IX
TWO CITIES
Where, O Earth! is a fairer city
Than this by night, when the Quay’s half circle ...
Lights the dusk of the city’s face?
Miss Mack’s verses to Sydney are the kind of tribute one would wish to pay to a lover of happier days. For that reason they may awake some kind of echo in the breasts of many hundreds of persons who will confess to a fondness for Sydney, but who are indifferent to the ways and methods of the lofty rhyme. For the place has a strong personality. One never thinks of it as merely so many houses and so many people. An entity, a living thing, a friend, a mistress, a consoler, a woman with soft breath and warm-tinted hair, a queen of men and yet their servant—it is any or all of these, and much besides.
The new-comer should arrange to enter Sydney by night. If he does this he will experience the strong and always remembered sensation of emerging from Cimmerian darkness into the blaze of a lighted arena. The waters of the Tasman sea are usually cold and stormy. If you have been ploughing across them for the best part of a week, if you have been beset with bad weather, or sea-sickness, or boredom, or with the three combined, you will hail as one of the pleasant sounds of a lifetime the news that there is visible a glimmer from South Head. Thereafter the transformation is rapid. Sydney by night does not grow upon you; it bursts upon you, and the impression is not soon forgotten. Whatever you have read and whatever you have dreamed of Eastern cities by the Tigris; whatever you have seen of lime-light effects on a brilliant, gaily coloured, thronged and animated stage; whatever you have pictured to yourself of islands and gardens and palaces by the water’s edge—all these and more are around you and in front of you as the ship winds past promontory after promontory, island after island, on its passage towards a mooring place in Darling Harbour. The panorama has an unreal and fairy-like splendour. For a minute or two, perhaps for half an hour, you expect that everything will presently dissolve, and the conditions of blackness and vacancy reassert themselves. But the boat passes on, and the picture remains. You realise after a while that it is the city itself welcoming you, beckoning to you, smiling at you with all its arcs and crescents and its glittering phantasmagoria of lights.
In the daytime all this is changed. Sydney by day is the real Sydney, the working Sydney, and like every other place in which men work and congregate, it has its dull and drab and depressing features. But the strangely marked personal characteristics are there still. They have taken on new phases, and they make a different kind of appeal. Your mistress has no longer the sparkle in her eyes and the diamonds on her brow; she no longer scintillates to dazzle you, and no longer challenges you to admiration by her life and movement. She has grown languorous as the land of the lotos-flower, enervating as the Island of Circë. True, she has her marts and her merchandise, her busy streets, her ships, and her people who toil and spin. But they are a people on whom she has set her imprint, and who have drunk the wine of love and of laughter at her hands. The fact is that neither by day nor by night, neither in summer nor winter, can Sydney look consistently hard or repellant. Now and then a bracing wind blows up from the waste places of the Pacific and talks menacingly of storm and stress and shipwreck. But it loses itself or dies to nothing when in the heart of the city, or when endeavouring to make its way along such good-tempered, well-protected thoroughfares as George and Pitt Streets. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it blusters a little, but only with an amusing semblance of anger. In an hour or two the sun is shining again.
A city that has grown has always an advantage, in point of attractiveness, over one that has been merely made. It is easy to understand the reason. No one cares for the display of qualities that seem to be the result of artificial training. Every one admires spontaneity, or rather the appearance of spontaneity. The thing itself may be a product of the finest art. But that matters nothing. As it is with individuals, so it is with a city. The straight, uncompromising lines which appeal to the draughtsman are of interest to no one else. It is a mistake to cultivate a prim demeanour or to attempt to keep a straight face if Nature has in view something else. The friend who keeps calling “Duty, duty, duty” in your ear is not really wise, and is always certain to be disliked. Equally tedious is the architect, or the surveyor, or the mathematician, who says dogmatically that certain streets should always meet at such and such an angle; that there should be certain spaces for parks and certain widths reserved for traffic; that there should be buildings modelled on particular lines, and conglomerations of houses arranged after a particular fashion; that there should be a scientific method observed in building the thing to be called a city, just as there are particular rules for turning out a baker’s oven or for making a carpenter’s box.
Sydney, as it does not take long to discover, has grown up after a careless and wilful fashion of its own. It is neither consciously straight, nor consciously irregular. Of modern improvements it takes what it pleases, and leaves what it does not want. Buildings cluster round the harbour and bedeck themselves with red-tiled roofs and flaunt their pleasant inertia in the sun. Some of the more recent structures—hotels, warehouses, public markets and the like—are showy and even magnificent. But the main streets make no pretence to symmetry or modernity, and are strongly reminiscent in their narrowness and grime of second and third-rate towns in France and England. The resemblance would be more striking did not Australia lack the pointed, old-world architecture that gives historic quaintness and interest even to the dirtier and more tumbledown villages of Europe. Sydney is suspicious of new inventions, and would prefer that the disturbing, scientific spirit of the age left it alone. Until lately it knew of no better means of locomotion than its steam trams. It is only within the last year or two that it has had its electric cars. The energy with which these gigantic structures rush to and fro and disturb traffic is quite out of keeping with the atmosphere of the place. There are numerous accidents, because so many of the Sydneyites have not the energy to get out of the way.
The people, as a rule, are not ambitious. They have not the restless unquiet temperament associated with the Anglo-Saxon race in other and less pleasant parts of the globe. For that reason they are often excellent companions. They know how to enjoy life, and they are willing to share their knowledge with the stranger. They have no cast-iron formulas, either of etiquette or of morals. They have not yet succeeded in reducing orthodoxy to a fine art. It matters comparatively little to them, before or after they have made your acquaintance, whether your education was finished at Oxford or in Lower George Street, whether your father was a pawnbroker or an admiral, whether your nearest relations keep a grocer’s shop, or are something connected with the Established Church. Are you an agreeable person? Have you a pleasant humour? Do you know how to make life entertaining? Can you help others to pass the time? If the answer to any of these questions is in the affirmative, the gates of many desirable places will be thrown open to you. You will be allowed to tread the primrose path to the music of lutes, to the sound of soft voices, to the rustle of silk and satin embroideries, to the rhythm of Government House waltzes, to the popping of Vice-regal champagne. The possession of wealth is an advantage, but it is not indispensable. The Sydney creditor is as accommodating as most creditors. Even this class is not absolutely proof against the influence of climate and surroundings.
Among the men who do the mental work of Sydney—the writers, the scholars, the financiers, the preachers, the politicians, the social reformers, and the rest—you find this lack of ambition and of sustained effort particularly noticeable. A degree of ability is common enough. But it is not husbanded and utilised with that fierce concentration of purpose which marks the North of England man when he packs his bag for London, or the Western American when he sets out for New York. The journalism of Sydney is intermittently clever, sometimes brilliant, never consistently good. It may be that a man has a vein of humour, a descriptive faculty, a sense of colour in words. It is little use telling this man that if he works and waits, and waits and works—if he denies himself the cheap laurels of newspaper favour, and the thin rewards of journalistic achievement—he may ultimately win a place in the inner circle of approved and recognised authorship. He knows that he can get a guinea for a couple of hours’ application. What is the advantage, then, of going elsewhere? A guinea is a guinea; and Sydney is an excellent place in which to spend it. Thus he reasons in act, if not in words. The consequence is that the intellectual tone of the city, as set by the writers and thinkers, is for the most part a blend of opportunism and of laisser faire. If you want to learn something, if you want an incentive to act, if you want to live the strenuous life, you must leave Sydney and go somewhere else.
The women of Sydney are in a class by themselves. They are as distinctive in their way as the city in which they live is distinctive in its way. There is little doubt that in a measure they obtain their character from the place, though it is also true that they assist to give the place its character. To think of them, after the lapse of years, is to conjure up pleasant memories. There is reason to believe that the Cytherea of the ancient Greeks was born in Sydney, or at least lived there in prehistoric days, long before settlement crowded the approaches to the harbour, long before Governor Philip sighted the Heads, long before the country knew anything of modern habitations, and while it still slumbered in the embraces of the Golden Age. The waters still smile when they remember the vision that once rose from them; and to this day they impart something of the warmth and colour of the foam-born Aphroditë to the women who dwell by their fringing shores. Not that the daughters of Sydney are classical, or Grecian, or faultless in form and feature. The symmetry of the marble statue is no part of their equipment. They are deficient, for the most part, in correct outlines. Such charm as is theirs is mainly the result of manner, of temperament, of suggestion, of look. They convey the impression that their sympathies would not soon be alienated, that their welcome would never be ungenerous, that they could, if they wished, make of existence a pleasant thing.
The character of the people has been a subject for uneasy speculation. It is darkly hinted that the city is a refuge ground for many strange sins. The majority of the residents do not trouble about these matters. But there are a few estimable people who do. The women belonging to the W.C.T.U., and the I.O.G.T., and the I.O.R., and the rest of the alphabet devoted to temperance and the higher life, work consistently hard. In their display of zeal they almost make up what they lack in numbers. They are troubled voices calling in a moral wilderness, but they do not despair. They have one friend and confidant—the Colonial Secretary for the time being. The tales of depravity that are poured into the ears of this patient individual each month would fill many volumes. His official life is a round of dreadful discoveries. He begins his Ministerial career a cheerful optimist, and ends it with every vestige of illusion gone. Virtuous and estimable women belonging to every reforming agency in the metropolis are constantly at his elbow, are constantly telling him of fresh detachments of young children found in opium dens, of fresh batches of drunkards picked up in the gutter, of new contingents of women discovered on the street. The Colonial Secretary is asked, entreated, and commanded to do something. Exactly what it is his auditors do not know, but something, he is told, must be done. The unhappy man listens, shudders, sympathises, and protests that he is passionately grateful to the earnest women who have thought fit to lighten his mental darkness. He agrees that something must be done, and knows in his heart of hearts that nothing can be done. Meantime the social life of Sydney goes on, and the place, with its agreeable men and graceful women, is a place to be desired and pleasant to the eyes.
It is always pleasant—pleasant to linger in, pleasant to look forward to, pleasant to look back upon. Not very intellectual, not very strenuous, not very inspiring, it has all the aids to enjoyment that have been discovered in the last twenty centuries, and all the ingenious devices that have ever been invented to make time pass. A city that has from its birth been cradled in soft airs; a city that spreads against the storm and stress of dissatisfied ambition, the protection of mild and lulling wings; a city intended by Nature to please the artist and bring the practical man relief and rest; a city that rescues humanity from the stern and unlovely asceticism of a gray and narrow school; a city that is indifferent to morals, and cares for religion only on the picturesque side; a city that holds always with the Persian poet and tells its people to enjoy themselves, for to-morrow they may be with yesterday’s seven thousand years.
To leave Sydney and to go to Melbourne is to enter a new world. Instead of resemblances there are contrasts. In place of Australianisms there are Anglicanisms, Americanisms, and foreign “isms” of various kinds. Climate may have something to do with the difference, and topographical conditions may have something more. The reception that Sydney gives you is that of a woman in a luxurious room, with soft lights falling on rich curtain hangings, with glitter of glass and silver ornament, with lavish display of elegance and outward charm. The woman rises seductively, looks at you languorously and invites you, not so much by word as by gesture, to make yourself at home. It is delightful; but yet there is something wanting. The reflection comes that you are not being specially favoured; that this is the manner of the hostess to all and sundry; that there may be something unhealthy in this mellifluous atmosphere; that the smile of welcome is less that of the friend than that of the courtesan. The reception you get from Melbourne is of quite another character. The woman this time is cold and calm, and superbly indifferent. If she seems to smile it is probably the reflection of your own hopefulness. She offers you nothing; she barely acknowledges you; she does not want you; it is certain that she is not anxious to know you. All her panoply of architectural ornament is arrayed against you. And yet the thought supervenes that this cold woman may be better worth knowing in the end than the other one; that her harder outlines may conceal a more genuine worth; that her good opinion may be better worth striving for than that of the other—the one with the redder lips, and the flaunting, unchanging smile.
But the wide streets and the flat unoccupied spaces of Melbourne are an outward semblance calculated to strike the newcomer with a shuddering sense of chill and desolation. More especially if they are encountered for the first time on a winter’s afternoon. For the winter that merely dallies and trifles in Sydney, and makes but a pretence of bringing with it cold weather, is genuine in the Southern city. There is no bleaker thoroughfare on earth than Collins Street or Burke Street on a blustering July day. From Spring Street to the railway station there is a clear, unbroken passage for the Arctic wind. The occasional tramcar and the infrequent pedestrian are cheerless objects around which the Sou’-Wester disports itself, seeking always, in return for some ancient grievance, a grim and unnecessary revenge. If the day happens to be a Saturday, or a public holiday, the outlook is rendered ten times more dismal by the deathly appearance of the streets, from which all but an unreal semblance of life and movement has departed. A wilderness of grim-looking window shutters, and a Sahara of pavement—that is all. The wind drives the dust in front of it, then follows on shriekingly. When it has finished playing with the dust it brings in the rain. And Melbourne, with its wide, shelterless streets swept from end to end by a rain-storm—Melbourne with its blank spaces and its vanished crowds—is the one place on earth where the new arrival would choose not to be.
But this appearance and mannerism of the Queen city—it clings to the name, though the boom era which gave the name a meaning has departed—must be lived through, and lived down. Presently the sun will shine again. Presently the holiday will be over; and the people who have been abroad in the suburbs, or cultivating their garden patches, or hiding themselves in their own houses, will be once more visible, and the pavement will once more echo to the sound of feet. By a seeming miracle the streets have become almost full. Melbourne has become an intelligible place to live in. The shops, now that the window shutters are down, are seen to be beautifully fitted up. The buildings are for the most part new, and they are never grimy. One remembers that in the heart of Sydney there are pervading evidences of smoke and grime. One must give Melbourne its due. It has something to boast about. It has been magnificently laid out. Its measurements are on a generous scale. It is fine and large and bracing. One forgets the chill sensation left by those deserted streets and those grim-looking window shutters. The Block has become a centre of bustle and animation. Again the thought presents itself that this place may have a heart of its own, that it may have a personality, even a warmth, concealed behind those set features and those formal lines.
Further acquaintance with Melbourne increases the respect felt for it. One gets to like it for the same reason that the Londoner gets to like London. It is not a question of beauty, or simplicity, or gentleness of form and feature. One gets to like it because of its greatness, and because of its strength; perhaps also, in the case of the older residents, because of the thought of the splendid life and animation that were part of it fifteen or twenty years ago, and that may be part of it again. The Melbourne man, after a certain lapse of time, acquires a personal feeling for his self-contained, self-respecting city. He learns to recognise its various moods—for even Melbourne has moods—and to enter into them all. He would not care for it if it were flashy and volatile like other places. He can admire it for its reserve and its silences. He knows that, go where he will, he will not find a cleaner, wider, more spacious city to dwell in. And he is fully aware that for him Melbourne reveals much of what she keeps hidden from the stranger; that she will show to him as to one of her lovers a warmth and friendliness that are the more satisfying because not universally shared.
Commercially, Melbourne is not what it used to be. It has lost the sparkle, the animation of other days. Yet, whatever else it has lost, it has retained its consciousness of former prosperity. It is as proud as ever; in fact more proud than in the days when people were pouring into it by thousands, and when fortunes were being made every five minutes in its principal streets. Diminished prosperity has caused it to hold its head higher. And at stated times, like some proud but impecunious beauty, it insists on recalling itself to the mind of the world. On Cup Days and fête days it scores a triumph: it arrays itself in the festal garment of the early ’nineties, and queens it to the admiration of the stranger within its gates. On these occasions Melbourne is incomparable. It has no need to be envious, because it is the admired of all admirers. When the cheering is over, and the crowds have departed, and the lights are being put out, Melbourne retires moodily into itself, goes about its daily business with an abstracted air, and consoles itself intermittently by talking of the long deferred prosperity which it insists must come.
For if the place fails in this or in that respect, it never fails to keep its expectations high. It has been doing this for the past dozen years or more. It has long outgrown its happy-go-lucky, red-shirted, soft-collared, mining, pioneering days. It has no wish to recall these outward symbols of an earlier and a vanished generation. With the memory of many losses and many disappointments, there is still the determination to put the best face on everything. Though the crowds no longer hum and vibrate round its chief thoroughfares, it retains its streets and its houses, its spacious theatres and commodious public buildings; its magnificent Houses of Parliament, its squares and gardens, its network of railways and tram lines, its villa residences at St Kilda and its mansions at Toorak. The outward shell of things is still there. Every now and then there is a sign of movement, an agitation as of returning life. The people are convinced that something is going to happen. The period of depression, they say, cannot last for ever. In imagination they can see the Golden Days ever returning.
Meantime, the business of keeping up appearances goes on. Melbourne has become accustomed, through sheer force of insistence on its individual merits, to regard itself as everything that a modern city ought to be, and as most things that other cities are not. It prides itself on a great deal—on its music, its art, its culture, its architecture, its good looks, and its intelligence. In the matter of dress it aspires to set the fashion for Australia. Men and women join in this amiable rivalry. The girl of the Victorian capital is more severe in demeanour, more classic in pose, and more punctilious in attire than her Sydney sister. She takes herself more seriously. She has few negligé airs and graces; she does not cultivate the irresponsible freedom of the gown of Nora Creina; she arrays herself for the Block with a firm resolve to compel critical admiration. And in this she generally succeeds. The men of Melbourne live in starched shirts and expensive broadcloth. They cling tenaciously to that fading relic of an earlier civilisation—the bell-topper hat. Social life in the city would be impossible without one. The Universities keep up their quota of students, whether the parents can afford to pay or not. The theatres can attract audiences even for a performance of Wagner, or a revival of Shakespeare. The city fathers set an example of dignity to the rest of Australia. The politicians rarely call each other bad names, and never indulge in free fights on the floor of Parliament.
Behind all this outward seeming there is, it need hardly be said, a great amount of make-believe. Melbourne is only the temporary capital of the Commonwealth, but it is the permanent centre of—to use an ecclesiastically sounding word—attitudinarianism. Its mental life is more the expression of a desire to be thought superior to others than the outcome of any set of inborn predilections. Its intellectuality has the motto videri quam esse. There is not one of its learned pundits or its litterateurs or its native born poets who has won much outside reputation. Its scrupulous regard for dress is the screen for much actual poverty. Its vaunted cosmopolitanism has no real existence. Its social circle is, only too often, the playground of snobs. Its professed public virtue deceives no one. In Sydney the spectacle of vice undraped, and of Lais plying her profession in the public streets, is more insistent and more familiar. But in Melbourne there is as much for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to grieve over, though there may be less that meets the casual eye.
When the last word has been said on the subject—when it has been admitted that Melbourne pretends a great deal and poses a great deal, and hides a great deal—it is yet a fact that the city retains among its people much of sterling worth, and many of the elements of greatness. From the army of those who are not what they claim to be, or not what they would have you think them to be, may be picked out a leaven of those who are entitled to respect, and perhaps to something more. Alert, quick-witted, well-read, well-mannered, tolerant, and scrupulously fair—that is the type which may be encountered if the search is keen enough. Hereafter, this type may set the standard. At present, all that can be said of it is that it is there.
The fact must always stand to the credit of Melbourne that it is capable of generous enthusiasms. When it lets itself go, it does so without reserve. Carlyle has remarked that a man who can laugh unrestrainedly, even if he only laughs once, is not wholly bad. A city that can cheer unitedly and unreservedly, whether for a singer, an orator, an actor, or a returned contingent, has at least some prospect of emerging from the wilderness of shams in which it happens to be located. Melbourne rises to greatness the moment it forgets itself.