Part 16
Mainly as the result of what is going on in England, partly because of other reasons, there is growing up in Australia a feeling of antagonism to constitutional ties as they now exist. I say “growing up,” although the shoots are at present hardly noticeable, and the vitality is taken from them by the vigour of other trees. But no one can afford to be blind to the signs of the times. In the Southern continent there is a strong and developing Labour party. Politically it is of the utmost importance. Where it does not actually choose Ministries and pass legislation it is the controlling or balancing force without which the Government in office could not carry on. This political Labour party is leavened with Republicanism. More than that, it is in spirit and essence Republican; that is to say, anti-Monarchical, and in a measure Separationist. So far, it is not actively disloyal. It has by no means shaken off old associations. The influences of race and of heredity are with it yet. The name and fame of England are more to it than the name and fame of France or Germany, or America, or Japan. Many of its members took part in the honourable folly of the Mafeking celebrations. But old associations become older each year; and even heredity is not in the long run proof against environment. A party that has to fight for its existence in Parliament, and to earn its own living outside of it, has not much time for sentiment. It comes down to bed-rock sooner than do other parties. All the patriotic ideals, all the associations of remoter kinship, all the far-off memories of battle fields, all the impalpable nothings that help to bind an Empire together, are not proof in the long run against the practical tendencies of the man who knows only his own surroundings--who is chiefly occupied in supplying material wants, and who wishes to be let alone.
Outside of political circles, and outside of the Labour party, there is a certain body of opinion that sees, or professes to see, indications of coming change. Causes of irritation are always arising. English newspaper criticism of Australia is one fruitful source of complaint. The returned Australian--the man who has battled hard for a living in London and has more or less failed--comes back with the conviction that racial sentiment is a vain and foolish thing. For him it is dead; its embers lie strewn about the pavement that runs past London newspaper offices, and are trampled under foot by the indifferent millions on their passage to and fro. The thoughtful and clever Australian, looking to the prevailing signs of the times, looking to the attitude of Downing Street, of Fleet Street, and of Belgravia, begins to pin his faith to a future that is not the future of the old world, but of the new.
For the present, old ties, old institutions, old associations are in the ascendant. The continent is owned, and to some extent governed, by men of peregrinating habits; by men to whom the Red Sea is as familiar as Collins Street; by men to whom the journey from Tilbury to Adelaide is no more formidable, and not much more unusual, than a cab-drive from the Marble Arch to London Bridge. These people, though they live in the Southern Hemisphere, have most of their financial, commercial, and social interests in the world’s metropolis. These people own most of the property and possess a preponderating, though a diminishing, share in the Government of the new country. Assisting them, and co-operating with them, is the racial and Imperialistic sentiment of the Australian middle classes. But the other type of individual--the man who believes that formulas have no hold over him, and who declares that he “may not call a throned puppet Lord”--is making himself felt more as a silent than as an eloquent factor in the life of the people. This is the type that is known as “little Australian.” On A.N.A. platforms, in suburban debating societies, at Trades’ Hall councils, and at Yarra Bank gatherings, it succeeds in making its aspirations heard. In social circles, in the region of practical politics, it is dumb and futile. But it is ambitious, and expects to grow.
For many reasons one might sympathise with the little Australian, and even feel some sorrow for him. He has so few materials with which to build. He has no national flag, no history, no bead-roll of fame, no justification for enthusiasm of any kind. He wishes to feel, and to spread around him, an atmosphere of enthusiasm for the land in which he was born. He wishes to see the embers removed from England, and relighted in Australia. But how is the thing to be done? National sentiment is largely the product of memories. And the Australian, as an Australian, has no memories worthy of the name. If he looks back a century--and he can look back no further--he finds merely the trail of the unattractive aboriginal, of the nomadic gold digger, and of that other man who, like Barrington, left his country for his country’s good. Hamlet declares that you cannot feed capons, that is to say, young cocks, on air; and you can hardly nourish the flame of patriotic sentiment on recollections such as these. So it is that in Australia the shrine of the local patriot is difficult to tend. The altar has not been stained with crimson as every rallying centre of a nation should be. A large expanse of territory, some trees, a whitey-grey or dull green landscape, a number of new buildings, a hard blue sky, a succession of fine days, and alternating periods of drought--these must be the outward and visible symbols, in default of others more histrionic and less tangible, on which the sentiment of the nation has to feed. It is no wonder that the result is a slow and fluctuating and uncertain growth.
But the little Australian lives on, and believes that time will have its revenges. He believes that each year as it passes is fighting for him. He knows that he is not strong enough to found a party that will carry any weight in the Government of the country. He is aware, also, that he can get no audience to listen to the gospel that is dearest to him, elsewhere than by the banks of rivers, at the less reputable street corners, or in the open spaces of a city domain. He recognises that the earth belongs to those who think very differently from himself. He has no hope of achieving a _tour de force_. But he is by no means idle. He does what he can. His voice is raised against all proposals that seem to have an old-world origin, or to be actuated by sympathy with old-world forms of Government. Thus he is an active opponent of the agreement under which Australia pays a naval subsidy of £200,000 to Great Britain. He is not candid enough to say what he really thinks--that he desires his country to be quite independent of the parent nation. But he talks, with an amusing sophistry that deceives no one, of the advantages that would accrue to the people of England if Australia possessed a navy of her own. Besides objecting to the naval subsidy he objects to State Governors, to all appeals from his part of the world to the Privy Council, to contingents such as those that went to South Africa, to the right of veto upon colonial legislation. All these are principles or practices that can be protested against without openly enlisting under the Separationist flag. The little Australian is not sure that the time is ripe for objecting to an English Governor-General, or to the appearance of the head of the Sovereign on the coins of the realm. But where there is a chance of doing something, he does it; where there is a head unprotected, he hits it as hard as he can.
What is the future to be? No one knows, least of all the little Australian. Sometimes he sees visions, sometimes he dreams dreams. But he lacks constructive ability, and he is wanting in definite aim. His antecedents are of a heterogeneous character. It may be that he is of Irish descent, and that memories of Drogheda and Vinegar Hill are running in his blood. Perhaps he has a Gaelic strain and refuses, as some Scotchmen still refuse, to forego the hereditary instinct which meant war to the knife against the race across the Border. Or possibly he is a German for whom loyalty to Great Britain has no meaning; or possibly an Italian, the child of a country that is always talking about liberty, but has for gotten how to use it. Perhaps he is an Englishman who for adequate personal reasons has a vendetta against his fathers’ country, and everything connected with it. There are a number of local causes, a number of nationalities, a number of racial prejudices helping to build up the little Australian. But for the present the Imperialists of the continent can afford to smile at him. They know that his day is not yet.
INDEX
A
Achilles, 122
Actors, 138-141
Actress, Young American, 147
Adams, Francis, 113
Adelaide, 53, 306
_Adonais_, 114
Adonis, 260
Æstheticism, 168
Aetius, 37
Afghanistan, 284
Agamemnon, 209
_Age_, 55-58
Aide-de-camp, Government House, 28, 34
Amaryllis, 110
America, 142, 144, 305
Amurath, 81
Aphroditë, 190
_A Pretty Woman_, 232
Araluen, 92
_Argus_, 55, 56, 66, 93
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 169
_As long as any May_, 249
Astoria, 145
_Atalanta in Calydon_, 39
_At Dawn and Dusk_, 227, 234
_At the Opera_, 232
Attila, 37
Aurelius, Marcus, 260
_Australasian_, 128
A.N.A., 307
Australian men, 1-22, 199-203
---- society, 23-44
---- women, 32, 160-180, 251
Authors, dramatic, 141
_Autumn Song_, 124
Azores, 115
B
_Bab Ballads_, 148
Back-blocks, 215
Badajos, 283
_Ballad of Dreamland_, 123
Barrère, 1
Barrington, 308
Barton, Sir E., 89, 252-258
Bayard, 133
Beaconsfield, 216
Beau Brummell, 260
Beersheba, 112
Belgravia, 306
_Belle of New York_, 146
Bent, Thomas, 78
Birth-rate, 36, 37
Bismarck, 1
Bjornsten, 146
_Blanchelys_, 233, 234
Blue Mountains, 209
Boers, 283
Botany Bay, 57, 285
Brighton (Melb.), 113
Brisbane, 53, 153, 158, 300
Brisëis, 122
Browning, 1, 68, 74, 91
Bryne, Desmond, 113
Buddhists, 3, 169
_Bulletin_, 103, 108, 109, 205
Bunthorne, 124
Burke, Edmund, 9
---- Street, 195
Burney, Miss, 124
Byron, 133, 259
C
Cæsar, Julius, 280
Cambridge, 171, 301
_Camille_, 150
Carlton, 265
Carlyle, 203
Cecil Family, 284
Cereals, 209
Chamberlain, Joseph, 299
Charters Towers, 158
Chateaubriand, 1
Circë, 183
Circular Quay, 142, 162, 207
Cochin China, 284
Collins St. (Melb.), 195, 207, 291, 306
“Colonial,” 301
Colonial Secretary, 16, 191, 192
Commonwealth, 36, 56, 259
Como, Lake, 215
Condorcet, 15
Confucius, 3
Contingent, S. A., 203, 310
Cowper, 277
Cricket, 155, 156
Cromwell, 1
Cronje, General, 291
Crosland, Henry, 24, 161, 162, 271
_Cui Bono_, 127
Cup Day, 199
Curate, the Anglican, 169
Cytherea, 190
D
_Daily Telegraph_ (Sydney), 55-58
Daley, Victor, 23, 92, 94, 225-236
Danton, 267
Darling Downs, 208
Darling Harbour, 182
Darlinghurst, 142
Deakin, Alfred, 89, 258-264
De Brett, 26
Demosthenes, 260
_Deus ex machina_, 168
Dibbs, Sir George, 78
_Dolores_, 150
_Doubtful Dreams_, 127, 130
Downing Street, 288, 299, 306
_Dreams in Flower_, 246, 247
Dress, love of, 174
Drogheda, 311
Dumas, 146
Dumplings, 158
E
Edward, the Confessor, 257
Egypt, 280
Egyptology, 172
_Elegy_, Gray’s, 269
Eliot, George, 23, 24
English middle classes, 300
---- newspapers, 111, 143, 145, 301, 305
---- society, 24, 25, 302
Epicurus, 1
Epsom, 156
Established Church, 187
_Euphues_, 123
Evans, Essex, 94
Expediency, 287
F
_Faces in the Street_, 242
Federation, 256, 264, 266
Flinders Lane, 162
Flippant style, 107
Forests, Australian, 208
_Fra Lippo Lippi_, 91
Free Trade, 266, 275
_From the Wreck_, 128
G
Gambling, 11, 34, 153, 156
Gamins, 14
Geelong, 300
Germany, 19, 305
_Girl, The Country_, 224
Gissing, George, 214
Godwin, William, 15
Golden Age, 190
Goose-step, 14
Gordon, Adam L., 113-136
Gorky, 214
Government House, 28, 30, 34, 47, 67
----, N.S.W., 37
Gracchus, Caius, 260
Graduates, lady, 173
Groperism, 54
Guildhall, 254
H
Hackett, Dr, 54
_Hamlet_, 252, 308
Hardy, Thomas, 209
Harland, Henry, 177
Harte, Bret, 96
Heine, 1
_Henry V._, 105
Holt, Bland, 142
Hooligans, 14
Horace, 168, 269
Hospitality, 5
_How we beat the Favourite_, 128, 130
Humorous style, 106, 217
I
Ibsen, 145, 146
Icarus, 231
Illegitimacy, 10
Illiteracy, 97
Immigration Restriction Act, 3
Immorality, 17
Imperial Defence, 289, 310
Imperialist, 277-295
I.O.G.T., 191
I.O.R., 191
Inner life, society’s, 32
Irrigation, 263
Irwin, W. H., 78
_Island Lover_, 94
J
Japan, 142, 286, 305
Jarrah, 208
Jones, H. A., 145
Journalism, 45-67, 220
Jugurtha, 25
K
Karri, 208
Katoomba, 209
Keats, 48, 225
Kelly Gang, 142
Kendall, Henry C., 8, 119
_King Lear_, 79, 217
Kingston, C. C., 290
Kipling, 296
Koniggratz, 19
Kosciusko, 284
L
Labour party, 81-83, 265-268, 305
Lais, 202
Lamartine, 133
Lancelot, 133
Larrikin, 8, 15
Lazzaroni, 14
Lawn tennis, 170
Lawson, Henry, 42, 99, 208, 237-243
_Leah Kleschna_, 146
_Lear, King_, 79, 217
Le Gallienne, Richard, 161, 162
Legislative Council, 84, 162
Leicester Square, 98
Leonidas, 39
_Light of Asia_, 169
_Lohengrin_, 224
London, 197, 207, 300
---- Bridge, 306
Lorimer, Mr, 224
Lotos-flower, 183
Louis XIV., 40
M
_Macbeth_, 257
Mack, Louise, 181, 243-251
Mafeking, 291, 292, 305
Magazines, Australian, 219, 220
Magersfontein, 283
Majuba, 283
Manchuria, 280
Mannerisms, 31
Mansion House, 255
Marble Arch, 306
_Marriage of Kitty_, 150
Melbourne, 53-61, 193-203
Melnotte, Claude, 215
Melville, Whyte, 128
Men, Australian, 199-203
_Mens æqua_, 209
Meredith, George, 214
Micawber, 214
Midlands, 300
Milton, 20, 137, 160
Mirabeau, 14
Molière, 40
_Morning Herald_ (Sydney), 55, 56, 63
Morris, Professor, 171
_Mouse, The Country_, 150
Mulhall, 10
Musical comedy, 151
N
Nadjezda, 145
Napoleon, 280
Nature and Art, 179
Navy, British, 289
Newspapers, English, 111, 143, 145, 301, 305
Newton, Sir Isaac, 153
New York, 52, 188
---- Zealand, 237
Nicholson’s Nek, 283
Nora Creina, 201
O
Octavian, 1
_Old Stone Chimney_, 242
_Omar Khayyam_, 193
_On Wairee Hill_, 249
“Oriel,” 63
Orpheus, 132
Ouida, 30
Oxford, 171, 187, 301
P
_Pallida mors_, 168
_Pall Mall Gazette_, 111
Paternoster Row, 98
Paterson, 48, 208
_Patience_, 124
Payments, literary, 224
Perth, 54, 153
Petticoat Lane, 145
Phantasmagoria, 183
Philip, Governor, 190
Pigmies, 16
Pinero, Mr, 145
Pitt, William, 260
Plato, 169
Plutocrats, 35
_Podas Okus_, 122
Poetry, Australian, 225-251
Poland, 280
Politics, the game of, 68-90
Port Darwin, 153
Potts’ Point, 67
Prejudices, 303
Proserpinë, 132
Protection, 266, 275, 276
Publishers, 100
_Punch_, 205
Q
_Quex, The Gay Lord_, 150
Quinn, P. E., 99
---- R. J., 99
_Quo Vadis_, 150
R
_Reedy River_, 242
Reid, G. H., 79, 89, 270-276
Resources of Australia, 208, 209
_Rhyme of Joyous Garde_, 122, 133
Richardson (novelist), 124
Roberts, Earl, 16
Robespierre, 267
_Roll of the Kettledrum_, 128
_Romance of Britomarte_, 129
Rostand, 146
Rudd, Steele, 204-224
Rugby football, 158, 171
Russia, 280
S
Sahara, 195
St Kilda, 200
Salamanders, 158
Salamis, 40
Salvation Army, 16
Samaritan, the good, 6
San Francisco, 52, 57
Sardou, 145
Sempach, 40
Sentiment, Imperial, 281, 295
_Seven Seas_, 296
Shakespeare, 105, 146, 152, 175, 201, 204, 217, 229, 252, 257, 308
Shaw, Bernard, 96, 149
Shelley, 114, 125, 224
Sheridan, 146
Slang, 171
Slums, 186
Smith, Sappho, 108
Snobs, 202
Society, 23-44
Solomon Islanders, 154
_Song of Autumn_, 127
Sou’-wester, 195
_Spectre Bride_, 117
Spring St. (Melb.), 195
Squadron, Australian, 286
Star of Australia, 43
Stephen, St, 297
Stowe, H. B., 45
Sudermann, 145, 146
Sweating, 17
_Sweet Nell of Old Drury_, 150
_Swimmer, The_, 124, 131
Swinburne, 39, 110, 123, 125
Sydney, 53-55, 61, 181-193
---- Town Hall, 256, 284
Supreme Court, 59, 257
Syme, David, 55
Symmons, Davison, 63
T
Tasman Sea, 182
Tennyson, 222
Theatres, 137-152
Theosophy, 168
Thermopylæ, 16, 39
Thurston, Mrs, 155
Tigris, 182
Tilbury, 306
_Tithonus_, 222
Toby, Uncle, 214
Togo, Admiral, 286
Toorak, 67, 142, 200
Torres Vedras, 216
Trades’ Union, 72
Trams of Sydney, 186
_Trip to Chinatown_, 146
_Triumph of Time_, 123
Trumper, Victor, 157
Tsu-shima, 4
Tugela, 283
Twain, Mark, 96, 106
Twofold Bay, 209
V
Vallambrosa, 93
Vedas, 169
_Venus and Adonis_, 229
Vices, national, 9, 13, 192
Victoria, Queen, 260
Vinegar Hill, 311
Virgil, 209
Virtues, national, 7
Vitellius, 1
Viviani, Emilia, 229
Von Kotze, 94
_Vows_, 249
W
Wagner, 201
Waldorf, 145
Warwickshire, 300
Waterloo, 47, 283
Watson, Chris., 89, 264-270
Wellington, Duke of, 103
_West Australian_, 54
Westminster, 145, 293, 299, 302
_White Heather_, 150
Wildman, Ina, 108
Wilkes, John, 1
Winkelreid, A. von, 40
Winter in Melbourne, 195
Woman’s suffrage, 163
_Women and Wine_, 150
Women, Australian, 160-180
W.C.T.U., 191, 202
Women, English, 176
Wooloomooloo, 255, 265
Wordsworth, 45, 153
Working classes, 44
X
Xerxes, King, 40, 280
Y
Yalu, 16
Yarra Bank, 307
_Years Ago_, 229
Yellow peril, 286
Yorkshire, 300
Young American Actress, 147
Z
_Zaza_, 150
Zeno, 1
Zola, 214, 216
Transcriber's Notes:
Repetative heading, ‘The Real Australia’, has been removed.
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.