THE BOOM
I am not going to disgust the patient reader with sick-room talk. But
certain facts connected with my hospital life bear directly upon the
object of this book, which is to reflect in my trivial experiences the
character of the country as modified by its circumstances from year to
year.
I had to pay L6, 6s. per week while an inmate of the house. This sum
did not cover medicines or washing, but board and nursing only. The
doctor who gave me chloroform three times charged me L5, 5s. on the
first occasion, and the same on the second; then his conscience
pricked him, I suppose, for he made me a present of his further
services. The surgeon's fee of L105 was comparatively moderate. _Per
contra_, I had a skimpy bed and room, and just the necessaries of life
as far as nursing was concerned. My nurse had too many other cases in
charge to give more attention to me than was surgically necessary; for
little spongings and pillow-shakings, a clean handkerchief, or such
trifle of comfort, I had to depend upon my friends when they were
allowed to see me. In dangerous crises a night nurse had me in charge;
at ordinary times a lay girl slept in my room. I moped in loneliness
through the greater part of the day, not knowing when I was well off,
until one morning the doctor asked me if I would mind having a
patient in with me, as the house was full. I weakly consented,
although horrified at the idea, and my one luxury of privacy was taken
from me. She was another surgical patient--another poor mother weeping
all the time for her children--and my sufferings on her account, which
included the total banishment of my friends from what was still my own
room, had such a bad effect upon me that they were soon obliged to
remove her. With regard to diet, I could hardly have cost more than
the cat. Fish, rabbit, cow-heel (not poultry) were the strong meats of
my convalescence; most of the time I was on broth and gruel--when not
sucking milk and soda from a spout. Nevertheless, I was no green
victim to experienced rapacity. None of those in whose power I
was--unless it were the chloroformist, who, I have been assured by
competent authority, did exceed his rights a little--took any unfair
advantage of me. The lady at the head of the establishment was a woman
of the very highest character, and is still my dear and honoured
friend; and the last of the facts I will give in connection with this
case is the fact that she could not make the hospital pay, even on
such terms, and although she worked herself to skin and bone to do it.
Why? Because this was the merry Boom time, when rents were what we now
call "fabulous"--houses letting at three times the present rates--and
the general cost of living in proportion. Her expenditure, kept down
to the lowest limit, was so heavy that her large receipts would not
cover it.
It is not for me, who never could do sums in my life, to give opinions
on matters of intricate finance that have proved beyond the grasp of
the most hard-headed experts, but no story of the country, or of
anyone living in it during the years when the great Land and Company
Boom occurred, would be complete without some description of that
amazing episode. I can, at least, give an interesting fact or two from
what I know.
While I was still in my hospital bed, one public authority--not
listened to, of course--was telling the mad land-speculators that
already more allotments had been put up for suburban residences than
would suffice to house the population of London. "When the rage was at
its height, and land-sales and champagne lunches were _de rigueur_ on
Saturday afternoons, every available bit of land in the suburbs was
bought up by syndicates ... orchards were ruthlessly cut down, gardens
uprooted, hedges broken down, and surveyors set to work to mark out
streets and small allotments, while the astonished owners received
small fortunes for the title-deeds. Numbers of these _nouveaux riches_
are now--this was written in '92--"touring in Europe, or living
comfortably at their ease on competencies thus acquired." But
some--friends of my own amongst them--handed over their properties to
be thus devastated for a further and higher sale, and got only a first
instalment of the purchase-money, or none at all; the "bottom fell
out" of the Boom before they knew it. While those who bought and were
too late to sell again--"witness," says the writer I am quoting, "the
suicides, the deserted homes, the present penury," domestic tragedies
beyond anything that "the pen of fiction" could produce.
One affair caused much excitement in clerical (Church of England)
circles. Our cathedral was a-building. Dr Moorhouse had started the
work, after a strenuous fight on his part for the site it now
occupies--in the very heart of the busy city, which time has proved to
be the right place--as against one more retired and picturesque, the
land in both cases being Church property from the days of old. The
work, as far as it had gone, represented about L62,000, "when hungry
syndicates were casting about to find city blocks, then considered of
unassailable value," and it was announced in the papers that L300,000
had been offered for the unfinished building and the land. "The
authorities were informed that even half a million might be
forthcoming, if they would appoint a committee to confer upon the
subject," and, oh, how that golden bait tantalised us all--or nearly
all! Bishop Moorhouse was gone to his see of Manchester, but there
were still a few men strong enough to breast the tide. "A fatal odd
vote," as it was called, saved us, the voter making himself for a
short time one of the most unpopular persons in the community.
"Business men will remember bitterly in the future, when funds are
scarce, that the sale of the cathedral would have represented a
perpetual income of L15,000 to L20,000 a year," wrote one of the many
good Churchmen who voiced their feelings in the newspapers; and he
said that those business men would be justified in refusing help to
the foolish ones who had "persisted in building on a veritable gold
mine," when those dark days came. The temptation was scarcely put
aside before the collapse occurred, and then, oh, what a sigh of
thankfulness went up from us all that the cathedral was there still!
When it was known by the high financiers behind the scenes that the
bottom had fallen out of the Land Boom proper, then the
company-promoting began. Some idea of the energy that at once poured
itself into this channel may be derived from the statement that within
one year 270 new companies were registered in Melbourne, having an
aggregate nominal capital of fifty-two millions. These were the traps,
baited with the names of men in high positions, notorious for piety,
respectability, and business acumen, into which walked that long
procession of honest toilers who, with their little savings in their
hands, aimed, not to make a fortune, but a comfortable provision for
old age.
Here is a sample of the kind of thing that might be found daily in the
newspapers--it is from the prospectus of the Centennial Land Bank,
Limited, Capital, L1,000,000, in 200,000 shares of L5 each:--
"The following statistics as regards the present values in
kindred institutions speak for themselves, and it is scarcely
necessary to point out the fact that this Company cannot
fail, with proper management, to have equally good, if not
better, returns:--
Australian Property and Investment Company, L5 paid; present
value, L8, 15s.
Henry Arnold and Company, L5 paid; present value, L12.
Standard Financial Investment and Agency Company, L1 paid; present
value, L7.
Mercantile Finance and Guarantee Company, 25s. paid; present
value, L4, 19s.
Freehold Investment and Banking Company, L2, 15s. 6d. paid;
present value, L10, 7s. 6d.
Real Estate Bank, 50s. paid; present value, 73s.
Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank, L25 paid; present value,
L46.
All the above have been paying dividends at the rate of from 10 to
50 per cent."
Is it any wonder that a spider's web of this description was simply
black with flies? Poor old maids, widows, parsons, school-marms, small
tradesmen who had laboriously put by a little--they tumbled over each
other in their eagerness to put a splendid finishing-touch to the work
of their industrious lives. They could not believe in frauds and
swindles at the hands of such men as they who enticed them to
irreparable financial ruin. Of the companies named in the Centennial
Land Bank prospectus, all, as I read in the records of the time, came
to grief, and "the names of four of them figure in the list of 133
limited companies that the _Government Gazette_ supplies as having had
to wind up their affairs during the twelve months from June 1891 to
June 1892 inclusive."
I said I would not meddle with figures, which are not in my line, but
I am tempted to give just a few more while I am about it.
Purchasers (at slightly under L1100 per foot) of land in Collins
Street, on which a draper's shop had been burnt to the ground, refused
L2000 per foot for their bargain. Another block, with frontage to
Collins Street, was bought for L65,000, and sold a few months later
for L120,000. Other premises purchased for L25,000 were sold four
months later for L55,000--L2000 per foot. The Equitable Life Assurance
Company of New York paid, I believe, L2500 per foot for the fine site
on which they have erected the finest commercial building in
Melbourne. It was the same in the outside suburbs, where as yet they
were not suburbs at all. At Surrey Hills land worth 15s. in 1884 rose
to L15 in 1887. A "moderate estimate" of the sales of the latter year
was officially reported as over L14,000,000. But one of the best
indications of the violence of these ups and downs is afforded by a
comparison of the advertisement-columns of the newspapers one year
with another. In 1888 the Saturday issue (for several consecutive
Saturdays) of a morning journal averaged 170 advertisement-columns of
fine print; in 1892 (also for several Saturdays) the average number
was 67. It was calculated by "one of our leading financiers" that the
"shrinkage" which occurred in stocks and shares, together with the
shrinkage in silver (which had had a world-famed boom of its own),
from 1889 to 1892 totalled "the appalling sum of L50,000,000." It only
remains to add that the population of the entire continent did not
total 4,000,000.
G. and I were amongst the fortunate ones who had no spare money to
play with, and so, when the crash came, we were in the position of the
cathedral--where we were--poor but free, not mortgaged body and bones
for "calls," like so many that we knew. Still, we had to bear our
little share of the general calamity. About a week after the State
Proclamation of five days' compulsory Bank Holiday--disregarded by the
only two banks which (with the exception of one little one) passed
unscathed through the storm--and when it was supposed that Government
had thereby checked the epidemic of bank disasters, G. was paid his
stipend, and on the stroke of three o'clock made a wild rush to
deposit the money before his bank shut for the day; _his_ bank being
above suspicion (to him), whatever others might be. He just, and only
just, managed it, and the doors that closed on him a minute afterwards
remained closed next morning. And so, as that money was for many a day
beyond recall, I had to make mine do for both of us, until I in my
turn was rendered penniless. With the narrow-mindedness of my sex in
business matters, I withstood the appeals of the manager of my own
bank, who assured me that his little all and the combined possessions
of his whole family reposed therein, and transferred what I had to the
Government Savings Bank, as being an approximately safe place--while
inclined to think that a hole in the ground or a tea-pot or an old
stocking would be safer--until things should have settled down. When
they did settle down, I opened my account with one of the two great
banks that had proved themselves impregnable.
From a newspaper of May 20th, 1893, I take the following:--"Counting
in all stoppages up to Tuesday last, about L55,000,000 of Australian
money is now locked up in suspended banks of issue--not counting the
amounts locked up in about fifty bursted land banks, building
societies and investment companies, and leaving the Mercantile"--this
was the particularly scandalous boom-bank--"out of the calculation
altogether.... Within a year 64 per cent. of the working capital of
Queensland has been locked up, 60 per cent. of that of Victoria, 55
per cent. in New South Wales, and 40 per cent. in South Australia." So
it appears, if these figures are correct, that there was still one
colony worse off than we were.
But it was not 1893--it was 1886--when I was in hospital, and the
"high old times" were in full swing. When I came out, to remain for a
long time under the necessity of reporting myself to the doctor at
frequent intervals, I was again, at those frequent intervals, in the
thick of the distractions of our still gay capital, where it was the
aim of my friends to make me forget that I was going to "die of it" or
to persuade me that my medical adviser was a fool.
I was not in the fevered crowd of those who "ran" the boom and made
the smell of money so rank in the nose; but it was high tide in the
fortunes of the landed gentry, and, indeed, generally speaking, of the
whole community. All in their degree were rich and lived lavishly; the
upper classes seemed wholly given over to pleasure-making, and their
appetite for social diversion was catered for as it never was before
or since. It was now that I heard so much good music, saw so much good
acting, met so many interesting travellers, enjoyed the greatest
race-meetings in the history of splendid Flemington, the hospitalities
of Government House in its best days, the most memorable
entertainments of a time when nothing but the first-rate was
tolerated. I look back now and wonder at my keen appreciation of it
all. But it never took much to make me enjoy myself, and I was younger
then.
Out of the crowded spectacle, which in memory resembles the dream of
Verdant Green's father after the first visit to Oxford, the Centennial
Exhibition stands most conspicuous. As first conceived, it was to cost
L25,000, because the buildings of the Exhibition of 1880 were still
there to work upon. Being a Boom enterprise, it had not gone far
before it was estimated that L70,000 would be needed to complete it
properly. When the bill at last came in, it totalled L250,000. "A
costly blunder," it is called in these soberer times. Costly it was
certainly, but a blunder--no. Not to us who made it our haunt and
rendezvous, our palace of pleasure in a thousand forms. I should think
that no money ever spent gave so much direct enjoyment to so many
people.
Ah, those days! Those days! I too had had my little boom on the
Australian press, and it was not yet over; bad times were still
undreamed of, the London Syndicate had not yet taken possession of the
fiction columns, pounds were freely to be had (I received L197 for the
serial rights of _A Marked Man_) where now shillings are hard to come
by; and my children were still under the expensive age. So that the
cost of two long journeys for a day or two in town seemed not worth
considering, and I appear never to have considered it. We were all
extravagant together. We made hay while the sun shone, if ever people
did.
Therefore, looking back upon those gay times, I have not to regret
that I missed anything (except Madame Norman-Neruda), whatever else I
may regret. Living nearly 200 miles away I had all the good of the
Exhibition that I could have desired; more would have meant satiety.
Scores and scores of those orchestral concerts (under Frederick
Cowen's conductorship) I must have attended, first and last; there
were two a day, and they gave you the best music of all countries, and
you only had to stroll into the hall and sit down and listen, as if in
your own house. It was here that I learned to be a Wagnerite, after
several unsuccessful attempts. By finding a very quiet corner, and
listening with my eyes close shut and a fan before my face, I
discovered the secret; now there is no luxury in life like a Wagner
concert--other music, even other great music, that I am bidden to
place higher, seems by comparison what other novels seem beside George
Meredith's best (the Meridithian will understand me). As it has
chanced, all the Wagner that I have heard since Exhibition days has
been rendered by the still more highly-trained orchestra of Mr
Marshall Hall, ex-Ormond Professor of Music in the University of
Melbourne; and, as a musician, we have never had his equal amongst us
here, and are never likely to have his superior.
The Art Galleries of the Exhibition were more to us than the Concert
Hall, for we were more in them. Amongst the Loan Pictures, of one
country or another, we met our friends; here we sat on soft lounges to
muse upon our favourites, in more or less congenial company, or we let
the pictures alone and gave friendship the whole field. There were
times in the day--the place was open from 11 A.M. to 10:30 P.M.--when
persons who desired privacy had no difficulty in finding it at fifty
different spots; wherefore it was a very paradise for lovers. And you
could live there all day long, with every comfort, including free
education worth years of school. It was delightful to show children
biscuits and hats and wire-mattresses a-making under their very noses,
and when they were tired of that to take them to see the seals fed in
the cool Aquarium, or up on the hydraulic lift to survey all Melbourne
from the great dome. The meals are a delicious memory--the little
lunches and dinner-parties, the afternoon teas (for nothing) in the
dainty tea-pavilions--all flavoured with the holiday spirit, the
bright talk of meeting friends. And the saunters to and fro, and up
and down (fatiguing, no doubt, but I have forgotten that), always with
something beautiful to look at, something interesting to do, and
generally with a comrade of your heart to talk to about it all! When
the place was shut at last, we wandered forlorn and lost for a long
time. We were spoiled for humdrum life.
The Centennial Exhibition--our "Great" Exhibition--marked the climax
of the Boom, of what we erroneously call the "good times," when we
were rich and dishonest and mercenary and vulgar. The end was not far
off. A few more luxuries awaited us, of which the one that recalls
itself most vividly to my mind is Madame Patey's singing of "Alas!
Those Chimes," from _Maritana_. This was on 27th November 1890. On the
25th June 1801 I saw Sara Bernhardt in _Theodora_. She it was who rang
down the curtain. We were able to give her a good season, to treat
ourselves once more regardless of expense; then, upon the heels of her
departure, the bubble burst. "Thank God," I heard a man say, "that we
got Sara first." It was our last chance for many a long day.
But the best thing that ever happened to Melbourne Society, as I have
known it, was the snuffing out of the lights of that feast, the coming
of that cold daylight to the revellers. A better example of the
vulgarising effects of wealth, and of the refining effects of being
without it, was never packed in a neater compass.