No! it is useless to try and link up a Northern Christmas with our Australian climate. The effort miserably fails.
Christmas Day, however, compensated us for all the trying heat of the previous week. There came one of those dramatic changes in temperature for which Melbourne is noted. In one hour the glass fell nearly thirty degrees. A “southerly buster” broke over us without warning, and when the dust storm had passed people were glad to put on thicker clothing. And so it came to pass that Christmas Day was chilly. The tempest broke up the heat and gave us weather less than normal. With the cooler temperature, goose and plum-pudding seemed more in place than in former years. But how could there be an English Christmas Day when the light remained until half-past eight? Before the kindly darkness came on, the little people, who “at home” would have been busy with the Christmas-tree, were yawning and inquiring after bed.
One can never forget these Christmas days under the Southern Cross, but to experience the ancient sentiment of Christmas one must be in the ancient home.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOCIAL LIFE IN AUSTRALIA
It is intensely interesting in a new country like Australia to watch the evolution of the aristocracy. The process is very rapid. That old idea about ten generations being necessary to make a gentleman has no countenance in that part of the world. Ten years or less now suffice. It is all a question of money-bags, and money is made with great ease and rapidity in Australia—at least by some. A heavy gamble in land will change a man of moderate fortune into a wealthy person. Indeed, when one comes to look into the matter, quite a large number of the people in Australia who are to-day extremely rich owe their wealth not to trading of any kind but to a gamble with land. They came out in the early days, and obtained land for nothing at all, or next to nothing. The Government of that time had no foresight, nor backsight either. Criminally forgetful of the iniquitous land laws of the old world, they did not scruple to transfer these to the new soil, and so lay the foundation of serious trouble in the days to come. Men who paid a ten-pound note for a piece of land were enabled to sell it some years later for a fabulous sum, with the consequence that to the end of time the public must pay increased prices for the wares it purchases. In Collins Street, for example, land which was once ten pounds an acre is now sold at twelve hundred sovereigns per foot, and at the chemist’s shop in that street we must pay half-a-crown for a bottle of mixture which in England would be sold for ninepence!
But, of course, the public does not count; it merely looks on, suffers, and—pays, while the land gambler is clothed with purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every day. And that brings me back to this gentleman, now in the guise of an aristocrat, but often bearing marks of the clay out of which he has fashioned himself. The evolution of the aristocrat out here, I was saying, is rapid. A few years, and his children obliterate all traces of their father’s former life. The old deal is stained and varnished, and appears as excellent mahogany. As I gaze upon this throng of well-dressed people, and remember their beginnings, I perceive a mirror of the world, “Queen Anne in front and Mary Ann behind.” It is not their success that offends so much as their veneer and pretence. These people conveniently forget their humble origin. They assume important airs which ill fit them. They gather themselves together into a close corporation from which the unmoneyed are excluded. When they marry their weddings are described as “fashionable” weddings. A nod from Government House is their beatitude. An English title is worshipped by them. It is all very comic to an Englishman, this bid for place and fame. Aristocratic pretence in England is bad enough, where family pedigrees count for something; it is vulgar here, where many of the pretenders have no pedigree at all. Australia has the chance to maintain a pure and wholesome democracy of the highest type; it will be a pity if she forfeits it.
Over against this crowd of would-be aristocrats there must be placed a smaller and nobler company of people who, ascending from humble life, have nevertheless preserved their simplicity, their modesty, and—their Christianity. They are amongst the very best men of Australia, admired by all who can appraise worth.
The great social season begins at the end of October. Everybody who is anybody must now go to milliner, dressmaker, tailor, and bootmaker, and henceforward, until the end of the season, appear in public places with the great. Dinners, luncheons, “five o’clocks,” balls, and all kinds of reunions serve to assemble our new aristocracy. Government House, of course, sets the pace and the fashion. It is the ambition of all who aspire to a place among the chosen to be received at Government House.
The Melbourne spring season begins with Henley-on-Yarra. It is an imitation of Henley-on-Thames, and it fairly rivals the older institution. The dresses are quite as smart, the social life quite as gay, and the boats quite as attractive as those “at home.” What is lacking is the Thames, with its locks and banks and exquisite green surroundings. The Yarra can never rival, in these respects, the English river. But it has a charm of its own. Scores of thousands of people attend it. It is a people’s holiday, and anyone can procure a boat and join the procession. It is a pretty spectacle—the best and the most innocent of all Australian open-air functions.