ALIEN LIFE
MELBOURNE is not a cosmopolitan city. It neither lies in the direct
route of globe-trotters, who will, indeed, often miss the whole of
Australia and pass on to New Zealand or the Pacific Isles, nor does it
possess many natural interests or curiosities. It is a level-headed
place, too, and, though it amuses itself well enough, it does not cater
for that class of people who will search the world over for a new
sensation or exotic pleasure. If strangers come to Melbourne it is for
the most part either to find work and carve out a new future for
themselves, or to escape from the responsibilities and duties which they
have pressed too insistently on them in the Old World. In either case
they find that their aim is best accomplished by identifying themselves
as much as possible with the life of the country and people, which is,
indeed, so vital and compelling that it quickly robs them of all national
characteristics, so that they, or at any rate their children, very soon
become completely Australian. It is very difficult for us, who in
England count time by centuries, to realize during how very few years
Australia has existed for the white man, and for how still shorter a
period Victoria has had a separate existence to New South Wales. Indeed,
only in the year 1855 was it declared a State, while but twenty years
earlier, in 1835, Melbourne was for the first time occupied by white
people.
That any country at the most between seventy-five and eighty years
old—the average life-span of one man—should have formed out of the
conglomerate masses of different classes which have poured into it from
England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and in a lesser degree from France
and Germany, such a truly distinctive race is scarcely believable, while
if it has a little outgrown its strength, if it does suffer at times from
that complaint which its own people designate as “swelled head,” is it to
be wondered at? For there it is, in spite of all, an indisputable fact,
a nation in all its characteristics, and not a dependency.
That there must be some strange, ever-moving yeast at work, either in the
climate or the circumstances of life, which shows an overpowering
tendency to draw all within its grasp; to work on it and with it; to
amalgamate it into the general mass, I can quite believe; and this yeast
is the spirit of Australia. Something stronger than the entire pull of
home apron-strings, of gratitude, of association, and of blood.
It all tends perhaps to the loss of individuality, but individuals are
not needed in a new country; what is needed is one great family which
will present as a whole an unbroken phalanx to the world. Exceptions,
however brilliant, do but break the ranks; no one has time to bother
with, or be bothered by them. One must keep step with the regiment, or
one will be left behind to die of privation.
Yet it is, on the whole, that very necessity for ever pushing onward, for
hewing wood and drawing water to keep this marvellous new household
going, that makes Melbourne such a cruelly hard place for the merely
intellectual man or woman, the writer, the artist, the poet, the dreamer.
Between the upper and nether millstone of the merchants, professional
classes, and landowners, and the artisans, mechanics, and labourers, they
are crushed so closely that their very existence is apt to remain
unnoticed. It is no good blaming these people; it is not their fault; it
is part of the rough, crude necessity of nation-building; we start by
giving a naked man a shirt; there is no time to worry over people who
offer to hemstitch frills for it, even gratis, while he is shivering.
All this is why I say Melbourne is not cosmopolitan. Sydney, older and
more settled in her ways, perhaps also more languid from the effects of
her relaxing climate, is far more so, but in no city anywhere near its
size have I heard foreign languages so little spoken as in Melbourne.
The newcomer must learn to speak with the tongue of the people, not they
with his; in more senses than one. They have no time for “frills,” and
as the spirit of the strange country is usually stronger than the
homesick spirit of the stranger within its gates, it is the stranger who
gives way. That is if he be anything but Irish. Generally speaking,
Australia can do little with the Irish; as some old proverb has it: “You
can’t hang soft cheese from a hook on the wall.” The summit of the
ambition of most Irish colonists is to attain to the dignity of keeping a
public-house. There are exceptions, of course. I have in my mind’s eye,
as I write, a family of whom the two brothers hold the highest position
in Melbourne—but it is not often the case. There is a free and easy
feeling about the life which appeals to Pat. He has few ideals; he is
too easily contented, and inclined to let things slide. Sad to say, if
he loses these faults he loses most of his virtues with them. The
successful Irishman in Australia is for the most part something of a
toady—hard, and mean, and shifty. I am half Irish myself, and I have the
strongest affection for the people. When I first landed in Melbourne I
caught eagerly at even the hint of a brogue, or Hibernian name; but only
in the poor, the struggling, the unsuccessful, did I ever find the true
spirit of Ireland.
I remember driving home from dinner one night, and as I paid the cabman
on my return home, remarking his brogue, I asked him how long he had been
in Australia.
“A matter of twenty years,” he said, and he had come from such and such a
place; in fact, his father, and great-grandfather, and progenitors for
centuries back, had, as I found, worked for my own mother’s people, and
his joy was unbounded at being able to talk over the old days and the Old
Country.
Nearly a year later I was dining at the same house, and a cab was sent
for to take me home. My host went out to interview the cabman, and
describing my destination, asked if he knew it, whereupon, with a rolling
brogue, all of honey and butter, came the answer: “God Almighty, shall I
ever forget that. Sure I drove a young lady there from County Galway.”
It is odd how the brogue holds in Australia, so that it is as pronounced
in people that have been out here fifty years as if they had landed this
week. If you are ever in Melbourne, and want to hear such a round rich
brogue as you will seldom chance on, even in the Ireland of to-day, drive
out to Heidelberg, one of the loveliest of Melbourne’s offshoots, and ask
to be directed to Flynn’s Hotel, a matter of a mile or two farther on.
There you will find a little old man and his wife—if they are still
alive, and God grant they are, for they are true Irish, warm-hearted,
hospitable, and altogether delightful—whose language and outlook on life
are still absolutely typical though they landed in Melbourne as much as
fifty-five years ago, when the town itself was all canvas or
weather-board, and a thickly-wooded creek ran down to the River Yarra,
where the cable trams now rush through Elizabeth Street, one of the
principal thoroughfares of the whole city.
Still, in spite of all their undeniable cleverness and charm, the Irish
do not, as a whole, attain to any high or permanent place in the country,
even their adherence to their national characteristics representing a
fluidity of will rather than a real spirit of patriotism; they will run
into any mould so easily, and out again so easily, that no change is
permanent. There is about them none of the passionate desire to remain
unchanged, which was shown once in a young Frenchman’s answer to my
question, as to whether he liked Melbourne. “I am afraid,” he said; he
used no adverb, but the intonation of his voice expressed all he meant in
that one word “afraid,” “that I may grow to like it.” He felt the yeast
working; he felt himself being chewed up, as it were, in the hungry and
compelling maw of the new country, and all that was French in him fought
desperately against the process. The Chinaman, of course, remains
mysterious, immutable, unmatched; perhaps that is the secret in some
measure of his unpopularity, but his unchangeableness lies in his
decision, and the Irishman’s in his want of it.
Still, there is one place in Melbourne where people seem to revert back
to their original state: where the Frenchman, the German, the Greek, the
Italian, and Russian throw off the garment of Australianism, and eat,
look, and speak like men of their own country, glorying in it, too. It
is as though a little patch had been cut clean out of Soho, and _planté
là_ in the midst of this prosaic city. The great and good of Melbourne
do not know of its existence, by which I mean the great-and-good in
family masses, all hyphened together; but still, there is potential
greatness to be met with there, and active goodness, and
light-heartedness, and charm—that undefinable, subtle quality in which a
balance at the bank mercifully plays no part. And yet it is only a
little Italian café—what, in my ultra-English days, I might have called
“a common little café.”
When first I knew it, it was situated in a low, straggling building in a
rather undesirable street. There were two private rooms in front where
the family lived. I know that because I once penetrated into one of them
to see a sick baby. Between these was a narrow passage leading to a
large room, with one long table running down the centre, the kitchen, at
the door of which one usually lingered to have a few words with the
hostess, and a smaller dingy room lying to the side. At the end of the
long room was a window, and a door opening into a courtyard, patched with
yellow light and velvety black shadows; and shaded for the most part with
a trellis of vines, most delicately and deliciously green in the spring
and early summer, and great dark casks, which had come filled with red
wine straight from Italy, the very blood of the country, and about which
the old host was for ever busied with a funnel and many bottles, for
white or red wine was supplied free of extra charge to all the customers.
After a word with the two daughters, busy over the long table at which
never more than thirty were served each evening, one moved out, if one
were early, as I always took care to be, to a bench in the court yard,
pleasantly cool even on the hottest evening to sip one’s vermouth in the
open air, and chatter to the old host, who would answer back in slow
difficult English—only answering, volunteering no remark. Not that it
mattered, for the peace, the sense of having slipped all the burdens of
the day off one’s shoulders on to that single meagre door step, made one
discursive; besides, a little later on there would be so many people
talking, so much to listen to, that one’s chance would be gone.
Then the other guests began to arrive, nearly all men. An Italian, the
first violin from the — Theatre; the sub-editor of one of the “dailies”;
a Member of Parliament; a man with a scar on his neck, who was said to be
an ex-Turkish brigand; a few art-students—one with inordinately long
hair, smoothed back from his forehead and cut all to the same length at
the back, so that when he grew excited over a song and shook his head
violently it all fell forward, like a lion’s mane, well below his breast.
Then there was a Frenchman, who owns a vineyard a little way out of
Melbourne, a German merchant, and a Greek youth, but these were only a
few. For the most part one could fix the people who frequented this
little café with no particular place in life, their nationality alone
being uppermost. There were usually a few girls, mostly of the quiet,
rather wan, student type; saving one vivid creature, of immature years
and marvellous maturity of intellect, whose knowledge and self-possession
made one feel like a crude child; and who, if her lines had been cast in
a wider sphere, and she had been less weakened by admiration, might have
developed into one of those mysterious women that—at all times—have been
found wire-pulling in court and diplomatic circles, even from the very
back of the throne itself, using their wit and their charm with an equal
sureness and audacity.
Long before the last glow of day had faded from the little vine-shaded
yard—where in a swinging hammock slept the much-pampered, and continually
fêted, “Bambina” of our host’s married daughter—the long, low room inside
had to be lighted by the hanging kerosene lamp, which threw the corners
into an even more sombre darkness, shining but dimly from the very first
through the thick veil of cigarette-smoke, the incense of modernity.
The talk was incessant, and perforce loud, for everyone joined in any
topic which interested them, no matter how far down the long table it
might have originated. If the young Frenchman on your right was
discussing grape-growing in Champagne with the little wrinkled Spaniard,
with waxed moustaches, on your left, of whom such stories were told—_mon
Dieu, bombs_, and what not!—and their talk became wearying, what so
natural as that you should join in with the fierce argument on the Fiscal
Question that a member of the Upper House might be holding with the
little Socialist, whose blood-thirsty policy, as exemplified by his
scarlet tie, was for ever warring against his warm Irish heart; “The
little Doctor,” as he is fondly called by all the habitués of the place,
for he is decidedly a better, or at least a safer, physician of the body
than the mind, while it was declared that the all-adored Bambina owed
life itself to his care and skill.
A young Greek talked of Athens, all aglow with fervour, to an
art-student, one of those completely self-sufficient girls who are so
typical of Melbourne. “But why?” I heard her ask, with the curiously
drawled accent—also typical, both question and accent; for the Australian
likes all his or her information to be precise—with the reason thereof
plainly showed, and “but why?” is their crushing response to most of our
enthusiastic eulogiums on the old order of things.
They were an interesting couple from their very contrast; but soon, one’s
wandering attention would float away on a new stream, piloted most likely
by one of the best talkers of the place, a man who was so completely
soaked in the spirit and literature, the eternal glow and romance, of the
Renaissance, that it seemed always as if Providence must have merely
amused itself, in some freakish fit, by reincarnating him here in
Melbourne. An atom of imagination was enough, and one was away with him,
wandering through the sun-soaked street of old Florence. Gone the babel
of talk and laughter, the queer, eager faces, the shabby coats, the
bright eyes, and erratic locks; the kerosene-lamps and long table, with
its vases of artificial flowers, all quite gone, as one paced demurely by
his side, between the stately palaces and high, huddled houses. Peeped
through the interstices of the iron gates into the great courtyards at
the orange-trees in their stone vases, where such or such a great Prince
lived, or such a lady—of a beauty, ah yes! But as to morals—well, a
shrug of the shoulders told all there was to be told with propriety.
Stopped at this corner, or that, where such and such a party-broil took
place, or stood agaze at so-and-so, who wrote those sonnets, or so-and-so
who painted so divinely. Then pressed back into a deep doorway while
Lorenzo himself—Lorenzo the Magnificent—swept past, with all his gay and
courtly suite, to see how the new frescoes came on, which were to make
that young Michael and his great master famous throughout the entire
world, or so said Lorenzo, bracketing himself and the artist urbanely
together. Such a whiff of perfume, such a rustle of stiff brocaded
silks, and flow of silver laughter as they passed; then, with a sudden
rasping sound, which brought one back with a jerk to the world of
reality, the chairs were pushed back over the boarded floors; there was a
crash of notes at the piano, and someone would begin to sing. Perhaps
the heart-rending words and melody of “A wearing o’ the green,” perhaps
the “Marseillaise,” or just as likely “Little Mary.” The coffee was
brought, the table cleared. Delicately burning his spoonful of
eau-de-vie over his coffee, the Frenchman on my right would throw out
some words on Arragon that set my other neighbour aflame, and a hot
argument would ensue, each man speaking his own language with a wealth of
expletives and abandonment of gesture. Feeling the fiery breath flame on
either cheek, and catching the eye of our old hostess who, the night’s
work done, had joined her guests, knitting in hand, I would nod my
response. For those eyes, so human, tolerant, and wise, said as plainly
as any words could, “What children those men are! what ‘blaguers!’” then
draw back my chair, and place it near to hers; when we would talk, sober
women’s talk—reasonable and profitable—of the cost of food under the new
tariff, and how the spaghetti had been cooked in that fresh fashion at
dinner. And if I asked the man to the right of that big man—the German
there—for a little tarragon for the vinegar, he would surely give it, for
he had a large garden, and then the Signora would present me with a
bottle. And of the Bambina, what gave it that little cough—cigarette
smoke! But he had breathed little else since he was born!
Someone would perhaps bang a fist down on the table, and fling the single
word “separation” like a lighted torch among tinder, or the big German
make bragging assertions as to the superiority of Goethe over
Shakespeare. One caught the choicest morsels from that week’s _Bulletin_
with which the art-students regaled each other, for the _Bulletin_ is the
bible of the Australian Bohemian. Or the murmur of the perennial
discussion on the Armenian question, in which the big Turk ensnared all
newcomers; less effective than it might have been owing to the fact that
in moments of excitement he forgot all the little English that he ever
had, and reverted to his mother-tongue, which no one else at table could
understand. But all this was mere sound and fury, leaving our little
oasis of quietude quite untouched. Then an immense man, who looked like
a Portuguese, but was in reality a half-caste Chinaman, would most likely
draw his chair up to mine, and join in our talk of the Bambina, with some
strange lore regarding the souls of children, and that little moment when
they remember all of the life they have lived before, while the old woman
dropped her knitting on her knee and listened open-eyed, till he drifted
off to other subjects—art and literature for the most part. He had never
been out of Australasia, and yet there seemed to be no historical spot in
Europe which he did not know intimately, not a half-forgotten verse that
he could not finish for me, not a writer whose works he had not only
read, but whose place in literature and whose influence he clearly
realized. And then sometimes he would quote Chinese poetry, accompanying
it with a running translation which was a delight to the ear.
One evening I remember some insolent, loud-voiced remarks on a “White
Australia” were flipped down the table in his direction, but he only
shrugged his great shoulders. “We shall see,” he said; “after all it is
the best who win.”
It always seemed strange—I write in the past, for, though the little
cosmopolitan restaurant is still in being, the old people have
relinquished their share of it, and it has changed its quarters, thereby
losing some of its indefinable charm; it seemed strange, I say, to come
out of such an atmosphere into the wide, dreary drabness of Lonsdale
Street, so nearly repellent, indeed, in its entire lack of expression or
soul, that often enough we would turn aside toward Little Burke Street,
to soak ourselves afresh in that “something different” towards which we
are all for ever striving.
Long ago I wrote for a Melbourne paper an article on “Lilly Bulke
Street”—which, with the cosmopolitan café, was the only possible
hunting-ground for “something different” in the whole city—that was
translated and republished in a Chinese paper, giving me a sort of fame
among its denizens; so that: “You the lady that like Lilly Bulke Street?”
they would often say to me, with their slow smile of sympathy; and of
appreciation, too, for a little thought, a little understanding.
Lately, since the opium laws have become so stringent, the people are shy
of Europeans in their shops and “fan-tan” rooms; but only a little while
before I could go anywhere I liked, and did so. Into the upper rooms of
the few Chinese who were married to women of their own race, to talk, and
sip tea, and play with the solemn-eyed children; even into the opium
dens, where men reposed sleeping off the effects of the drug with a
seraphic expression; or sat puffing, fiercely and wildly anxious for the
coming of the rainbow-tinted dreams, which would, for a while, shut away
from them all the hard and sordid realities of life.
After dark Little Burke is bordered, save for a few Chinese chemists’
shops and eating-houses, by jealously closed doors, through which not one
single crack of light penetrates.
Some have a name above the lintel or a sentence in Chinese; and though
one may not remember the name or understand the sentence, one soon knows
what places are worth entering, and, pushing open the door, pass in,
secure in the knowledge that though one may be met with the cold
inquiring stare of many narrow inscrutable eyes—and a dead silence where
there has before been a babel of voices—one will encounter no incivility,
no insolent look or gesture.
Sometimes the dim, narrow door opens into an even narrower passage, or a
little ante-room leading into a larger apartment, where in a recess, on a
bracket—beneath which a joss-stick or so sends up a blue spiral of
scented smoke—a plaster figure of Buddha, resplendent in gold and
crimson, sits smiling his tolerant, far-seeing smile, out over the heads
of thirty or more men all intent upon a game of fan-tan.
No European is allowed to play fan-tan with a Chinaman in Melbourne; so
we must satisfy our lust of gain vicariously by watching the players, by
putting ourselves in the place of first one man, then another, of all the
throng who have placed their money on the table; or in the place of the
loiterers who have lost all, and yet linger, gazing eagerly, with a
hunger that nothing will ever satisfy, at the shifting piles of counters
and coin.
There are two croupiers; one makes the stakes, entering them on a
paper-pad with a long camel’s-hair brush, which he holds quite upright,
and manipulates with a marvellous delicacy like a watchmaker does his
tool.
The stakes are made—that is, every man playing pushes out in front of him
what money he wishes to risk—maybe a sovereign, maybe a single
threepenny-bit—each being entered in the first croupier’s book for fear
of any dispute.
Then the second croupier shakes out of a basin a number of little
greenish-white counters; and places over as many of them as possible a
small metal cover with a stem to it. This done, he begins to rake
towards him with an ivory paper-knife all the counters outside the cover,
calling the numbers out loud as he goes. Soon all the loose counters are
gathered aside, and no more bets must be made, everything depending now,
for each man, on the number beneath the little cover, some having betted
on the odds, some on the evens. For a moment or so the croupier
hesitates solemnly, his delicately poised forefinger and thumb just
touching the little brass stem, and looks around him. Feverishly the
players push forward higher stakes, or stretch out eager hands to claw
back what they have already placed on the table. There is an absolutely
dead silence in the room; it would seem as if nobody so much as breathed.
The shiny yellow faces are immobile, as if cast in metal, only the narrow
dark eyes gleam, and shift, and glance.
Then, with a gesture of infinite ceremony, the little lid is lifted, and
the croupier begins to rake the counters towards him one by one with his
ivory knife. After the first two or three are moved the more seasoned
players, who know at a glance what remains, odd or even, push forward
their money and move away from the table; or draw out of their sleeves
fat notebooks wherein to enter their winnings; but for us the breathless
charm holds to the very end; and, till the last counter is drawn aside,
we cannot be certain whether it will prove to have been ninety-seven or
ninety-eight—a hundred, or a hundred and one.
One little old man I particularly remember, in a faded blue blouse, who
one night began by putting down shillings and florins, and always losing.
If he shifted his stake from odd to even, from even to odd, the game
shifted too, till it seemed like some malignant fate. But still he went
on, each stake higher than the last; from half-crowns to ten-shilling
pieces, and then to sovereigns, and yet there was nothing reckless in his
air, none of the fevered excitement a European gambler would show. Only
an intense, silent, agonizing anxiety, which seemed to set such a strain
on him that all his muscles were rigid, and he appeared like a dead man,
not moving at all, excepting to automatically push forward his stakes.
One felt that his blood had ceased to circulate, that his heart no longer
beat. Only in his hungry eyes did there seem to remain a spark of life
burning fiercely beneath the wrinkled lids, which it veritably seemed to
shrivel as with fire.
At last, in a sort of desperation, he pushed forward four sovereigns—all
that remained to him in the world, I believe—placing them on the even.
Never, never shall I forget his face as the croupier raked aside with his
ivory knife the scattered counters, then very slowly—more slowly than
ever it seemed to me—with the air of performing a sacred rite, lifted the
little lid. For one moment the old gambler gazed as if spellbound at the
compact pile which remained; gave one awful shudder, which shook him like
a reed, from head to foot, and then, turning, slipped silently away among
the crowd, God only knows where, or to what—to some world of shadows, I
veritably believe, that world which is so near, so easily reached, for a
few short hours by the magic pipe, or for perpetuity by the merest prick
of a “bare bodkin.” Still I lingered, hoping past hope for the little
grey man, till the very last counter had been drawn aside—one hundred—one
hundred and one—one hundred and two—one hundred and three—odds!
From the gaming-houses we would drift into the eating-houses, and
perchance sup on savoury ragout of duck, served in a porcelain bowl,
flanked by lesser bowls, each filled with some mysterious odoriferous
condiment, or venture daringly on eggs of an infinite age and most potent
flavour; then pry into the kitchen, clean as a new pin, yet fragrant with
all the mysterious scents of the East; peep into the great caldrons in
which the brass-bound cooking vessels steamed and simmered; lift the
green jade teapot out of its wadded case, and sip tea from one of the
fragile little bowls, which are kept ever at hand in a basin of clear
cold water.
In some of the gambling-houses men were playing a game somewhat
resembling dominoes, the slips used being cut out of black wood, and
marked with any number, up to twenty, of sunken red or white spots, the
arrangement of which seemed capable of infinite variation; one slip
perhaps showing four white, two red, and again four white; or two red,
three white, two white, three red; the different colours crossing the
dominoes horizontally, or diagonally, or vertically. A croupier holds
all the slips and plays them, the lookers on laying the stakes; but never
for one moment does he glance either at what he holds, or places on the
table, for all the time his eyes are wanted in case some hand should be
pushed out furtively to rearrange the stakes. His slim fingers, however,
are never still; like lightning they skim over the surface of the slips
he holds, and he calls out the numbers as quickly as he plays them. It
seems quite impossible to believe for a moment that he can really count
them, as he brushes them with a butterfly touch; even if he did it is a
mystery to any Western mind how he could differentiate between the
colours, but the even monotonous voice never hesitates; though perhaps,
all on one slip, there may be five or six different arrangements of dots,
still his voice runs on without a break—“six red, four white, three red,
one white, two red”—or again, “three red, four white, eight red, one
white,” slip after slip dropping with a little crack on the table, as he
enumerates their marking as quickly as the words can be formed.
I once had a long talk with a Europeanized Chinaman—who often acts as
interpreter in the “Lilly Bulke Street” Court cases—on this subject, and
he declared that it was only a matter of practice, that the old players
know at once by the feel; the red dots are a little rougher than the
white, or _vice versa_, while they count them by a sort of instinct, and
yet the extraordinary swiftness of the process still remains, and ever
will remain, perfectly inexplicable to me.
This wonderful sense of touch shows itself everywhere, in all that the
Celestial does; in the swift, fan-like arrangement of a hand of
cards—each suit holding four times the number of ours—in the way the
cooks in the eating-houses—stout high-priests, Buddhas of
gastronomy—slice the infinitesimal shreds of pastry, for garnishing soup,
with the most monstrous of knives; in the deftness with which the men in
the herb-shops mince and shave and weigh the aromatic herbs.
These herb or chemists’ shops are fascinating. There are to be found
remedies for every disease that flesh is heir to.
“That never was ther grievance hot ne cold,
There was eke every holsome spice and gras—”
says Chaucer, in his, “The Assembly of Foules”, and so it is in Little
Burke Street. Chiefly I go there for camphor—granulated like brown
sugar, and of a greyish tint, but of such a perfume! toothpowder made of
the powdered ashes of scented geranium-leaves; and an unfailing remedy
for toothache, put up in minute fairy-like bottles.
The interiors of the herb-shops are dim and mysterious; the
dispensers—ever busy chopping herbs and weighing spices—and the doctor in
attendance all of the most placid and confidence-inspiring solemnity.
One learned physician I particularly remember, a new-comer and speaking
“velly little Eenglish.” He was quite young, as far as years go, but his
smile was the oldest thing I have ever seen. It seemed, indeed, as if
since the days of Confucius he must have let the corners of his mouth
curve, indulgently and mirthlessly, over the furtive strivings and droll
pretensions of humanity. Indeed, one feels that everyone in “Lilly Burke
Street,” all the men in the china, the provision, and the herb-stores,
the cook-shops, and gaming-houses, have existed since the beginning of
time—till at last their souls have become indifferent alike to good and
ill; life appearing, to each, but a task to be finished with, one bead in
the necklace of eternity, an oft-repeated routine, where philosophy has
ousted pleasure.
To pass from this sombre and leisurely old world in among the flashing
lights and loud twanging voices of Greater Burke Street makes one feel as
if one had been roughly flung through the centuries, regardless of time
and space—just flipped off from the thumb and finger of some potent,
all-indifferent Deity, leaving the greater part of one’s anatomy behind
one in the process, and with it some subconscious memory, something far
away and so deeply buried, beneath a weight of actualities that only in
sleep, for the most part, can one catch a glimpse of its shadow, an echo
of its voice; though among those inscrutable people, to whom a hundred
years or a day are alike but a fragment of eternity, one may yet meet it
face to face.
But the Chinamen do not all gather in Little Burke Street, nor do they
confine themselves altogether to the making of that cheap furniture, for
which they are equally well known and detested, for by them most of the
market-gardens within easy reach of Melbourne are both owned and worked.
The Chinaman is the most careful and thrifty, the most loving, gardener
in the world. It seems as if his little plot of land grows to be to him
as his child—no matter how small it is. I remember once watching from my
bedroom window, in one of the Melbourne Coffee Palaces of which the back
overlooks Little Burke Street, a Chinaman in a blue linen coat, busied
during the dinner hour, day after day, with some narcissus in blue bowls
on a neighbouring roof, and marvelled at the infinite loving care with
which he was tending them. As in the smaller so in the greater, though
perhaps, on the whole, he is the truest artist in the minute. The
Australian does not like the Chinaman; he resents his frugal ways—in a
country that is certainly not frugal—his colour—his strangeness, his
untiring, unswerving industry. You see a lot of white men working in the
market gardens round Oakleigh and Garden Vale. They stop to talk with
each other, to look round at the sky and distant landscape, to enjoy a
few quiet puffs at their pipes; above all, to spit on their hands. The
Chinaman never looks up, never stops from dawn to dark. He divides his
ground into little oblong patches, with channels between to conserve
every drop of moisture; he pampers the young weak plants, shading them
from wind and sun with bits of sacking, boards, or slates; he loosens the
ground unceasingly round them, and waters untiringly. I do not for a
moment advocate Australians working in this manner; a man must sometimes
straighten his back and look around him, must have something of a soul
beyond early tomatoes and green peas; but still there is very much that
he could be taught from the alien in his midst; and it is a schoolboy’s
poorest excuse not to learn from a master because he is personally
distasteful to him.
Australia, particularly in its up-country places, needs more vegetables
most terribly, if it is to escape at all from the scourge of cancer which
already lays such a heavy toll on its inhabitants; and if it needs more
vegetable gardens to satisfy its human needs, it certainly needs more
flower gardens for its spiritual needs, as a humanizing, home-making
influence, nothing striking the new chum more forcibly than the utter
lack of any attempt at beautifying the outside of up-country cottages,
save with empty condensed milk and jam tins.
For many years squatters in the drought-stricken districts have employed
Chinese gardeners, to whom they often owe the fact that their families
grow up healthy, and their wives find some solace, some reminder of their
girlhood’s home in the lonely wind-swept plains, where the poor despised
John Chinaman has—with unceasing toil, with infinite manceuvring, by
means of prehistoric wind-wheels and pumps old as Egypt in design—made a
little oasis to blossom for them.
“I would give anything to have a Chinaman to teach my boys vegetable
growing,” said the Principal of a Horticultural College near Melbourne to
me some years ago. “But the Minister would never allow it, and if he did
I should have the whole country about my ears.” He was right, for no
freeborn Australian boy would tolerate for a minute being taught anything
by an Asiatic. But are they right in this. One may perhaps despise
certain traits in every race, in every phase of Nature even, but is that
any proof that they have not much to teach us? And after all, as wise
men of all ages have realized, it is from our enemies, not from our
friends, that we learn most, and the Chinese native is after all perhaps
a trifle older than the Australian—though you in my dear foster-country
must really forgive me mentioning it.