Chapter VI: The Australian in Society

There is no work for the phrase _noblesse oblige_ to do in Australia. The nearest one can get to it is _noveau riche_. For in Australia the parvenu is paramount.

The people have no ancestry to boast of; all its nastiness is near the surface. If it isn't the beer pump half the time I am very much mistaken.

For the other half history is not silent. Arthur Gayle tells of it in the "Bulletin's" History of Botany Bay. Not so very long ago he wrote: "We are still ridden by the influence and ruled by the lineal descendants of the squalid officialdom of the grisly past. The whistle of the lash and the clank of the convict's chain are still distinctly heard though fifty years have passed away since transportation ceased. The reason is, in a word, that the men of the class that came into existence under the Imperial regime made the most of their time. They founded family fortunes and became territorial magnates, the lords of the soil...."

But it was not only "squalid officialdom" that made the most of its time. Those comprising the other class were also "in the van of circumstance."

"Be thou therefore in the van of circumstances,
Yea, seize the arrow's barb."--Keats.

They had in England been in a different kind of van--Black Maria. Subsequently they got the "Arrow's barb"--broad arrows. The genealogical records have been destroyed, but ever and anon the grim figure in prison garb steps out of the family cupboards. Sometimes it is mere atavism. During the visit of the American Fleet all the spoons were stolen from the Flagship during a reception. Again, when Shackleton returned from his Antarctic exploration Esquimo dogs were stolen from the Nimrod. Last time, however, that fifty thousand or so close-cropped heads obtruded themselves through the interstices of family cupboard doors it was at the beck of Lord Beauchamp, who is an Australian. He duly qualified as such by making a general Australian of himself when Governor of New South Wales. His first act of bad tact and worse taste was to send this little Kipling slur over the telegraph wire to Sydney by way of showing that they must regard him as one of themselves:--

"Greeting! my birthstains have I turned to good;
Forcing strong wills perverse to steadfastness;
The first flush of the tropics in my blood,
And at my feet success."

It showed an appreciative, social spirit--that sort of Australian spirit that leads to calling each other names, etc., at meals.

The next proof of his being an Australian was for him to deny, through one Henry Lawson, that he sent the slur. A friend of mine, however, has seen the "birthstains" message in his handwriting, and, furthermore, knows where it now is.

But tuft-hunting Sydney society obligingly pushed the close-cropped heads back inside the cupboards and tried to marry their daughters to the Australian who had caused their ancestors to feel restive to the point of obtrusiveness.

As he became more and more Australian, Lord Beauchamp made a delicate concession to society snobbery. He issued blue and white tickets when he entertained. It was a nice differentiation of the status of his guests. Seidlitz-powder functions they were called, but the recipients of both blue and white went for all the disturbing elements.

And the matrons still pursued Lord Beauchamp with their daughters. Eventually they ran him out of the country.

As is usual with Australians, once he went to England little more was heard of him. He married there, however--that, of course, was cabled, and Australian snob papers have since had domestic details, including the birth and christening.

Whenever I have felt sympathetic with Australia it has been on the score of what it has to put up with from the cable man and the London correspondent. She can't shake off her old Governors, and she also has the relatives of those in gubernatorial state inflicted upon her. For instance, when Lord Brassey was falling out of, off, and under things in Victoria,[A] an additional family misfortune was cabled. His brother, while playing tennis, was hit in the eye with a ball. Victorian society liked it; it gave the opportunity to write condolences and have the Government House orderly ride up to its front door and leave the acknowledgment.

[A: Lord Brassey fell off a bicycle, a horse, a pier, and sundry
other things too numerous to mention. A bridge built by Lord
Brassey across the Brisbane River also fell into that stream when
it was in flood in 1893.]

When the Australian pater-vulgarius makes a rise in the world his daughters start to teach him etiquette. If he blows his nose in the way we expect Gabriel will announce himself one of these mornings early, it is "bad form," and he may not even know his friends of adversity. Fortune makes him acquainted with well-fed fellows--at his own board--to whom he is most affable. If he would keep silent and let his money do the talking his daughters would be less fidgety. It must be an awful thing to try to regulate one's behaviour by a book on etiquette, and, but for his bound and hide, the torture of the new-rich Australian with a family would be worse than vivisection. But he has bound and hide. God is good to him.

But the family take the altered circumstances seriously. They become finickety on the matter of social distinctions. Had their father kept a shop they cease to remember the fact, and shopkeepers in general are altogether "beyond." So is now also the reception of a suburban mayoress. For has not the head of the house been made an M.L.C., bringing them into contact with vice-royalty. It is as often as not of the slightest, but the newspapers only publish a list of "those present."

It is the same when these women are gathered together ostensibly in charity's cause. Charity begins at snobbery in Australia. Let the wife of a Governor but take the chair, and the institution in need of funds is "deserving" from the moment the announcement goes forth.

Max O'Rell saw it all. Hear what he said: "Colonial society has absolutely nothing original about it. It is content to copy all the shams, all the follies, all the impostures of the old British world. You will find in the Southern Hemisphere that venality, adoration of the golden calf, hypocrisy and cant are still more noticeable than in England, and I can assure you that a badly cut coat would be the means of closing more doors upon you than would a doubtful reputation." This was really another way of saying Australia is a land of doubtful reputations.

Everybody in Australian society is better than everybody else, and everybody can give full and particular reasons why (including dates). The position is obvious--everybody is trying to hide what everybody else knows, and is prepared to make even better known should occasion offer.

This is a natural consequence of money being the "open sesame." It does not matter how the money may have been acquired. The sons and daughters of pawnbrokers, for example, loom large in Melbourne society to-day. And butchers become squatters. This, above all, the money must have been made; society starts the nouveaux riches from that point. Money covers everything--except the women at evening entertainments.