In Bad Company, and other Stories/Ancient Sydney
ANCIENT SYDNEY
Our good barque anchored in Launceston harbour in 1831—about the same year, by the way, in which Marcus Clarke's dream-ship, the Malabar, ended her eventful voyage to the same port. The writer's father owned and commanded the vessel. Our steerage passengers were of the same class as those of the Malabar, being a draft of convicts, in process of deportation to the strange South land, there to undergo experimental discipline, which to some meant probationary industry—the path to a prospective fortune; to others, a slave's dread life, a felon's shameful death.
Ruffians doubtless cursed and caballed among the two hundred prisoners which crowded the lower deck, but they were in a minority. A herd of luckless peasants constituted the main body; found guilty of rick-burning and machine-breaking only—crimes common enough in England, before the repeal of the corn-laws.
Their offences had been but the ignorant, instinctive protest of Labour against Capital; less dangerous far than the organised communism of the present day. Poachers and petty larcenists, with other humble criminals, completed the list. For the most part they were a timid and obedient company, cowed and unresisting, incapable of planning mutiny or revenge. Our family party consisted of two tiny sisters and myself, my mother, and our nursemaid—a resolute, sterling Englishwoman, destined in days to come to be the best friend our childhood could have found in the new world or the old. The ordinary military guard, so many rank and file, with their officers, together with the Surgeon-Superintendent, had been detailed for the duty of ensuring discipline and the safety of the ship.
It may well have been that among the band of exiles were some unjustly sentenced, mixed up accidentally with a crowd of excited rustics engaged in unlawful deeds—wondering spectators rather than actors. Such a victim was probably the unhappy Annetts, a vacant-faced farm labourer, from Essex or Dorset, whose wife, accompanied by their two children, came daily to see him before the ship sailed.
I seem to remember the wretched group, though most probably it was my good nurse's description that imprinted it indelibly on my memory.
There would they sit, hour after hour, bathed in tears—he, with the irons on his limbs and the ugly prison garb; she almost a girl, with traces of rustic beauty, as he was hardly more than a boy—holding each other's hands and weeping silently for hours; then, sobbing in paroxysms of lamentation, both repeatedly declaring his innocence, the children wondering gravely at the strange surroundings, at times mingling their tears with those of their parents. It was a sight to touch the heart of the sternest. Then the last agonised parting, when the fainting woman was carried on shore, when the hopeless outcast watched his native land recede, instinctively aware that he gazed on it for the last time.
Is there such a physiological process as a broken heart? It would seem so, even in this world of lightly-borne sorrows and forgotten joys. He, at least, was not thus fashioned, stolid peasant as he seemed to outward view, untaught, uncared-for, born to the plough and the monotonous labour of the farm animals, which in his undeveloped intelligence he so closely resembled. But their fidelity to the heart's deepest feelings was rooted in his being. He never raised his head afterwards, as the phrase goes. He moved and spoke, went through the ordinary motions of humanity, as in a dream. Day by day he pined and wasted; in little more than a month, from no particular ailment, he died and found burial in that mysterious main which before his sentence he had never seen.
The only other death on board was that of the second mate, a fine young seaman named Keeling. Strange to say, he had a presentiment that drowning would be the manner of his end. He would say as much, on one occasion telling us that he was one of three brothers. Two had been lost at sea. He knew the same fate was in store for him. He even put his head in a bucket of water once, and held it there, 'to see how it felt.' He was strong, active, temperate, and a smart officer. One day, in calm weather, when spearing fish from the dolphin-striker, he lost his balance and fell overboard. The ship had way on, though the breeze was light. He was a good swimmer; a boat was instantly lowered. I believe that my recollection of seeing him rise and fall upon the waves, far astern of the vessel, is accurate. The boat rapidly nears him—swimming strongly and easily supporting himself. It turns for a moment, shutting him out from sight. A man leans over to grasp him. Why do they commence to pull round in circles? Why can we not see the rescued man taken into the boat? After an interval which appears terribly long, the boat comes back to the ship without him. At the very moment of rescue a wave drove the boat stem on. The keel struck him on the head. He sank like a stone, never being visible to the boat's crew afterwards. Thus was his doom accomplished.
Though our passengers did not resemble those of the Malabar, we boasted a similar military force. The Surgeon-Superintendent was a much-travelled, cultured man. The Major and Subalterns in charge of the detachment were agreeable personages; fortunately they were not required to act in any military capacity beyond causing guards to be strictly kept. Had the prisoners even been other than they were, their chance in rising would have been small, having to deal with one of the most watchful, prompt, and determined men, in the captain of the vessel, that ever trod a plank. It was happily ordered otherwise. The voyage was successful and devoid of adventure. There were neither storms, mutinies, fevers, nor other disasters. And somewhere about the month of August (as we left England in April 1831) we delivered our passengers to the authorities in Launceston, in good order and condition. Our military friends quitted us after our arrival in Sydney, our final destination. My father had visited the port when an officer in the East India Company's service as far back as the year 1820, had been struck with the land's capabilities, and augured well of its future. He resolved to settle therein in the aftertime, did events shape themselves that way. By that voyage our destinies as a family were decided.
The Paris of the South was then a seaside town, numbering not more than thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. Described in station parlance, it was well grassed and lightly stocked. As a matter of fact there was a good deal of grass in the streets, and between Macquarie Place, which was our first location, and the Domain, the little Alderney cow, which had accompanied us on the ship, was able to pick up a good living. She and other vagrom milch kine often eluded the vigilance of the sentry, at the entrance to the Domain, where they revelled in the thick couch-grass; to be turned out at the point of the bayonet when discovered. Much of the city is changed; but much remains unchanged. Our first abode was a moderate-sized house in Macquarie Place. It possessed a second story and a garden, standing next to a tall, narrow building, occupied by Mr. Harrington, an eminent civil servant of the pre-parliamentary régime, later on Griffiths Fanning's office. Messrs. Montefiore, Breillat, and Co. possessed the corner house with its walled enclosure, taking in the angle of Bent Street, with a frontage also to O'Connell Street. The wall, the house, and the store still stand, unaltered in half a century. Mr. Dalgety, then himself a junior clerk, might be seen walking to and fro from the wharves, inspecting cargo, note-book in hand. Think of that, young gentlemen in like positions, and ponder upon the mercantile monarchies which have been (and may still be) reached by perseverance, financial talent, and prudent ambition!
Chief-Justice and Mrs. Forbes, with their family, inhabited a large stone house on the opposite side of the street, also surrounded by a wall. It now forms a portion of the Lands Office buildings. Archdeacon Cowper lived on the other side, now New Pitt Street, a grass plot with two large cedars being in front of the house.
Sydney must have been then not unlike in appearance to one of the larger country towns, Bathurst or Goulburn, save and excepting always its possession of the unrivalled harbour and that fragment of Eden the Botanic Garden. There we children walked in the mornings of our first summer in Sydney. The grateful freshness of the air, the beauty of the overhanging trees, the vision of blue water and white-winged skiffs seen through flower thickets, still remains among my childhood's fairest memories.
At the back of our garden rose a stone wall, which supported the higher level of the allotments fronting O'Connell Street. In a balconied mansion opposite lived Mr. Raymond, the Postmaster-General, with his numerous family of sons and daughters.
How few survive of that merry band of youths and maidens, whom I remember so well! After our debarkation no time was lost in sending me to school. A lady who lived conveniently close, in O'Connell Street, first directed the pothooks and hangers, which, further developed, have since covered so many a printed page. Mr. Walter Lamb and the late Colonel Peel Raymond were among my schoolfellows. At the ripe age of seven, being according to the maternal partiality too far advanced for a dame school, I was promoted to Mr. Cape's Sydney Academy, in King Street, opposite to St. James's Church. Seventy boys more or less were there, not a few of whom have since distinguished themselves 'in arms, in arts, in song.' William Forster, Walter Lamb, Whistler Smith, and Allan Macpherson were among my older comrades. I well remember on the day of my arrival how Forster, actuated by the hatred of injustice which characterised his after-life, fought a sanguinary battle with another oldster who had been oppressing a smaller boy. Sir James Martin was there then, or came soon afterwards. At any rate he was one of the scholars when Mr. Cape, then newly appointed Headmaster of the Sydney College, moved over and took possession of that institution upon its opening day. The Nortons, James and John, were among the pupils, with many others whom I could perhaps recall, but whose names are at present fading in the mists of the past. The Dowlings, Mitchells, David Forbes, Sir John Robertson, Mr. Dalley, with many another, were among the pupils of that most conscientious and earnest teacher. They will always acknowledge, doubtless, their indebtedness to him for a sound classical training, the groundwork of their higher education.
The late Mr. James Laidley was one of the smaller boys at that time. Our fathers had been friends in other lands. I saw Commissary-General Laidley's funeral—a military one—and Dick Webb, the family coachman, leading the dead officer's favourite chestnut mare in the procession.
On the day of my introduction came also a new boy, about the same age. His name was Hugh Ranclaud. We were placed in a class in order to test our reading, and, as the last comers, at the bottom of the class. The lesson commenced; the others went through their allotted portion haltingly, after the fashion of the small boy of the period. When it came to Ranclaud's turn, he commenced in a clear, distinct, properly-punctuated manner, much as if he had been in the habit of performing at penny readings, or acting as curate on occasion. I see (as if it were yesterday) Mr. Cape, who paused to listen, take him by the arm and march him to the head of the class. I was promoted, too, and we soon quitted that class for a higher place in the Division, from that day to be close friends and confidants in literary matters. Eager, voracious readers we both were. He was a poet as well. We used to walk about arm in arm and recite bits out of Walter Scott and Byron. Until we left school and settled in different colonies our friendship remained unbroken.
The first thing I remember after the ceremony of installation was the adjournment to the new cricket-ground granted for our use in that part of Hyde Park then known as the Racecourse, which was opposite to the College, now the Grammar School. Percy and Hamilton Stephen were at the wickets. They, with their cousins James and Frank, Alfred, Consett, and Matthew Henry were among the schoolboys of that period; Prosper and André de Mestre, with, later on, Etty (Etienne), then a little chap, like myself.
We of the old school were much gratified at the superior advantages we now enjoyed in the way of playgrounds. The free use of Hyde Park, then merely fenced and not planted, was granted to us. Below the school building was a large area, divided by a wall from the present labyrinth of terraces built on the Riley Estate, then a furze-covered paddock of pathless wilds, in which we were free to wander.
A chain-gang was at that time employed, under armed warders, in levelling the line of road which leads towards Waverley. One of the prisoners tried to escape and was shot by a warder. We boys went over. There he lay dead in his prison garb, with a red stain across his chest, 'well out of the scrape of being alive and poor,'—only paupers were unknown then, and prisoners, of course, plentiful.
We were near enough to the Domain for the boarders to walk to 'The Fig-tree,' that well-known spot in Wooloomooloo Bay, where so many generations of Sydney boys have learned to swim. The old tree (a wild one) was there long years after, and from the stone wharf, with steps considerately made in Governor Macquarie's time, how many a 'header' has been taken, how many a trembling youngster pitched in by ruthless schoolmates! There was no danger, of course, and among rough-and-ready methods of teaching a useful accomplishment, it is perhaps one of the best. Mr. Cape was a good swimmer, and on the mornings when he accompanied us, these little diversions were not indulged in.
My recollections of him as a headmaster, and, indeed, in every other capacity, is uniformly favourable. He was a strict, occasionally severe, but invariably just ruler. Discriminating too, always ready to assist real workers such as Forster, Martin, George Rowley, and other exceptional performers. But for us of the rank and file, whose scholastic ambition lagged consistently behind our powers, he had neither mercy nor toleration. A thorough disciplinarian, prompt, punctual, unsparing, we knew what we had to expect. The consequence was that a standard of acquirement was reached at a comparatively early age by his scholars which with a less resolute instructor would never have been gained.
The constitution of the school was professedly in accordance with the Church of England denomination, but it was wisely ordered by the founders that no religious disability should exist. The fees were low, particularly for the day scholars. All ranks and denominations were equally represented, equally welcome. Mr. Cape himself, though inflexibly orthodox as an Anglican Churchman, was liberal and comprehensive in his views. The school was commenced (I think)—certainly ended—with a prayer from the Liturgy. The boys who belonged to Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Nonconformist denominations were permitted at pleasure to absent themselves from this observance. Very few troubled themselves to do so. Among the boys themselves I never remember the religious question being raised. We remained united and peaceable as a family (resorting, of course, to the British ordeal of single combat on occasions), but all took rank in the school chiefly in accordance with their prowess in the classes or the cricket-field. We had no other standards of merit.
Talking of cricket, the 'stars' of my day were Mr. William Roberts, senior, who with his brothers Dan and Jack were my contemporaries, and Mr. William Still. Roberts was a distinguished bat, renowned for the finer strokes and artistic 'cuts.' Still was a deadly bowler, a first-class field, and unerring catch.
In those days the old barrack -square was in existence, taking up many thousand feet of priceless frontage, at present value, in George Street. The military reviews and evolutions performed therein afforded unfailing interest to the school-boy and nursery-maid of the period. Colonel Despard was the military commander of the day. His carriage and pair of chestnut horses, George and Charger, both nearly thoroughbreds, passed into our hands at the sale of his effects previous to his departure from the colony for New Zealand.
Racing matters, which have received of late years such astonishing development, were then in an infantile condition, it may be believed. Hyde Park was probably the first racecourse. The next arena (literally) was the Old Sandy Course near Botany. To this unimproved tract I remember trudging with school comrades in 1836, when we witnessed a closely contested race, in heats too, between Traveller and Chester, the former winning. Frank Stephen rode a mule that day, who kicked all the way there and back. Lady Godiva and Lady Cordelia were the heroines of that meeting. Charles Smith and Charles Roberts were the principal supporters of the turf. This was near the proclamation of Her Gracious Majesty's accession to the throne at the age of eighteen years. Hugh Ranclaud and I attended the ceremony, and heard the proclamation read among the oak trees not far from the Lands Office.
The late Colonel Gibbes was a friend of the family. Edmund Gibbes was a schoolfellow, and many holiday visits were paid to Point Piper, their lovely residence. It was my ideal of perfection as a haven of bliss for boys, far removed from lessons and other drawbacks of youth. Many a happy day I spent there, though nearly coming to premature grief in the fair (and false) harbour. A large, well-ordered mansion, sufficiently removed from town to have country privileges, Point Piper contained all the requirements for youthful enjoyment. The kindest hostess, the nicest girls, a picturesque old-fashioned garden with fruit and flowers in profusion, fishing, bathing, boating to any extent, books, and music,—all the refinements and elegancies then procurable in Australia. As to the course of everyday life, it did not differ noticeably, as I can aver from after-experience, from that of country-house life in England. The stables were well ordered, grooms and coachman being assigned servants of course. Perhaps a stricter supervision was necessary for some reasons. At a stated hour one of the sons of the house was expected to walk down to the stables, which were half a mile distant, to perform the regulation inspection, to see the evening corn given, the horses bedded down for the night.
We boys (Edmund, his younger brother Gussie, and myself) used to fish and bathe nearly all day long, continuing indeed the latter recreation in the summer afternoons till the sun scorched our backs. Then, after a joyous evening, how sweet to fall asleep, lulled by the surges, which ever, even in calmest weather, made mournful music on rock or silver-sanded shore the long night through!
About this time a certain adventure befell our party, which might have ended tragically. One fine morning Gussie and I, with a kinsman about the same age, went fishing in the bay. Our 'kellick' was down, and the sport had been good. The provisional anchor was lifted at length, as the wind, having shifted, began to blow off the land. We had delayed too long, and found it hard work to make headway against it. Pulling with unusual determination, one oar snapped. The blade floated away. The gale was rising fast. Moving broadside on meant being blown out to sea. An interval of uncertainty ensued. Gussie, who was a little fellow, began to cry as we rapidly receded from the Point and the waves rose higher.
I took the command—my first salt-water commission. It was no use letting matters (and the boat) drift. To this day I wonder at the inventiveness which the emergency developed. Taking off Gussie's pinafore, a brown holland garment of sufficient length, I caused him to stand up and hold it like a sail. Wallace, the other boy, was to act as look-out man. I took the tiller and steered towards Shark Island, which lay between Point Piper and the Heads. Our spread of canvas was just sufficient to keep steerage way on. The wind was right aft. And in a comparatively short time we jammed the boat's bow between two rocks, where there was just beach enough to haul her up safe on our desert island.
We knew, of course, that they would see us from the house, and judging that we were cast away, send for us. Soon we discerned a boat coming to our rescue manned by the groom and the gardener—both fair oarsmen. The wind was a good capful by this time, and it took two hours' hard pulling to land us at the Point Piper jetty. 'Oh, you naughty boys!' I can hear the mild châtelaine saying in simulated wrath as we marched up, extremely glad to be so well out of it; and as they were very glad too, no serious consequences tending to moral improvement ensued.
At the Sydney College half-yearly examination Archbishop Polding was always among the examiners—a gentle, if dignified, old man, whom all of us revered. Our own Bishop and clergy attended on these occasions, but I have a more distinct impression of the Prelate first mentioned than of any other clergyman of the day. St. Mary's Cathedral was building then—it is building now—a monument of the persistent progress of the Church of Rome. What she begins she always ends, rarely relinquishing an undertaking or a stronghold. My reason for mentioning the religious aspect of the question is that, save for the morning and evening prayer and Mr. Cape's regular church-going, our school, though strictly denominational in theory, was virtually national and secular; chiefly, as I said before, because we of the different sects and persuasions agreed to respect each other's religious opinions and beliefs.
Whether this practical Christianity made us the worse churchmen in after-life I leave others to judge. When my father deserted salt water for the land permanently, he did not fix on one of the charming nooks embosomed in sea-woods which lay so temptingly between Hyde Park and the South Head road. Like most sailors, he had had enough of 'the sad sea waves,' whether in play or in earnest, and was relieved to be out of sound of them. Glenrock was, I believe, offered to him at a temptingly low rate, but he preferred to buy a tract of wild land at Newtown, as the suburban hamlet was then called, there to build and improve.
Beginning in good earnest, the walls of a large two-storeyed house soon arose—something between a bungalow and a section of a terrace. One Indian feature of the place was a verandah fully a hundred feet in length, and twelve feet in breadth, running across the façade and turning the ends of the house. This was flagged with the cream-coloured Sydney sandstone. Well do I remember its refreshing coolness of touch and appearance in our first summer. The house being built, the garden planted, and the whole purchase substantially fenced, the property was christened 'Enmore,' the name borne by the suburb into which it has grown to this day. East Saxon originally, it may be quoted as an instance of the evolution even of names. From one of the eastern counties of England it emigrated to Barbadoes, where it served to distinguish the plantation of an intimate friend of my father, the late James Cavan, a wealthy mercantile celebrity of Barbadoes in the good old days—the days of slavery and splendour, of princely magnificence and gorgeous profits, whereof the author of Tom Cringle's Log has left such picturesque descriptions. Hence to an Australian suburb, and going further afield, still following the course of colonisation, the homely name has travelled into the far interior. There are now the Enmore Blocks, an Enmore sheep station, and possibly in the future there will arise an Enmore inland town, with railway terminus, town hall, and municipality complete.
In the years between 1836 and 1840, when we lived at Enmore, we had, like all other householders of the day, assigned servants. The only exceptions at that time were our confidential nurse, and Copeland the coachman, an ex-50th man. Most fortunate was it for us young people that such a woman had attached herself to the family; of exceptional energy and intelligence, deeply religious, with an earnest and unswerving faith—'a slave of the ought,' like Miss Feely. As she abode with us from 1828 to 1858, it may be imagined what an influence for good she exerted upon us children when almost wholly under her control.
As for the poor convicts, they were really much the same as other people. Some were good, none of them particularly bad. Their master, though with a natural leaning to quarter-deck discipline, was not severe. When they got 'into trouble,' as they expressed it, it was through their own irregularities. A man would apply for a 'pass' (a permit in writing), granting leave to go to town and return by, say, eight o'clock p.m.; instead of which (like the ingrate who stole geese off a common) he would get drunk, be locked up by the police, and be brought up before Captain Wilson or other Police Magistrate of the day, charged with intoxication and being out after hours, whereupon he received twenty-five or fifty lashes, and was carefully returned to our service. The first intimation we received was the sight of Jack or Bill, as the case might be, coming up the carriage-drive in charge of a constable; his blood-stained shirt tied over his shoulders by the sleeves, instead of being worn as usual.
The flogging wasn't child's play, as may be believed. I have seen the weals and torn flesh; but the men did not seem to care so much about it, nor did it tend to brutalise them, as asserted. They admitted that it was their own fault, for running against that stone wall, the law. We had nothing to do with it, but indeed suffered loss of work thereby. In a day or two they were all right and cheerful again, well behaved of course, until that fatal 'next time.' Whether the men were of tougher fibre in those days, I can't say; but fancy a latter-day larrikin getting fifty or a hundred lashes, as these men did occasionally, without wincing, too! Compared to the modern product, the 'larrikin,' with his higher wages, better food, and more of the comforts of life than are good for him, they were angels of light.
The groom was a prisoner; so also the gardener, the butler, the housemaid, the laundress, the cook. The women were, no doubt, more difficult to manage. If they got to the sideboard when there was a bottle of wine open, trouble ensued. Hard working and well behaved generally, none of them could withstand the temptation of drink. This may have occurred more than once, but the ultimatum of which they stood in dread was, after repeated misbehaviour, to be sent to the Factory at Parramatta—the Bridewell of the colony. Their hair was cut short in that house of correction. They were supposed to work at hard and monotonous tasks. The work the unfortunates did not mind so much, but the short-cropped hair—all ignorant of the turn fashion was to take in after-years—they detested unutterably.
Two of these engagés (as French colonial officials called them) played us a pretty trick, for which, though it caused temporary inconvenience to the household, I have always felt inclined to pardon them.
The butler was a smartish young Dublin man, not more than a year out. He behaved well—was steady and willing. The laundress—Catherine Maloney, let us say—a quiet, hard-working young woman, was a valuable servant, worth about fifteen shillings a week, as wages go now. Fancy the privilege of keeping a capable servant, say, for four or five years certain! 'Please to suit yourself, ma'am,' and the later domestic tyrannies were then unknown. However, Patrick and Kate nourished deep designs—made it up to get married; wicked, ungrateful creatures! One fine morning they were missing, and, what was really exceptional in those man-hunting days, were never discovered—never indeed found from that day to this! 'These lovers fled away into the storm.' It would be in 1839, just about the 'breaking out' of Port Phillip. They probably got there undetected. Who knows? One wonders what became of them. Did Patrick grow rich, prosperous—even politically eminent? It was on the cards. They had my good wishes, in any case.
When we migrated to Port Phillip in 1840, a special permit was obtained from the Governor in Council to take down our servants—eight men and two women. The men went overland with the stock, and of course remained till their tickets-of-leave were due. But the women, our fellow-passengers by sea, married soon after they got to Melbourne. It was a 'rush,' in the latter-day goldfields' idiom, and women were at a premium. We might have refused our royal permission to this, but were not hard-hearted enough to do so. We were thus left desolate and servantless, a condition in life much less common in those days than it is now, I grieve to say, speaking as a householder. The men on the whole behaved well. George Stevenson, a clever mechanic and gardener from the north of Ireland, was drowned while crossing the Yarra at Heidelberg by night—a shanty being the fatal temptation. The groom died in the Benevolent Asylum at Melbourne, after many a year of faithful service to us and others. All our men but one got their tickets-of-leave, and drifted away out of ken. But while on the question, I may here record my opinion, that these men and their class generally did an immense deal of indispensable work in the earlier decades of the colony. They were, on the whole, when fairly treated, well behaved. They rarely shirked their work, were often touchingly attached to the families wherein they had done their enforced servitude, and after their virtual freedom was gained, mostly led industrious and reputable lives.