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 £197 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.