On the other hand, I heard many authentic stories in Australia of the kind treatment and good behaviour of the convicts who were sent out from England for slight offences, and who became steady and law-abiding settlers, and were particularly careful in the education and upbringing of their children. One gentleman told me of a dentist who refused a fee for treating him because his father, who had been an official in convict days, had been so good to the dentist’s ticket-of-leave family. Of course it seems very hard of our ancestors to have transported men and women for stealing bread or poaching, and I am not justifying the penal laws of the eighteenth century, but being what they were I am not at all sure that the majority of those who were sent to Australia were not better off than they would have been shut up in the prisons of those days in England, and certainly their children had a much better start in life. I believe that the great hardship was the voyage out in a slow sailing ship, overcrowded, with little fresh air and the constant risk of food and water running short. Once landed, there were many chances of prosperity for the well-behaved. I say nothing of the real black sheep who were relegated to Port Arthur or Norfolk Island. It is a mercy to think that those days are past and over.
To return to New Caledonia. There were elaborate arrangements for work in the nickel mines, and as assigned servants to free settlers whom the French Government were very anxious to plant on the land. I do not think that they were very successful in inducing large numbers to undertake the long voyage, though there were a few Bretons on our ship. A good many Australians, however, were established in trade in Noumea.
Words fail to do justice to the kindness of the New Caledonian French—they made every exertion to render us happy, and completely succeeded. When we left they robbed their Museum of a whole collection of native curiosities which they put on board ship with us, despite our protestations. One quaint incident perhaps deserves record. Just as we departed I received an imposing-looking missive written in flowery English, which proved to be a letter from a French poilu. He informed me that he had been in Australia and had there married a girl whose name he gave me. She was then living in Victoria, and if I remember rightly was half Belgian, half British. A small child had been the offspring of the union, but “France had called on him to serve,” and though his time of service overseas was nearly up, and though he wished to return to Australia to “stand by his wife,” France saw otherwise and proposed to ship him back to Marseilles; he was in despair until I had appeared “like a star of hope upon the horizon.”
When we were back at Sydney I wrote to the Charity Organization at Melbourne asking if they could find out anything about the lady. Oddly enough she was actually employed in the C.O.S. Office, and was said to be quite respectable, though there appeared to have been a little informality about the “marriage lines.”
I then wrote to the very amiable French Colonel at Noumea and asked whether under the circumstances he could see his way to letting the lovelorn swain return to Australia instead of to France. With prompt courtesy he granted my request, and named some approximate date for the man’s arrival in Melbourne. Thereupon I wrote a further letter to the C.O.S., asking that they would be prepared for a marriage ceremony about which there should, this time, be no mistake. The end of the romance, at all events of this chapter, was that I received a gushing epistle of gratitude signed by “two young hearts,” or words to that effect, “made for ever happy.” I never saw the youth and maiden whom I had thus been instrumental in launching among the eddies and currents of matrimony, but I trust that the little girl was sufficient to justify a somewhat blind experiment.
DEATH OF LORD ANCRAM
A great tragedy threw a shadow over our sojourn in N.S.W.
One of our aides-de-camp was Lord Ancram, elder son of Lord Lothian, and a particularly attractive young man. He was a great favourite in Sydney and much in request at gatherings of every description, being good-looking and having charming manners. In June 1892 he and my brother were invited to join a shooting party in the country. He went off in high spirits, and when he came to say good-bye to me, knowing him to be rather delicate, I cautioned him to be sure and put some kind of bedding under as well as over him if sleeping out at night. This he promised to do. I never saw him again. It was customary in Australia to shoot riding. He and his companions got off their horses for luncheon, and put their guns on the ground. On remounting one of the party seems to have picked up a loaded gun in mistake for his own which he had discharged. Handled incautiously this gun went off, and poor Ancram was shot through the head, dying instantaneously. I shall never forget the universal sorrow not only in Government House, but among the whole warm-hearted community of New South Wales. It was some comfort that the Admiral commanding the Station, Lord Charles Scott, was Ancram’s uncle, and he and his nice wife were able to help, and advise as to the best means of breaking the news to the poor parents and relatives in England.
Poor George Goschen, who was devoted to Ancram, was almost prostrated by grief. It was rather curious that not very long before the accident Ancram told me that he had dreamt that he found himself back in his old home, but that his brother had taken his place and that nobody recognised him or took any notice of him!
Treasures of the Old World are sometimes found at the Antipodes. On one of our tours, at a township called Bungendore, a large wooden box appeared unexpectedly in our private railway car. Opened, it was found to contain a letter from a Mr. Harold Mapletoft Davis explaining that he confided to our care relics from Little Gidding, brought from England long before by his parents. His mother, Miss Mapletoft, was directly descended from Dr. Mapletoft and from his wife, the only Miss Colet who married. In the box were a copy of the famous Harmonies, and bound volumes of manuscript writings by Mary Colet and her sisters. The fine binding of The Harmonies, now in the British Museum, was said to have been executed by Mary Colet herself; she did not die young as represented in “John Inglesant,” but lived to a good old age. There was also a lovely Charles I embroidered miniature chest of drawers, containing a boar’s tooth, a handkerchief with the royal monogram, and other relics. Charles I left this at Little Gidding during his troubles. It was ultimately purchased by Queen Victoria, and is now at Windsor.