afterwards as a staunch supporter of Henry George and his land-nationalisation scheme here at home in the Midlands. It has always seemed to me very creditable to the squatters that forty years ago a chance majority of them should take the view they did, when up country, and on their own lands. But things move slowly in Australia, too, and not even the Labour Party has yet carried a vote for the resumption of Crown Lands in the House of Representatives of Victoria.
Returning to the Melbourne Club, after a very delightful and instructive tour through the colony, I was quite unexpectedly plunged into journalism and politics, and this, to some extent, against my will. I was thoroughly enjoying this new and fresh life, as well as the friends and acquaintances I had made and was making, sending a letter now and then to a well-known journal at home but otherwise not troubling my head about writing of any sort. One fine day, however, the manager of the Argus, who was a member of the club, an old Lincoln College, Oxford, man named Gowen Evans, whom I had got to know well, upbraided me with my laziness, which as I told him was no business of his, and then pressed me to write a review for the paper of a novel by Marcus Clarke, which had just appeared. Marcus Clarke was then and for long afterwards the smartest littérateur in Melbourne, and it appeared that other writers of ability did not care to criticise his work. Evans persuaded me to undertake the task and I did it as well as I could.
So far as I can remember it was not a bad novel; but it described scenes in England which the writer had never looked upon, and dealt with a life he knew of only by hearsay. While giving the author full credit for its merits, therefore, I did not hesitate to point out very clearly its defects. I never got greater fun out of anything I ever wrote. As I have said the Melbourne of that day was a city which rejoiced in anything that was lively in the way of journalism or letters, and it was most amusing to hear the talk going on as to who had been so rash as to criticise thus adversely the writing of this promising and rather prickly young Australian. The secret was well kept, and when at last it leaked out Marcus Clarke and I had become excellent friends. At the end of the review I had said that I felt sure if the author would turn his attention to the life and character of his own native country he would make a great name for himself. I only mention this now because, years later, Marcus Clarke, recalling this remark of mine, sent me a copy of his novel entitled His Natural Life.
This is an awful book. Some one speaking of it the other day said it was a mere reproduction of official records. That is quite unfair in every way. The novel is in its line a masterpiece of horror. It is not mere photography: it is an artistic presentation of events so terrible in themselves that it needed a craftsman of much more than ordinary skill and imagination to bring them within the scope of literary art at all. The story is based on incidents many of which actually took place in those hells upon earth, Van Diemen’s Land and Norfolk Island. So hideous were the details of revolting tyranny and cruelty exercised from above on the luckless prisoners and, sad to say, by the prisoners themselves upon one another and upon warders whom they were able to overmaster, that I believe the original records were deliberately destroyed, as being contrary to public morals that such things should ever see the light. But Clarke’s tremendous book remains, telling, alike by what it recites and what it suppresses, the frightful truth. I defy any one to read it through without feeling as he lays it down that he has been perusing what is not far, if at all, removed from a work of genius. This is the more remarkable inasmuch that Clarke’s turn seemed to be towards light and witty comment on the topics of the day. His Natural Life shows that, as I suspected, much greater power than he himself knew lay below the surface of his ability. He never did himself full justice. But this novel of his will live by sheer force of its terror-inspiring delineations long after his other work is forgotten. I am sure all who read it will share my opinion as to its power.
My connection with the Argus thus casually begun did not, I am glad to say, end there. Professor Hearn, the author of Plutology, was the principal leader-writer for that journal, which then held the same position in Australia that the Times under Delane held in England. The education question was being forced to the front, and Hearn was a strong denominationalist, writing indeed all the time in that sense in the Australasian, which was the weekly journal of the proprietors of the Argus. I was asked to contribute articles as leader-writer in favour of secular education in the Argus in Hearn’s place. As I had always been of opinion that the only possible solution of the problem of education was that it should be gratuitous, compulsory and secular, and of the best kind for all classes, from the common schools up to the university, with physical training for both boys and girls all through, I gladly embraced this opportunity of advocating that policy.
By far our most formidable opponents were the Catholics, who fought a good fight on behalf of their reactionary, mind-perverting principles. The Anglicans, Nonconformists and other sects who favoured religious teaching in the State schools merely followed in the wake of the only great international Christian Church. It was a hot struggle while it lasted; but the whole progressive party in politics and in the press was marshalled on our side. Moreover, we were waging a war for clearly defined principles; namely, that public money should only be used for public purposes, and that the community at large had nothing whatever to do with promulgating sectarian religious beliefs, whether those beliefs happened to be Christian or Mohammedan, Buddhist or Fetichist. We won completely all along the line, and though, since that day, many and vigorous efforts have been made by the bigots and reactionaries to upset the system, Victoria still enjoys one of the best schemes of education for the whole people from childhood to maturity that exists in the world.
I have looked back ever since with genuine satisfaction to the small part I took in this great work, and I think it was a fine thing for my friends of that time, Frederick Haddon the Editor and Gowen Evans the Manager of the leading Conservative organ in Australia, to have used its great influence at that critical juncture in favour of lying a thoroughly sound unsectarian education to the whole of the children of that colony. Both of these men have long since joined the minority, but their work lives after them, and the Oxford man buried in Northamptonshire and the old reporter-editor who went to his rest in Victoria deserved well of their time, and I rejoice to be able to pay their memory now this my little tribute of affectionate regard. All who lent a hand in securing that glorious victory for free thought and Sound education might indeed well be proud of the results achieved. Here in Great Britain, more than forty years afterwards, our politicians and journalists are still engaged in their pitiful squabbling as to how best to keep the children of the “old country” ignorant, or at the best half-taught, in the name of their holy Christian religion, which is never inculcated in two schools on the same lines.
Long years after this, the whole episode was brought to my mind in a rather amusing way. I was in control of a financial organisation in the city. A wealthy and well-known Australian came to see me on an important matter of business connected with the colony of Victoria. After we had discussed matters fully, and I had come to some arrangement with him, this Australian magnate became quite friendly and communicative. He told me of his early struggles and how, by dint of hard work and persistence in the face of great difficulties, he had made his way, and had achieved by his own exertions the enviable position in which he was now placed. He had much to say also of Victoria, its advantages and drawbacks. Among the latter, he put unhesitatingly its methods of educating the young. I did not tell my visitor in turn that I knew something about the colony, and he went on with his tale to, as he thought, a thoroughly sympathetic listener. “Will you believe it, sir,” he said, “will you believe it, the poorest miner’s sons in Victoria can get as good an education as my sons, and I have to pay in order that these paupers should come out afterwards and compete with them on equal terms? What do you think of that?” “Monstrous,” I replied, “quite monstrous”; and he retired convinced that he had met a most sensible person in myself. I laughed heartily, when he had gone, and recalled once more with pleasure the work I had done to bring about the state of things which so angered my rich, self-made man. And I read in the newspapers as I went home a vehement argument against allowing children to be brought up without religious teaching, no matter what might be the shortcomings of their educational course in other respects. We are indeed a conservative people!
The Duke of Edinburgh was on a visit to Australia at this time, and I frequently met him at the club. He used good-naturedly to go out of his way to talk to me, and I had not conversed with him long before I found out that I had to do with a very clever man. Mean in his dealings with money, indifferent as to his dignity at times and places when such carelessness attained to the proportions of an indecent public scandal, and certainly not generally popular as a personality, there could be no doubt whatever as to his capacity, nor as to his power to make himself agreeable when he chose to do so. It became quite a joke that the Duke should chat so often, and at such length, with an out-and-out Radical and Republican like myself. So one day when he had, as usual, run away from others and settled himself down to argue with me, I asked him, point-blank, why he was kind enough to distinguish me in this manner. “Because,” he said, “you talk to me just as if I were the same as everybody else and that when you don’t agree with me – as in the little matter of the overcharge for my coach to the Melbourne Cup – you tell me so plainly. It is nothing short of an infernal nuisance for people to say to me always what they think I want them to say. It bores me to death. I have come out here to see things and to learn men’s opinions, and it is a reflection upon my intelligence to suppose that I cannot bear any one to differ from me.”
In justice to myself I will say that he had no reason to complain of my sycophancy, and two little touches show that he was a better fellow at bottom than the public generally believed him to be. The brilliant barrister, Aspinall of Sydney, was the counsel who defended the Irishman O’Farrell when he was tried for shooting the Duke, and, of course, regardless of court etiquette, did the very best he could for his client, pushing certain points to the front which a less strenuous advocate might very reasonably have slurred over. His action created quite a stir at the time, and was widely disapproved. Nevertheless, it produced no unpleasant effect on the Duke’s mind whatever, and he was careful to tell Mr. Aspinall so. Years later, Aspinall was taken very ill in London, and was confined to his bed for weeks. The Duke of Edinburgh heard by the merest accident that O’Farrell’s defender was being somewhat neglected. Quite unknown to the outside world, he went frequently to see the sick counsel, and did all he could to hasten on his recovery. The other matter referred again to myself. When I was in Sydney I became intimate with Mr. William Macleay, afterwards Sir William and the hero of a very remarkable expedition to New Guinea, and his wife. I used to go down to their place in Elizabeth Bay frequently. When the Duke of Edinburgh came to Sydney for the second time, the Macleays gave a grand reception in his honour, and upon issuing their invitations, Macleay said he hoped I should not be offended if they did not ask me to come, as my extreme opinions were well known and might give umbrage to the Duke. I replied, “Of course not,” and laughed a little. Purely by accident I met the Duke going into the Union Club, to which I did not belong, and he greeted me with his usual cordiality. The next day, as I believe is the rule, the list of guests invited to meet him at the Macleays’ was submitted to him. After looking it over carefully he wrote in my name himself, to the utter astonishment of my friends, who were still more surprised at the manner in which he greeted me.
But I have not yet taken my leave of Melbourne, and this gossip about the Duke of Edinburgh puts me in mind of a very brilliant and caustic lecture delivered by Sir Archibald Michie, then, I think, Attorney-General, on Royalty, Loyalty, and the Prince’s Visit. It was one of the smartest things of its kind ever done, and people were a little shocked at the speaker’s freedom in dealing with one so near to the Lord’s Anointed. But what was even more interesting than this address was a letter received about this time by Sir Archibald from Mr. Robert Lowe, then at the height of his fame. Lowe himself had been an Australian statesman, having fought for the leadership of the New South Wales Assembly with Wentworth, who was more than a match even for Lowe. This letter was written by Lowe when Chancellor of the Exchequer, and its contents were told to me by a well-known Australian, Mr. George Collins Levey, who is an old friend of mine. “I am now,” wrote Lowe in effect, “in almost the highest position that can be attained by any Englishman who was born into my rank of life, and I believe I have as much weight in the Cabinet as any member of it except Gladstone himself. Yet I feel that I have no real influence at all. Matters of the highest importance are not decided by us. A small inner chamber of the great aristocratic families arranges these affairs among themselves, and we have little to do but register their decrees.” This is almost precisely the same thing as Lord Beaconsfield said to me shortly before his death, as I shall later recount.
Now that I have mentioned Robert Lowe, however, I cannot pass on without saying a few words about that remarkable man. I used to meet him frequently at dinner at Mr. Samuel Laing’s, who just after I had taken my degree went so far as to ask him to take me as his private secretary, on grounds which were stated in a way far too flattering to myself. I shrank from taking the post and, what was much more to the point, Lowe did not offer it me, so nothing came of that. But I had several opportunities of becoming familiar with his mind and conversation, and I should think few keener intelligences ever entered English political life. It was wonderful how he made way against such strangely disagreeable and awkward physical peculiarities as he had. Lowe was an Albino with whitish hair streaming down over his head like bleached thatch. His face was rather ruddy, which made a strange contrast to his hair. His eyes, which were very imperfect indeed, were always half closed, and seemed to be pink behind the lids. He peered rather than looked at anything, and could barely see beyond his nose. Yet with all these disadvantages he began life as a most successful tutor at Oxford, then made his mark as a politician in Australia, and became one of the most effective speakers in the House of Commons. Talking late at night in Mr. Laing’s library he did himself the fullest justice; but I confess I always felt, as I listened to his brilliant conversation, that quite good-naturedly he was on the look-out for weak places in the intellect of those around him, in order that he might delicately poke his sarcasm into them. Two of his sentences in his famous speech against the Reform Bill ought to be remembered: first when he said that having given the people the vote, it now became absolutely necessary “to educate our masters,” and next when he spoke of “the barren desert of democracy where every mountain is a molehill and every thistle a forest tree.” But he will live longer by reason of the epitaph written upon him when he was still in the full vigour of life, than on account of anything he himself ever said or did. The lines are still generally remembered, but I really must quote them again here:–
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Here lies Robert Lowe; |
Lowe himself was delighted when he heard this epitaph, and at once translated it into Latin, Greek and French.
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