Chapter 5

Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried off to the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensational period of their development, and attracting people from all parts of the world. It was the time when the ordinary business of the colonies could scarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexed employers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urged Governor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit mining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible to persons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.' In the country districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the towns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it half done; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews had deserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content to stand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being found up-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt to stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings,' was the reply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners.

Ex-military and naval officers, professional men, convicts from Van Diemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexican mines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbed shoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in the crowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo. In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of them were toiling in Victoria alone.

Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist his first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to his wife.

An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new edition of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then, like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel the country in search of work on the sheep and cattle stations.

A well-known pastoralist of the western district of Victoria, the late Hon. Philip Russell, was accustomed to describe to his friends the arrival at his station many years ago of a party of 'sundowners' (_i.e._, tramps), among whom was Kingsley, looking 'very much down on his luck.' Soon found to be no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest at the station, where he remained for several months. The most agreeable glimpse obtainable of his colonial life is given in _Old Melbourne Memories_, a little collection of sketches published by Rolf Boldrewood twelve years ago.

At the period which they recall, Boldrewood was a young man, and making the experiment in squatting which, though disastrous in its ultimate commercial results, was afterwards turned to a rich literary account by him. A friend of his named Mitchell occupied a station in western Victoria named Langa-willi, and there on one occasion Boldrewood met Kingsley. The passage in which he gracefully records the event is worth quoting in full.

'Why Langa-willi,' he says, 'will always be a point of interest in my memory, apart from other reasons, for I spent many a pleasant day there, was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest of Mitchell's.

'It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffry Hamlyn_, that immortal work, the best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host had ridden forth with his overseer to make-believe to inspect the flocks, but in reality to get an appetite for lunch.

'I like to think of them both spending the evening sociably in their own way, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing away till he had covered the regulation number of sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps when the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell reading steadily, or writing up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the glasses at ten o'clock; then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke on the verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, happy, unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not strong, and for his talented guest, who was not always so profitably employed. I suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the restful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi.'

At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being among the happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley's career after he returned to England may be summarised here in a few words. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the first four or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest as he lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, and became more conventional in his methods.

He essayed journalism for a time, first as editor of the Edinburgh _Daily Review_, and later as a correspondent of the same journal at the Franco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being without the necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy. Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of which he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels.

It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any of his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the most striking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60.

The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centre at which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, a daily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters was primitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulation of wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperity created by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memories which it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, he succeeded with singular completeness.

Save the technical knowledge of geology shown by Trevittick in _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, and by the encyclopædic Dr. Mulhaus in his lecture at the picnic in the grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there is nothing to suggest that the author had any personal acquaintance with mining in the colonies. The experience that was so fresh and abundant in his mind is put aside in favour of a set of facts and pictures not even incidentally connected with life on the gold-fields.

As if to emphasise the motive of his choice, if motive there was, he selected the pre-auriferous period for the Australian parts of his stories. His squatters become wealthy by a comparatively slow process, extending over some sixteen years. The squatters of the gold period would certainly seem better adapted to the purposes of fiction. There is, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance in the sudden burst of fortune which within the first few years after 1851 raised so many of them from positions of struggling uncertainty to affluence, with incomes varying from ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some few cases as high as thirty thousand pounds, a year.

The first and last use Kingsley made of his gold-fields experience is seen in the sketch of mining of the successful sort in the third volume of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but this is so slight that it might have been imagined by a writer who had never handled a shovel or a washing-cradle in his life.

The Australian people have so often been the subject of flippant and ill-natured criticisms, that they can readily appreciate any liberal estimate of themselves in whatever form it may be placed before their kindred in Great Britain. It is a fact, as natural as it is undeniable, that they are very sensitive to praise or blame. What wounds them more than adverse comment itself, is the circumstance of its often proceeding from persons who have accepted without warning their too prompt and trustful hospitality.

To anyone but the incorrigibly confident and good-natured Antipodean, the lesson would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished visitor should be petted less, and left more dependent upon his own devices in the collection of materials for the inevitable book or magazine article. Though the result might be the same, there would be no ingratitude, and the critic would be less able to pose as an impartial inside observer of Australian society.

Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight of imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself from the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point.

It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casual writers, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whether these kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surround them. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable?

By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning the colonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of the pioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate (since largely realised) of the future of the country, find more enduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing in ordinary circumstances.

The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ would earn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itself spirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which this first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might be unfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at least told nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generous one, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort.

It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting to preserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrant colonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Some of the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, and delicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; and then there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broader expanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, a greater trust in human nature.

As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, this difference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable in the light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly exists. Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley's young Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of the characteristics of their British parents. But, still, they show themselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds of representatives in the homes of the Australian gentry.

Of such was the young squatter who so attracted the attention of Mr. Froude at the first station he visited in Victoria. 'He had till within a month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work for four years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained the manners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as a deer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot.' Of course, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minute observation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content to fly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softest sofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin,' he might have seen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptly called the working aristocracy of Australia.

The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, and picturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian, Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the rest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardships which have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil, loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. The aspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one.

There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he has made squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic.' Had Kingsley been himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might have obtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect the historical value of his work is less than it might have been. But the compensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author's choice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he was telling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group of emigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and its difficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with the exception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketches rather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was the first to describe in fiction the rural life of the country, to recognise the beginning of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate the pervading spirit of cheerful confidence to which so much of the rapid early development of Australia was due.

It may well be regretted that one who had so keen an eye for all that was best in the social life of the country, at one of its most interesting periods, should not have written a volume or two of reminiscences, but no colonial reader would wish _Geoffry Hamlyn_ or _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ to have been made the vehicle of more descriptive matter than they contain. Kingsley was more sparing in the use of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the younger writers are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may be considered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper to Hamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the story of the lost child. The latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus' geological lecture, has the merit of being one of the best pieces of prose the author ever wrote, and gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford an opportunity for a dramatic settlement of the order of their suit for the hand of Alice Brentwood. In the main narrative the periods of 'dull prosperity' are expressly avoided. After that first beautiful picture of the pioneer settlement, 'the scene so venerable, so ancient, so seldom seen in the old world--the patriarchs moving into the desert with all their wealth to find a new pasture land'--the action of the story is rapidly advanced to the later days of their success. The estate which has been the home of Major Buckley's forefathers for generations no longer providing a competence, he has resolutely left it for the land where he is to find 'a new heaven and a new earth.' Unlike so many of the pioneers, he has bade a final good-bye to England, but that it is _not_ 'for ever' one can safely predict from the outset. He sees the old country in long years after, when, with some of the wealth garnered on the rolling prairies of Northern Australia, his son has proudly bought back the family domain of Clere in all the completeness of its original acres. Within a few brief chapters the colonists are discovered in the security of assured wealth. Sitting under their station verandahs, they can contemplate almost with calmness the death of their cattle by hundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They have arrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in the cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.' Meanwhile, the old Devonshire life is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create a new Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homes among the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourse approaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--of life as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softening glow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of ideal friendship, of youthful love, family affection, pride of nationality, and charity towards all mankind.

Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and wont to declare that the proportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the world over. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all his novels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it spring their most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that 'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,' which Matthew Arnold assigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and right feeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silent and kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. The names alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall scene after scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind to return. There is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature, refined, calmly courageous--a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs. Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic, passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; Captain Brentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who is sighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young lovers so nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers came down'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humoured roar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who is everybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except George Hawker, of whose 'tom-cat' skull he has made that amusingly audacious examination at the beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful to find all the faces familiar in the old land reappearing in the new, even though the coincidences which attend their coming seem too good to be true.

But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness of the story in contemplation of the swift succession of happy scenes created for him. In these there is nothing dubious or artificial. They are sketches straight from the life of the country, and it is their beauty that makes _Geoffry Hamlyn_ a classic in Australian literature.

Among the characters, there are so many who inspire us with love rather than mere interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes, of conversations, rides, pleasure-excursions, and other intercourse, which in another book might prove wearisome, becomes here the best enjoyment of the reader. With what vivacity and gusto the author describes the visits exchanged between the home stations, and the comforts and happiness which they reveal! Half the book is made up of them, and yet the majority remain sufficiently clear in the memory to be recalled separately. Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away, buys a station near at hand, he and Buckley having become inseparable, and now Baroona, Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles apart. 'There was always a hostage from one staying as a guest at the other.' The visits were generally unannounced, and the visitors stayed as long as they felt inclined to. The effects of this custom are once amusingly illustrated at the home of Captain Brentwood. It is when the members of the little colony hear of the arrival of his beautiful daughter from Sydney, where she has been at school. 'That week one of those runs upon the Captain's hospitality took place which are common enough in the Bush, and, although causing a temporary inconvenience, are generally as much enjoyed by the entertainers as the entertained. Everybody during this next week came to see them, and nobody went back again. So by the end of the week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all uninvited, and apparently bent on making a long stay of it.' They help one another when there is work to be done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously. Kingsley has properly made eating and drinking a noticeable part of the hearty full-bodied existence of his squatters and their friends.

There is no class of people who have a better capacity for enjoying the material comforts of life than the country gentlemen of Australia. Major Buckley is just the sort of person one might have expected to hold decided views on the subject of dining as an art. To dine in the middle of the day was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the gifts of Providence. 'I eat my dinner not so much for the sake of the dinner itself as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows--a feeling that you have nothing to do, and that, if you had, you'd be shot if you'd do it.'

On another occasion the author himself preaches a similarly agreeable doctrine, concluding with the advice: 'My brother, let us breakfast in Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives end.'