THE AUSTRALIAN TITLED PERSON.
Everyone in Australia is in imminent peril of a title. Nobody is safe.
There is no saying whose turn it will be next. When he gets up in the
morning the first thing the Australian does is to look at the paper and
see if his name is among the list of those knighted or otherwise
decorated. The distribution seems to run like a sweep consultation. So
many K.C.M.G.'s, so many C.M.G.'s, and so on. Then they put the names of
all the people of Australia into a hat and draw for them.
There is no other way of explaining how the people who have titles got
them, or why. In only one instance on record is there a proper fit. It
is the particular case of a Sydney publican who sells threepenny beers
with a free "counter lunch." He was made a C.M.G. The humour of the
lottery once more. It is most amusing to anybody from the old country to
see funny little men "Sirred" in Australia.
People whose luck is so much out that they can't draw a title make shift
in the meantime with a hyphen. It is just as well that strangers know
this for the purposes of answering invitations. Never forget the hyphen
in Australia. No "family" is without it. In the early days Brown was
hyphenated to Smith with a gyve.
The Australian titled person is mostly under-educated and over-fed. He
is of no particular use except to company promoters, who put his name on
the front page of a prospectus. Sometimes he opens a bazaar. He prefers,
however, eating at complimentary banquets tendered to anybody whose
fellow townsmen think justifies a gorge.
The prodigality with which the people responsible hand out titles to
Australians is no doubt part of the scheme which sprang from the mind of
William Charles Wentworth, the originator in the country of "that fatal
drollery called representative government." Wentworth was known as "the
shepherd king"--the titular craze again. There was also in Australia a
bushranger king. Hall, who was shot by a policeman, was so titled by the
New South Wales Premier of the times, Hon. (afterwards, of course, Sir)
John Robertson. Hall owned a station.
But to return to Wentworth's scheme. It was to found "a colonial
aristocracy," a House of Peers--"a replica of England rather than
America." Martin in his "Australia and the Empire" chronicles the folly.
"The subject," he wrote, "had been for years maturing in his
(Wentworth's) mind; he even expounded his views on this question of an
Australian House of Lords in a long-forgotten article in the pages of an
English magazine...." Yet on this point of creating a brand new colonial
aristocracy he failed miserably. The commonest street orator in Sydney
could raise a ready laugh by giving a list of the expectant "nobility."
Robert Lowe opposed it in the House of Commons, and his criticism had
all the weight of colonial experience, while a young Sydney tradesman,
by name Henry Parkes, as Dr. Lang described the Premier of New South
Wales, first rose to public notoriety and favour by his diatribes
against this feature of Wentworth's great measure.
The young Sydney tradesman afterwards drew a knighthood himself, and
didn't send it back to the title lottery department of the Colonial
Office.
There are certain fat people in Australia who are scant of breath
through pursuing the House of Lords' will-o'-the-wisp. Desperate have
been the efforts exerted.
The progeny of the innumerable crop of pompous low-order knights and
colonial-made Gentlemen in Australia does not benefit to any enviable
degree. Living up to a hyphen is bad enough, but when it comes to an
order it invariably means an inheritance of debts, ending in passe
daughters becoming manicurists (an occupation not respectable since the
gay Lord Quex), and the sons up-country police-court practitioners, or
L100-a-year civil servants. On even footing with the low-order knights
are the "honourables." They approximate to Wentworth's House of Peers,
membership of State Legislative Councils carrying the title. The
"honourables" guinea-pig mainly for a living. The title also means
Government House entree, and rating at functions where there is recourse
to precedence. Wives and daughters thus get their hands on the social
lever, and so, later on, catch, with great adroitness, the overworked
reception smile of Governors' clever consorts. Clever because it must
often be so hard to refrain from laughing outright.
I should like to share some of the fun at the various Government Houses
after a reception.
It is rather rough on them, though, not to be able to enjoy the comedy
while it is in progress. Seldom can they. There is, however, a time on
record when they did to the full--so did many others who had a "Burke's
Peerage" on their library shelves. The Duke of Buccleugh was cabled to
have sailed for Australia. "A title!" cried some. "A Duke!" gasped other
Australians. Society was agog. But it was only a very well-bred bull
shipped for stud purposes.
Is it any wonder that "the commonest street orator" can raise a laugh
when Australian titles are mentioned?