The old Flagstaff Hill and the old cemetery were two objects which I
sought for on the earliest opportunity, and as the business day-time was
so full of work, I took the early morning. The Flagstaff Hill I had soon
to give up as quite unrecognizable under new plantations and roadways,
but the cemetery, in its close vicinity, was much as I had left it, and
there the old friends, albeit voiceless now, cropped up at every turn.
Let me select a few, commenting as I go along, and beginning with the
earliest in date.
1841.
A series of the well-known early family of the Langhornes, some of whose
members I often met. Let me begin with "The wife of William Langhorne,"
who died in this far back year, and end with Alfred, who used to amuse
us all with interminable stories, who had a strikingly beautiful wife,
and who died in 1874.
1846.
"The beloved wife of Joseph Raleigh, aged 32 years," whose funeral I
attended, to be witness to the profound grief of the husband thus
prematurely bereft of a wife who was, as I recollect, a rarely fine
woman. Even Carlyle's indifference to "tombstone literature" might
tolerate these lines, recorded on her monument, both for their own high
quality, and as the eloquent expression of the heart of the bereaved
husband:--
"Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,
For God was thy ransom, thy guardian and guide;
He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee,
And death hath no sting, for the Saviour hath died."
1846.
"Allan K. Renny, of Dundee, Scotland, aged 24." A remarkably fine young
man, who died thus early, to the grief of all his friends. He was one of
the staff of the Union Bank of Australia. Although the favourite of
everyone, he retained his unaffected simplicity of manner and character
to the last. He died of consumption, in the house of Mr. Cassell, who
had invited him there when he took ill, in order that he might be better
attended to. Cassell, James Gill, Alfred Ross, and myself took the last
night of the dying lad in relays of three or four hours each; and when
the last breath passed from the fine young face, Mrs. Cassell, who stood
by with the rest of us, and who had nursed him with the fondest mother's
care, broke out into loud sobs of irrepressible grief. We decided upon a
broken column as his monument--fit emblem of the life so early
broken--and we settled his brief, simple epitaph, which Mr. Cassell drew
up:--"Erected by his friends in this colony in testimony of esteem and
regard."
1848.
"Edmund Charles Hobson, M.D., born 1814, died in his 34th year." The
monument, erected by public subscription, commemorates also two sons and
one daughter--all the family save one thus early carried off, for, alas!
the father, although of large and well-filled mind, was a man of poor
health and feeble physique. Mrs. Hobson, our old friend, still survives,
but is at present in England. I have already alluded to the Doctor and
his high qualities.
1850.
"James Jackson, of Toorak, who died at sea, aged 47." This was
Melbourne's greatest merchant of his early time, although he died at so
early an age. His house at Toorak, or rather the second house which he,
with his enlarging fortune, built there, but which he did not live to
enjoy, was long the finest of the place, and served for some years as
the Governor's residence. It supplies a striking illustration of the
sudden needs of the advancing colony after its golden era. A prominent
Melbourne trader had leased it at 300 pounds a year, but in the mid-term
of the lease, a demand suddenly arising in 1854 for a Government House
for Sir Charles Hotham, Toorak was sublet at 10,000 pounds a year. I
recall the early, happy, Toorak home, where personal beauty in mother
and young children lost its edge by being so common. The remaining
family are now all in the old country. Mrs. Jackson still lives, the
honoured head of a surrounding of descendants, which, to me at least,
have been long past counting.
1850.
"Isabella, widow of James Williamson, solicitor, Edinburgh, aged 70."
This is the lady of whom I have already spoken, who gave up six fair
daughters to the young settlement in its direst need, and who in turn
have given to it multiplied sons and daughters.
1850.
"Edward Curr, aged 52. In your charity, pray for the soul of Edward
Curr, of St. Heliers."
This is my old friend, the "Father of Separation" (from New South
Wales), with whom I marched for years towards attaining that object. He
was a proud man, who, with his vigour of mind and body, grasped his
world with a firm hand, and was not, perhaps, of the humour to ask the
help or prayers of anyone. But his church, by enjoining the above
formula over its dead, had its own way of humbling even the proudest,
whether the great or the small, the prince or the peasant. I was
surprised to find that one who held so commanding a position in our
young community should have been, at death, only 52.
He took the chief charge of the separation movement, if, indeed, it did
not originate with him; but, sad to say, he died, at this too early age,
just the year before the great object of his later life had been
attained. In considering this question practically as a merchant, my
view of the determining principle as to the mutual boundary line was
that the natural tendency of the trading, whether it took the Sydney or
the Melbourne direction, should decide. Thus the hoofs of the bullocks,
whether they indicated the northerly or the southerly direction, would
decide the contentious question. When I mentioned this point to Curr,
who, curiously enough, had wholly omitted it from a very long list of
"my reasons for separation," he saw at once its importance, and, in
incorporating it in his list, remarked that it was worth all the rest
put together. Whenever we sat together afterwards at a separation
meeting, he would pass me the joke about the "hoofs of the bullocks"
deciding the boundary. Sir John Robertson has since told us that
Melbourne missed its destiny in this fatal separation movement, for, had
she remained within New South Wales, she would have been the capital of
Eastern Australia. Well, that slap in the face to us is not altogether
uncleverly or unfoundedly directed. The eventuality thus predicted for
us might, indeed, have happened. And we, too, might have hesitated in
our divisive course if we could but have foreseen two things: first,
that the very next year Victoria should produce as much as fifteen
millions of gold, and for some twenty years after between six and twelve
millions yearly; and second, that our mother, Sydney, who had completely
the whip-hand over us at the time, would have permitted us to use all
our great resources in order to place ourselves, at her expense, the
first in the race.
1853.
"The Honourable James Horatio Nelson Cassell, H.M. Commissioner of
Customs, Member of the Executive Council of Victoria, born 1814. 39
years of age." I have already had to mention repeatedly one of my very
best and most intimate friends. He died in November, 1853, while I was
upon a Home visit. He left a message for me that he looked forward to
resuming our most pleasant friendship in Heaven. What a reality of voice
has this hope when it comes thus from the brink of the grave! What a
strength of resistance to that tendency of modern science, which, as
interpreted by some even of its greatest chiefs, is to abolish the hope
of the life beyond the grave, and to class us all with "the beasts that
perish."