By some irony of fate it seems as if the different vices and virtues in different countries are in the end pretty nearly balanced. England needs a society to protect the health and lives of its children from unutterable cruelties, though it holds up holy hands at the way an Italian treats his horse. It is shaken through its length and breadth at the idea of the Portuguese persisting in slavery, and yet when the women slaves of the North—who, naked to the waist, swing a heavy hammer at chain and nail making for ten hours a day—strike for a princely minimum wage of 2½d. an hour, the Board of Trade decides that they shall go on as they are for another six months—or, if they can be cajoled into it, for yet another six months—or eternity.
The people in Victoria are not cruel either to their children or their wives, even among the lowest classes, as they are in England. Ask anyone who has nursed in the slums of London—if you doubt this cruelty—how many of the women with cancer in their breasts owe it to their husbands’ playful habit of knocking them down and kicking them; or examine some of the reports of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Neither do the Australians, as a nation, ill-treat their horses or their cattle, or give way to the sexual excesses of the Latin races, but, on the other hand, they most certainly are inveterate gamblers; a far less repulsive vice than many, I admit, but all the same as far reaching as any in the trouble that it causes.
Every Saturday there are races somewhere within easy distance of Melbourne, and by tram and train, carriage and motor, people flock to them. It is part of their religion, their Sabbath falling on a Saturday, like the Jews.
Of course the Cup week in November is the high festival of the year, but the race for the Caulfield Cup runs it close. The Caulfield course is most beautifully situated in wide, open, common-like country, dotted with dark masses of pines, and fringed in the distance with blue tinted mountain ranges, while the air blowing from the sea, across the almost untenanted land, is extraordinarily clear and exhilarating. Then the race is run at the very apex of spring, and the day is as inevitably fine as the week of the Agricultural Show is inevitably and hopelessly wet. Everybody dons their best and newest clothes, the men for the most part showing their sense of the festive season by the exuberant colouring of their socks, which, like the burnished dove, of which Tennyson speaks, shows an even livelier purple than usual. The Australian men do not, as a rule, dress well. If they are commercial or intellectual their clothes are too loose; if they are sporting they are too tight, with overmuch of “fit” and not enough “cut.” But they make up for it with their waistcoats, and socks, and ties. I remember once being at a seaside picnic where there was a beautiful youth in a pale grey suit; his straw boating-hat was bound and banded with mauve, his tie mauve, his shirt a paler tint of the same, his socks a discreet violet. In clambering about the cliffs a bramble impertinently ripped a long tear in the nether part of his nether garments; but he bore it with the sweetest equanimity, in the full knowledge that his under-clothes, thus inadvertently exposed, were also mauve—of the palest tinted silk. It is rather the same with the women. They are very dainty in all the accessories of the toilet, colouring, and trimming, but they do not pay as much attention to cut and material as their English sisters; which is perhaps why they look infinitely better in the summer than the winter, while the girls in white muslins, and silks, and flower-trimmed hats that one sees at the Cup or a Government House garden-party are very hard to beat.
There is an idea that the Australian women’s complexions are not good, they themselves being the first to rave about English roses; but I think their complexions are exquisite, though far more delicate in tint, and perhaps not of so lasting a quality as those seen at home. Still the Melbourne girls resemble the English girls infinitely more than do their Sydney sisters, who are more exotic and altogether fragile in appearance.
New fashions come in slowly and dubiously, for the people luckily possess a strong sense of the ludicrous, and are very much afraid of being made to look foolish, some snapshots taken of the wearers of the hobble-skirt at the last Cup sealing once and for all its inevitable doom.
To this day I smile at the remembrance of the one and only true Directoire costume which ever graced a Melbourne racecourse—worn as it was by a beauteous, though unorthodox, lady—I believe on the Oaks day, the most exclusive and smart day of the whole Cup week. The dress was slit up one side in true Directoire fashion, showing a length of shapely leg well to the knee, and—or so some whispered—a jewelled garter. When scandal reaches a certain point it becomes almost fame, and certainly that particular lady on that particular day was the most discussed person in Australia; her name and that of her protector being on everyone’s tongue.
It was the year in which Lord Nolan won the Cup. He was a complete outsider, and nobody had the slightest idea that there was any chance for him. Just before the race a man belonging to our party came up to me, and advised me to put something on him; for he had got a tip that he was bound to win. But I was adamant. I very rarely bet, and I never win if I do; while it takes such a terrible amount of hard work to make any money that I dare not risk losing it.
I shall never forget the excitement of that race. Opposite the Grand Stand—where the Government House party is always enthroned among a perfect flower-garden of gaily-coloured frocks—and another small stand, over the far side of the course lies the hill, where people do not have to pay any entrance fee, while they have a most perfect view of the races, so that whole families camp there day after day. One could see the people plainly through a glass as Lord Nolan began to gather up the course in his stride, and it seemed as if the whole hill-side shook and swayed with the wild excitement of the swarming masses upon it, while a roar rose on the air like the sound of an inrushing tide upon the shingle. People on the lawn beneath—with all its roses, a mass of quiet and delicate beauty—began to run, mostly backwards and forwards in sheer excitement, waving programmes and shouting. The first round the occupants of the Grand Stand kept quiet, a sort of thrilling quiet—then they arose, and shrieked and waved, just like the crowd on the hill. A little way off I heard a woman’s voice rise to the highest note that I should think possible for any human throat to compass, and remain there, vibrating in a long-drawn out scream, while a well-dressed man in front of me kept tearing at the lapels of his coat, and calling out “My God! my God! my God!” at the top of his voice.
The whole stand seemed to sway. Everyone was shouting wildly, while more wild and amazing than all was the atmosphere of utter savage abandonment, as if for the moment the garment of civilization were literally ripped from hem to hem. I do not think I screamed, but I know my hands and feet were stone cold, while my cheeks flamed, and I felt as if someone were pouring icy water down my back in one small continuous stream.