AUSTRALASIA
After my visit to the United States on lecturing business, I gladly
embraced the opportunity to go to Australasia on a similar errand,
although, in the latter case, the venture was entirely my own. I mean
that I was not engaged by anyone. More than that. I had an agent whose
agreement with me was that he should have a free hand in spending money
on my behalf, but that of the net proceeds he should take two-fifths,
leaving the remaining three-fifths to me. My only safeguard was
that we should have weekly settlements, but as that was treated as
non-existent, it didn’t make any difference, and I had the pleasant
knowledge that all through my tour I was working to maintain three
people. That, however, is a mere detail.
As was to be expected, my audiences in Australasia were very much
smaller than they had been in America, but I gladly note that what
they lacked in numbers they made up in appreciation. Perhaps this was
to be expected, as I found that I was well and favourably known by
repute in the Antipodes, which was certainly not the case in America.
And besides the handicap of my being an Englishman was absent. This,
however, is not the pleasantest of my recollections of that tour.
At the time of my visit the total contributions of the whole of
Australasia towards the expense of the British Navy was only £240,000 a
year, or much less than the cost of a scout. One of my lectures (“The
Way they have in the Navy”) was an attempt to show my hearers what
the British Navy really was, and in it I spared no pains to convince
my Southern hearers that their attitude towards the Navy was not
only ridiculously penurious, but fraught with the greatest danger to
themselves. I very well remember impressing upon them, whenever I got
the opportunity, that the amount contributed by the British people for
the Navy was about £1 per head, and that if the Australasian people
would only tax themselves to the same extent they would in five years
have such a Navy as would afford them the protection of which they
were now destitute. Nor could they reasonably expect the British Navy,
if the mother-country was in danger, to spare a single modern warship
for the protection of the Antipodes, all of whose cities lay near the
coast, and liable to destruction by a single foreign war vessel of
modern design and armament.
What the Australasian Dominions have done since then is a matter
of common knowledge; if not quite as much as I recommended, still
gigantic strides have been made, and I am grateful to feel that what
I had the opportunity of saying by tongue and pen aided local effort
sufficiently to bring about such a desirable result. At the time of my
visit the obsolete cruiser _Powerful_ was the most up-to-date vessel
in Australasian waters, and the flagship of the Admiral, Sir Wilmot
Hawkes. Then there came into Sydney the Japanese training squadron,
three small gunboats, each of which mounted a twelve-inch gun, and
though about one-quarter of the size of the _Powerful_, with armament
sufficient to have sunk a whole fleet of _Powerfuls_ at her leisure.
The object-lesson could not have been better timed, and I hope I used
it for all it was worth. I know, at any rate, that I was severely
censured for plain speaking, but I felt and said that the welfare of
such cities as Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide was far before any
personal considerations. But I proved then that both Press and people
only wanted the facts pointed out to them for them to act. They were
not content simply to turn over in their sleep and mutter, “Oh, it will
last our time.” Not they. And the recent naval activity of the Southern
Dominions is the result.
Apart from this patriotic matter, the reception that I met with
everywhere was most encouraging. It is true that I often had the
misfortune in the smaller towns of coming immediately after or before
a theatrical company, which had either swept up all the “joy-money,”
or it, the cash, was awaiting the advent of the fun-makers. Also I had
to compete with the cinematograph in the large cities, which had just
arrived, and was scooping up all the money in sight. And beyond that I
was surely unfortunate in my time. Just after my arrival in Auckland
from Sydney, and on the very day that I was to give the first of four
lectures in Her Majesty’s Theatre, came the upheaving news of Mr. R.
J. Seddons’ death, which affected the whole community more than an
earthquake would have done. But not in the same way that it affected me.
For when the news arrived the city went immediately into mourning,
and I was perforce compelled to refrain from giving my lecture that
night. This was a very serious matter for me, for the expenses of each
day, heavier in Auckland than in any town I visited, were about £80.
And I was faced with that loss, because it was certain that I could
not regain that lost day, as the theatre was let again immediately. I
did try to get the company owning the theatre to meet me by cutting
the enormous rental of the theatre for that unused night in half, but
they would not hear of it, the loss was mine, and I must bear it, they
said cynically. But that was not the worst. So great was the shock to
the community that all businesses like mine felt it for a long time,
and the three lectures I was able to give in Auckland did little more
than cover expenses. The late Prime Minister of New Zealand had many
sincere mourners, but none who showed their sorrow in a more practical
manner than I did, even if the exhibition was quite involuntary.
Now the North Island of New Zealand is quite an earthly Paradise,
and although it was mid-winter at the time of my visit, arum lilies
were growing rankly in the ditches about Auckland. Yet at Gisborne,
only about 100 miles south of Auckland, I felt bitterly cold on the
platform, a thing that has never happened to me before nor since.
So cold was it that the speculator who had engaged me for those two
lectures, at a fee of £40, made a very severe loss, because hardly
anybody came the second night. They would not sit in an unlined
galvanized-iron building to be half frozen, no, not to hear the most
eloquent speaker living, much less myself, and truly I could not blame
them. It has, however, always been a mystery to me how it could be so
cold in that genial part of the world.
Considerable mystery attaches to my visit to Nelson. As a trip it
was delightful, giving me as it did the opportunity of verifying the
existence of Pelorus Jack, the celebrated grey grampus which for some
inscrutable cetacean reason meets and for a short time accompanies
every steamer that enters or leaves Tasman Bay by the French Pass.
Upon such a well-worn subject I am not going to expend space, but I
must just notice one matter that is not touched upon usually by any
of those who have written about this sociable whale. The _Pateena_ was
going a full sixteen knots, so her captain told me, yet “Jack” played
round her bows without any apparent effort, and occasionally would
put on a spurt that carried him a ship’s length ahead, when he would
slow down, and allow the ship to overtake him again, and resume his
favourite pastime of wallowing in the turbulent water just abaft her
stern. And when he left her finally, which he did after about twenty
minutes, he shot off at right angles from her, and almost immediately
disappeared. I therefore cannot put his top speed at any less than
thirty knots an hour.
But from a financial point of view Nelson was a dismal failure, and I
do not see how from its population it could well have been otherwise.
It may have been bad management, however; of that I know nothing.
Still as my object was not a pleasant holiday, I was glad to get
back to Wellington again, where I had an excellent reception, which
partly consoled me. This was the more noticeable, because here again I
lectured in the theatre, where I followed an excellent opera company,
under the management of Henry Bracy, who were giving all Gilbert and
Sullivan’s operas. Yet, despite this, I was very well patronised.
My hopes were now centred upon Dunedin, for I knew that practically
everybody there knew me, and I felt very hopeful that my reception
would go far to make up for what could only be classed as failure
hitherto. I was to appear in the Garrison Hall, the largest auditorium
in the city, and although it was not crowded it was well filled. One
of my old Dunedin friends, a very prominent man of business and an
expert accountant, at whose house I was a guest, congratulated me upon
the audience, but when I told him the amount of the takings he was
dumbfounded. Presently he said:
“My dear Bullen, you are being robbed. At the prices of the seats there
should be fifty or sixty per cent more money in the house than that.
Who have you attending to the front of the house?”
I replied that I did not know. My agent was in Wellington, and the
very reliable and honest fellow who was acting for me could only be in
one place at a time. My friend explained to me how easy it would be
for dishonest people to keep a great deal of money from the takings at
the doors, and then offered to come the following night and count the
house, a thing he had often done before. Afterwards we would compare
one another’s figures. We did so. I had £74, his count made £135!
And now I could see how this thing must have been going on all the
time, and I powerless to help it in any way. The best proof of the
correctness of his counting was in the fact that on a return visit
which I paid to Dunedin before leaving for home I gave a complimentary
lecture for the benefit of a fund for helping stranded seamen. The
house was about the same, but, after all expenses were paid, there was
£110 net available for the fund.
These are details, however, which only show the difficulties under
which a lecturer labours who has to put up with an inefficient agent
or an inequitable agreement. The people were splendid. I enjoyed
everything else in the country most thoroughly--the charming scenery,
the delightful audiences, the home-like hotels, the thoroughly good
newspapers. And the kindly hospitality of Messrs. Huddart Parker and
the Union Steamship Co. and the N. Z. Government railways, which
relieved me of all expenses of travel except for my agent and the
advance man, was very welcome indeed. But for this and the kindness of
the Steamship Company that gave me a free passage out and home, I am
afraid that I should have had very little to show for my tour in cash,
notwithstanding the fact that in Melbourne, in a hall which cost £4 a
night, I grossed between five and six hundred pounds in six days. But I
had no control over the expenditure, nor was any account ever shown me,
and as for the weekly settlement, that was from the first a dead letter.
Afterwards I learned that I was supposed to come back over my tracks
and revisit the cities I had given lectures in, supposed that is by
those who knew me, wanted to hear me, and had been prevented. There
were also many large places in Australia such as Ballarat, Bendigo and
Brisbane to which I did not go, why I do not know. And so, as I began
to feel very disheartened at the poor personal results from such great
sums as were taken, I looked forward eagerly to my winter lecture tour
at home, where, if the financial returns were modest, they were sure,
and I never had the slightest reason to suspect that anybody wished to
wrong me of a penny. So just when, as I afterwards learned, I ought
to have been beginning the most successful half of my tour, I caught
my ship at Melbourne, and started for home, where I arrived after an
absence of seven months.
Looking backward over that period of my lecture career, I can see
how good it was, and how well I should have been rewarded but for my
ignorance in making the agreement I did. I might, it is true, have
had bigger audiences in many places, but I could not have been better
received than I was. And that not merely by the rank and file, but by
all those in power of whatever political cast they happened to be.
This was all the more delightful to me because I did not make the
slightest attempt to push myself forward, and the kindly reception I
got from governors and ministers was spontaneously tendered. One day in
Wellington, when I was taking a walk, I thought I would leave my card
at Government House, and write my name in the visitors’ book, which I
had been led to believe was the correct thing to do. I had done so,
and was strolling away down the carriage drive again, when a messenger
came after me, and told me that the aide-de-camp wished I would return.
Of course I complied, and was immediately taken into the aide’s room,
who said that Lord Plunkett had seen me going away, and wished to have
a chat with me.
I was then taken into his Lordship’s room, and had a very pleasant
interview with him for about half an hour, during which he expressed
surprise that I had not been to see him before. He laughed heartily
when I told him that my native modesty forbade me to take any advantage
which calling on the great ones might give me, but though I knew I was
often a loser from this diffidence, I could not alter it. But I have
never been able to push myself forward in this way, and there’s an end
of it.
There is another thing which causes me to look back upon my
Australasian tour with complacency. The experience which I then gained
came too late to be of any financial benefit to me, but I fondly
believe that it has been of some use to others. I have been very glad
to put my knowledge at the service of anyone asking for it to whom
it was likely to be of use, and I do not think that any lecturer of
standing has since been caught in such toils as I was. And that is well
worth remembering, I think. But here, if it will be of any use, I would
wish to add, for the benefit of any brother-lecturer going to the
Antipodes, never allow your agent a free hand in spending, and insist
upon a daily settlement. This can easily be done if the agreed terms
are half the gross takings, the agent to pay all outgoings, except the
lecturer’s personal expenses, out of his half. In my case I only had
three-fifths of what was left, after _all_ expenses were paid--I paid
my own--and in too many cases there was nothing left for me at all.
And I never had a settlement, that is with vouchers, duly presented
and signed. So that I did not, nor do I now know what all those huge
expenses were for.
Still, I cannot too emphatically repeat that this was nothing to do
with the audiences, which were of the very best I ever lectured to,
or with the welcome I received everywhere, which was the warmest
conceivable.