When the adored—and rightly adored—Nellie Stewart returned, some two or three years ago, from a prolonged absence abroad, her admirers began to take their places on the theatre steps for her first evening’s performance at about midday—and consumed sandwiches for their lunch. All through the afternoon they waited, persistently cheerful and good-tempered as an Australian crowd usually is. About five o’clock Miss Stewart could stand it no longer, and ordered the doors to be opened, when the wearied but indefatigable “first nighters” flocked thankfully into the pit and gallery. But this was not all. Realizing the hours that must still pass before the people could get a proper meal, she ordered tea, bread-and-butter, and cakes from the nearest caterer’s, and fed the waiting multitude liberally. Is it any wonder that so warm-hearted a woman should be adored as she is, as much for her nature as her art. There was a collection of coppers among her guests, I remember, and someone slipped out and bought a huge floral trophy for their hostess, which I am sure meant more to her than all the many elaborate bouquets she had ever received. It is things like this that mark the essential “humanness” of people in Australia and help one to realize the warm heart beneath the curt off-hand manner.
The actress in Australia, if she touches the popular fancy, is simply overwhelmed with flowers, and I never saw such wonderful bouquets, such intricate and glowing baskets, and harps, and crowns, all bedecked with immense streamers of wide satin ribbon, as are heaped round the feet of a popular star in Melbourne; and not only flowers, elaborate boxes of “lollies,” also, and jewels, the summit of originality being lately reached when a flower-bedecked crate of tiny yellow chicks was handed up over the footlights; though this was closely rivalled by a popular actor being presented, some time ago, with a medley of gorgeous socks.
The Melbourne maiden frankly loves a successful actor, particularly if he be handsome in addition; and is no more ashamed of this taste than of one for Paris frocks or sweetmeats, trailing him about after her with as much naïve pride as she would a real lace flounce or any other new importation. I do not think the Melbourne men run after actresses much; they are too busy, as a rule, and girls of their own class are sufficiently bright and smart; but an actor is asked out to tea, and fêted and entertained to an unlimited extent, which, I suspect, accounts for the smug self-satisfaction of most of his kind after a few months in the country, the partiality they arouse being quite frankly shown, as are all other sentiments and proclivities.
The Australian audiences are for the most part clean-minded, and there is little encouragement given to the problem play out here. Frank vulgarity the people can understand and laugh at, as they did for so long at poor George Laurie’s delightful absurdities, but for the stuffy atmosphere of “double entendre” they have no time; while they are frankly disgusted at many of the plays that appeal to the English, and I do not believe for a moment that productions such as I have seen in London, adapted—and badly adapted, too—from the French, would have the faintest success in Melbourne. There is only one music-hall, “The Opera House,” as it is misleadingly called, or more familiarly, “Rickard’s.” Most nights there are a couple or so of good turns on here, usually by some imported star or trick artist, who comes rather late in the evening; but the whole affair is very dull in comparison with any European show of the sort, and overhung with a rather gloomy air of middle-class propriety. Melbourne boasts of but few gilded youths, not sufficient to make any show of; while, though the “demi-mondaines” certainly do patronize “Rickard’s,” they are studiously quiet, both in dress and demeanour. I suppose there is vice enough in Melbourne, as there is in any other town, but it certainly does not “glitter,” and for the most part the seats of this one variety show are filled by bourgeois families, of intensest gravity and decorum, which is curious, for, on the whole, the Australians seem to take their pleasure—and in Melbourne even more so than in Sydney—with a sort of jollity that is essentially youthful. This spirit of youth I attribute to the open-air conditions of most forms of amusement—cricket and football, racing, boating, and picnicking—while, with a climate warm enough to enjoy themselves in such a way, and with a summer-heat that is neither relaxing, nor sufficiently overpowering to forbid physical exertion—I believe that all these people, as long as they continue to take their pleasures in such a wholesome fashion, will still keep themselves free from the worst sort of dissipation.
Next to racing I should certainly place football first in the popular affections, particularly among the lower classes. During the season the whole talk on the trams, or in the trains, is on that one subject, “Well, who won?” or “How did it go?”—being the inevitable question asked of the grip-man, by everyone who boards a tram coming from the direction of any of the suburbs where there has been a match. At first you are puzzled by the gratuitous bits of information the conductor deals out to you with your ticket, or your neighbour, out of sheer philanthropy, beguiles you with, the information often being rendered all the more puzzling by the fact that many of the localities from which the teams hail bear famous names.
“Did you hear Balaclava’s won?” or “Windsor’s clean wiped out” or “Mentone”—in which the final “e” is not sounded—“has been knocked to bits!” Gradually, however, one gets to adapt one’s mind to the new conditions among which one lives, and realize that if the people are discussing “Burns” on the trams, it is not the poet nor the politician; it is the prize-fighter; while any unknown name which strikes your ear—and which, from the way it is uttered, you might make sure belonged to some all-powerful politician, at least, is probably that of the latest hero who has kicked a goal or won a race.
The Melbourne men work hard enough when they are at it, but once free of their offices, they are like boys out from school. They do not talk shop, they do not even think of it; and at one o’clock on Saturdays I believe it is only by some stupendous effort of will that—as they flock out from chambers, offices, and counting-houses, off to a cricket or football match, race-meeting, or golf—they desist from throwing their hats in the air and shouting from sheer delight.
It is strange that, in the face of all the indomitable pluck and light-hearted gaiety these people show, that their literature should be permeated with that uncouth melancholy which gives other nations so false an idea both of the country and the people.
“Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in sorrow
What they teach in song.”
Shelley says; and perhaps this is most truly the case in Australia. That it is not prosperity, wide sheep-runs, good seasons, horse-racing, and theatre-going that has produced the literature of the country, but loneliness of heart and soul; the terrifying size of the country; and poverty and misunderstanding.