There is Melbourne, too, which sets the fashion; and which, if the word were not so detestable, forms the “society” of the capital. But “society,” so misused a word elsewhere, is more vague in its application in Australia than elsewhere. Government House is the vortex about which it eddies; and perhaps cards for Government House garden parties, or receptions, or invitations to Government House luncheons and balls may be the fount of as much rivalry and as many heartburnings as in the oldest capitals of Europe. Certainly Government House maintains a ceremoniousness which is in extraordinary contrast to every other usage in this land of democracy. Ladies curtsey to the Governor-General’s wife and to the Governor-General, as if they were of Royal blood, instead of the representatives of Great Britain. The Governor-General goes out to lunch attended by an aide-de-camp; nobody would go to a reception at Government House in anything other than the most official dress he was entitled to wear; nor would any lady go in anything that was a stitch less than the best of her dresses—for Government House is the Court. And yet ... one day when one of us was lunching at the Melbourne Club,[11] the Governor-General came into the luncheon room and sat down at our round table, with his aide and a friend, and the other lunchers at the same table, who all more or less impartially went on with their own conversation or exchanged a word or an answer with the Governor-General, were an editor, a doctor, two business men, a lawyer and a geologist. There was somebody else whose profession I have forgotten, but the luncheon party was very typical of the social life of Melbourne, and typical, too, I think, of what is the most vivifying and vigorous thing in Australian intercourse and converse.
In England, not altogether as a consequence of our social conventions, though they are the chief thing, the people of one social circle know very little of one another; and doctors, lawyers, artists, or literary or scientific men, merchants, men in commerce or finance, tend to limit their intercourse to those of the same profession as themselves. There are exceptions to this rule, of course; and it grows less rigid. But in Australia such limitations hardly exist at all. If you have a job of any kind, in letters, or politics, or science, or commerce, or trade, and are doing it well; and if you are a man of intelligence—then you stand on your merits, not on your social position, and you are of the same standing as anyone else. A few years ago in an English novel written by a lady of talent and insight, a duke is made to say, as almost his last utterance on his death-bed, “We big-wigs have a good time.” Such an incredible observation would appear even more fatuous in Australia than in Eaton Square; for there are no “big-wigs” in Australia.
It would be hard to say who or what takes their place in such a democracy: talent perhaps; ability in such public affairs as bring a man into relation with European politics or with the home country, though in politics or affairs men do not stand apart from their fellows as they do over here. In England, or in any European country, the men of affairs are known to their countrymen chiefly by their photographs. How many people, for example, in England have ever seen Sir Edward Grey? But in Australia the public men are not photographed; they are known to everybody and are spoken to by everybody. The only exceptions are the Governors. If they are men of great ability, a limited divinity hedges them, but they are the only people thus fenced in, and the fence can be seen through if they are not first-rate. If there are no big-wigs in Australia, the land is knee-deep in critics.
In the absence of any deeply separated social circles in Melbourne, there is a social life of unbounding vitality and capacity for enjoyment. During our stay there, despite the outbreak of war, a great deal of ceremonial festivity was taking place, so that abundant opportunity was given for surveying Melbourne in its ball-dress at Government House, or in its silk hat and morning coat at official garden parties. One impression left on the mind and the eye was that these things were sufficiently uncommon and sufficiently enjoyed for no one to leave them out if they could attend them. I have a recollection of good-tempered struggles for hats and coats at the City Museum and Library (where a conversazione was held), such as obliterated every other impression—even the impression of that massive and graceful City Library with its domed roof and white arcading; or of the serried multitudes coming and going from the supper rooms. There was the hunt for the motor-car, too ... in a sudden night wind that brought stinging dust from the north ... and there were the throngs of ladies quite cheerfully sacrificing their satin shoes as they walked along the streets to the cars, sometimes to the street cars. For if you go home by street car in Melbourne it makes no difference to your social standing.
Gay, cheerful, social, hospitable Melbourne. It is full of memories of kindnesses, of hospitality, of dinner parties, of gay and—forgive the blighting phrase—of that cultivated converse which our better instructed grandfathers called “good talk”; of houses which were luxurious and homes which were deeply comfortable—and of one house, to which, however long and tiring the day, we always came back as those who come back home.
CHAPTER X
SOCIAL LIFE IN MELBOURNE
The country surrounding Melbourne was far more populous than anything we had yet seen. The land was very flat, and the plain was extremely bare, even denuded; there was hardly a tree to be seen on the great expanse; scattered over it were innumerable little yellow boulders, thousands of them. Sometimes they had been laboriously collected and heaped up to form walls. These are the recollections which the approach to the Victorian capital by railway from the west leaves in the mind. The entrance to Melbourne itself is much like that to any other great seaport. The masts of the ships showed above the houses, the air was cool and fresh, and invigorating after the night in the train. Melbourne was in fact the coldest place we visited in Australia, but even here heavy winter clothing such as one would wear in an English winter is unnecessary in that dry air and brilliant sunshine.
Our hosts had sent their car to meet us, and we spun out of the station yard into a city of immensely wide straight streets, sometimes rather sharply ascending and descending, with handsome tall buildings, some of which had a quite venerable air; the cathedral of St. Paul’s, for instance, is grimy with age. From a local station people from the suburbs were pouring out to their day’s business, as if it were a London terminus, and there was little to distinguish them in general appearance from the London morning throng. We gleaned a rapid impression of gardens and parks and open spaces, and after crossing the Yarra River, arrived in the pleasant green hilly suburb of South Yarra, where we were to stay. The car drew up at a large bungalow in a sloping street of bungalows each in its own garden. A broad verandah ran round the one-storied house; at the entrance to the garden a pepper tree had been cut back and a rose trained over it. These lovely trees, with their grey fern-like foliage and strings of red berries are very common in Australia, but they are untidy things in a garden, with obstreperous roots. Geraniums were in flower even here, and a pink camellia bush.
