_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.