Bombay—My Brother’s Grave—London Streets—Outward Bound—I play at
Government House—Ballarat—Mosquitoes—Sightseeing in New Zealand—A
Maori Dance
MY next trip took me to Bombay, where I stayed for a few days at the
English hotel by Fort Hill. The tropical scenery struck me as very
similar to that which I had seen at Colombo, and the heat as terrific,
though feathery tamarisks and palms shaded the tracks. The white
population were waited on by the natives. My father was correspondent
for _The Indian Times_ and my parents had lived in Bombay before I was
born. They knew a great many people there. In my pocket I had a letter
from home. “If you go to Bombay do go and see Mr and Mrs C——, and
whatever you do, dear, be well dressed.” I had heard a lot about those
great people when I was a schoolboy, so I did as I was bid and dressed
up like a prince. When I arrived at the aristocratic, verandahed
building I carefully dusted my boots with my handkerchief and knocked.
When the door opened, and I gave my name to the native servants, an old
man, the great C—— himself, came forward. He was polite to me, and I was
the best-dressed man in the house, so I did not begrudge the money I had
paid for the loan of the suit at the Bombay tailor’s!
Before I left Bombay I went to see my little brother’s grave, Gerald
Massey S. Middleton. He was buried at Colabba Point, and I discovered
his grave at last. A tamarisk tree was growing on it and a few strange
flowers. I felt the kinship of that little grave in a strange land; the
earth did not hide from imagination’s eyes the little dust beneath,
which would have been my big brother if he had lived. I remembered my
mother and father saying how they had felt when their ship went by
Colabba Point, homeward bound for England, and they stood on deck and
gazed inland and thought of their child being left behind. I knew how
they must have felt as I stood there alone and gazed upon the little
stone set between two large vaults. I felt intensely lonely. The Indian
bees moaned in the flowers and palms. I saw my mother, a girl in years
that day, standing weeping by her lost child; she still stood there in
the sunset and shadow as I dreamed. I kissed her, picked a flower and
then walked away, the one solitary mourner that had come after many
years, and probably the last.
Next day I joined my ship and arrived in London six weeks later, only
again to get a berth and go seaward, for the grim respectability of the
city soon haunted me with its stony, nightmare eyes. The very atmosphere
seemed to whisper: “Englishman, Englishman, are you respectable? Where’s
your Bible, your rent-book and your marriage certificate?” I seemed to
hear that humming in my ears as I walked through London’s streets,
miserably cold. I shivered, and jumped into a cab at Waterloo and rushed
off to Poplar. There was a man who lived there, in Abbot’s Road, who was
a crack hand at getting berths on the ships for us.
In a week I was off down Channel, on a Shaw-Saville boat, bound for New
Zealand and Australia, as happy as a swallow flying South. The music of
the sails, bellowing out and flopping to rest, the rattling rigging, the
sailors talking and singing on deck, made me feel intensely happy, and
yet half miserable as I thought of the ship sailing across the world to
a civilised port. I stood on deck wishing there were undiscovered shores
where waves sang, never seen by human eyes, and dreaming of old pioneers
and heroes of far-off ages. I seemed to realise at a very early age that
the light of the Universe, the sun and stars were my religion, and their
mystery my unfathomable mistress with divine eyes.
When the tramp steamer, after toiling along for weeks at sea, sighted
land I stood on her deck the longest, as the far-off shores shaped
themselves, and fancied I could see the old wooden pioneer ships and
galleons that discovered them still hugging the misty shore as sunset
died. Often when far out at sea I would stand on the poop by night for
hours, gazing astern, watching the star-like eyes of the albatrosses,
flitting on the restless winds, till they seemed old heroes, my comrades
out of their graves, on beautiful wings following the new ships. Then
the mate would touch me on the shoulder and say: “Now then, young man,
you didn’t come to sea to dream.” The crew holystoned the decks, the
cook swore in the galley as only a sea-cook can swear, and the
cabin-boy, who had never been to sea before, said, “Is that New
Zealand?” and pointed shoreward. As we rolled along, with all sails set,
he stood on his head as soon as my back was turned, for I saw him in the
glass of the saloon port-holes. I knew how he felt.
I returned to England on the same ship and then got a berth on the
_Seneska_ and went to America. A few years later, and I was again in
Australia, on the P. & O. liner _Britannia_.
A strike was on, and we lay out in Sydney Harbour for two weeks and used
to go ashore in a tender every evening. One night I went ashore and
played at a private concert out at Pott’s Point, and stayed the night as
well. It was a wedding festival, and my host and hostess were kind,
Bohemian folk, relations of Sir Henry Parkes. I cannot remember their
name. They used their influence and secured me a position to play at the
Government House balls in Sydney. I did so well that I got my box off my
ship and left.
At Government House I played as a solo my own composition, _The Monk’s
Dream_, which I had arranged for violin and pianoforte, and _A Soldier’s
Dream Waltz_, with variations. Among the audience was the present
Lieutenant James Ord Hume, who was on a tour through Australia, as
adjudicator for the great military and brass band contests of Australia
and New Zealand. Hearing me play, and finding that the solo was my own
composition, he complimented me, and asked me to go to see him at the
Occidental Hotel. I had a very good time there, for he was most
hospitable. He was then about to leave Sydney for Ballarat. “Would you
like to come on a trip with us?” he said. “Certainly,” I answered, for I
had a considerable amount of money just then and felt that a holiday
would do me good. Mr Hume had not been to Ballarat before and was
delighted with the scenery passing over the Blue Mountains.
In Ballarat we had various experiences, and I worked, digging for gold,
down the chief gold mine, the War-Hoop Mine. We went outside the town
and got into the bush too; for though Ballarat is a beautiful town, with
splendid buildings, one can walk in a very short time right into the
bush and see scenery equal to the Queensland landscape. The Botanical
Gardens are also very beautiful and reveal patches of primeval
Australia. We took snapshots of the Wendowee lakelet, because of the
pretty little plump Colonial girls standing by the banks; they were
nut-brown with the sun.
Mr Ord Hume went out to see a friend who lived in the bush, but we only
stayed two nights. There was a stable and swamp near our bedroom window,
and when, after enjoying the squatter’s hospitality and a musical
evening, we went to bed, though we rubbed ourselves with kerosene oil
and smoked, the mosquitoes charged down on our feet and faces in Hunnish
regiments. At midnight we called our host, and he came to our door in
his nightshirt and told us to rub some whisky on our faces and on our
feet, and gave us a full bottle of the best brand. Directly he had gone
we closed the door, wiped the sweat from our perspiring brows and drew
the cork to rub our ravaged bodies.
“Don’t you think if we took the stuff internally and then smoked that
our breath full of the fumes would keep the cursed mosquitoes off?” I
suggested. Mr Hume quite agreed with my suggestion, which eventually
turned out to be a most disastrous one for the mosquitoes, for we drank
the whole bottle and then went to sleep, and never felt one mosquito
bite the night through, nor did we wake till long after sunrise.
I think it was four days before the great band contest, which Mr Ord
Hume was in Ballarat to adjudicate on, came off. The whole of Ballarat
came to it. It was at that contest that I first became enthusiastic over
bands. I felt the fire and go in the Australians’ performances; their
bands cannot be beaten the world over.
We saw a good deal of life in Australia together before I left
Lieutenant J. Ord Hume, a few weeks after the Ballarat concert,
arranging to see him later in New Zealand, where he was going to
adjudicate at other band contests.
I went as a passenger on a boat to New Zealand, and when I had been a
few days in Auckland I saw by the newspapers that Mr Hume had arrived to
judge the great New Zealand band competitions at Masterton and
elsewhere. I managed to be there. The weather was glorious, also the
applause of the New Zealanders as the bands marched by.
I travelled with Mr Hume by train over the Rimnatuka Mountain from
Wellington to Masterton. It took three engines to take the train over
the rocky ledges and slopes. The grade is one in fifteen in many places.
The bush-land and mountain scenery is equal to anything in Australia,
for the scenery of New Zealand is wildly magnificent.
After Mr Ord Hume had judged and conducted the massed band performances
at Auckland he kindly invited me to join him, and we went off
sight-seeing, visiting bush-lands, rivers and hot springs, old tribal
battle spots and Maoris in their pahs. Maori guides led us up mountains
and across volcanic chasms, and took a great deal of trouble on our
behalf. They knew that Mr Ord Hume had specially come across the world
to judge the bands, and so they took us everywhere as their guests.
Things had altered a good deal since my New Zealand visit of a year or
so before. We went across the bush, on the way to Wanganuis river, and
passed through thick, jungle-like forest and scenery that made us forget
the world behind. I remember we came across one Maori pah where we got
the Maoris to stand and have their photographs taken. I played the
violin again, as the thick-haired Maori girls chanted and danced. They
have many kinds of dances, and the rhythmical movement of their bodies
is equal to the weird beauty of the South Sea Island Siva dances.
Some of the Maori girls are exceedingly handsome, but they fade at an
early age. I remember one girl who was both handsome and
intellectual-looking; her features were delicate and soft, refined
through not being too perfect. She had a clear voice, and I extemporised
an obbligato on my violin as she sang in the pah. The chiefs and women
were enthusiastic in their applause. One ancient chief was thickly
tattooed in engraved, ornamental lines and looked exceedingly majestic.
He spoke English perfectly, and I was deeply interested in the many
things he told us of his younger days. He was a prince by blood and,
like the old chief whom I told you of in a preceding chapter, remembered
the days when the rival tribes met in battle, or his tribe resented the
white man’s encroachment on the tribal lands.
I visited North and South Island and saw many of the geysers. Waimana
Geyser is often in eruption and throws up volcanic steam and matter nine
hundred feet, and then quiets down. I tramped along in tourist fashion
with my gay companion; helped take snapshots, and spoilt a good many! We
saw, too, the Waimango Basin, the hot springs and the “Devil’s Frying
Pan,” where one could stand up to one’s ankles in fire. We stopped with
a guide called Warbuck and had a fine time. From there we travelled
everywhere, and camped out for several nights, just for the romance and
fun of it. We cooked our potatoes and boiled eggs in the hot springs of
the Kerern Geyser, Rotorua.
After that I secured a position as violinist in an orchestra at Auckland
and bade Mr Ord Hume good-bye, for soon after he left New Zealand.
* * * * *
I will now return once more to my old Bohemian days. Away from
respectability that whitewashes men, back away from the mighty orchestra
of moving cogs and wheels, and from the crowds of cold eyes, thirsting
for the gold which is necessary to keep them warm in white-collared
respectability, back over the seas to the forests of Maori land, to the
cry of the curlew and huja in the trees, by the old pahs of Orakan,
where Herowera, the old-time warrior, sat by the rushing river waters.
His tattooed, engraved face is alive with memories. Once again he tells
me of the mighty Rewi Maniapoto and the _esprit de corps_ that bound the
tribes together in their fierce battles, when Maoris fought as bravely
for their rights as the old Britons still do. Still I fancy I hear
pretty Rewaro, the Maori maid, singing her chant as she listens to the
old chief’s reminiscences of mighty deeds and battles of yore. In the
birch and eucalyptus trees sigh old winds, and from the mysterious gloom
of moonlit Arcadia come soft, weird sounds of Maori musical instruments.
I could write chapters about the Maoris and their habits, and their
wonderful poetic legends of dead chiefs singing in the forest, and
maidens made of sea-foam brightly dancing in the glimpsing moonlight of
forest rivers. I have seen Maoris stare down the main streets of
Masterton and swear that they could see the rivers rushing along in the
moonlight, and the canoes bearing the tribes over the swirling falls,
while Maori maids, with their beautiful hair lifting in the winds,
danced on ghostly, primeval waters.
[Illustration: RIVER SCENE IN NEW ZEALAND]
I have felt as they feel when they see the city spires rising over their
enchanted lands, for I can dream as they dream and awake to the same
reality. Were I to rise, as a man in a dream, and go back across the
years and pitch my tent on the old spot in Queensland where I camped, I
should be moved on for obstructing the tramcars, and yet I am still a
young man, so you will see how great is the change in a few years. I
remember my self-made hut home, fashioned by my own hands, my comrade
pulling the thick bush grass and boughs for the walls. How happy we were
in that little room as the river sang, travelling onward. Just below we
picked the ripe yellow oranges from the deep grass under the scented
trees, where often my parrot raced me across the slope and flew by me
sideways with its cut wing and won the race as I let it pass. I remember
how, before the parrot died, it walked up our cabin walls screaming,
with its tongue hanging from its beak; how great was my grief as its
tiny jewel eyes opened and closed for the last time. That death was the
great sorrow of our hut life, and we buried the poor bird, as parents do
a beloved child, by the riverside. We went that same night over the
slopes to the camp of aborigines, who cheered us up as they danced the
corrobboree, while I played the fiddle under the moonlit gums. The old
women were as black as ebony, and they also jumped and beat their hands
on their skinny thighs, while old and young men, almost naked, whirled
round the smouldering camp fire, with their ribs painted white, looking
like hideous, screaming skeletons. We gave them cakes of plug tobacco,
and in return they would dance. Sometimes they would just begin and then
stop and say: “Me no dance, want more baccy first.” I used to answer:
“You no dance? Then me no play music.” Then their thick lips would flop
together, as they all grinned, and off they would start, whirling round
in the old brown Government blankets which they wore over their
shoulders something after the cavalier fashion of romantic ages. One old
fellow had a tremendous head and was the tribal musician; he played a
bone flute, the thigh-bone of some ancestor. He blew four notes on it
and played them repeatedly; and the dusky forms chanted and jumped round
him, beating their black breasts with their hands. This is how the
thigh-bone wailed to the lips of its posterity: [Music: _Aboriginal._]
Those wild black men had creeds and poetic legends of their bush world,
much the same as the wild white men. For some historic ancestor’s deed
with the boomerang filthy old men and women were waited on by the
low-caste tribe, who gazed upon their aboriginal gentry with awestruck
eyes, and pushed hot, cooked white grubs and eel-like snakes into the
big black lips of the aristocrats, who sat by the camp fire and opened
their huge mouths in a listless way, their black, protruding bellies
heaving in the bloated affluence of their high lineage.
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