Thus, on the advancing tide of Victorian prosperity, then steadily sweeping onward, unknown to us all, Trawalla and its owner were floated on to fortune—a gently gliding, agreeable, and satisfactory process. The sheep multiplied, the fleece acquired name and repute—one couldn't grow bad wool in that country, however hard you might try. Cornborough became a peer of the Godolphin Arabian in all men's eyes, and the A.G. brand, on beeve-or horse-hide, an accredited symbol of excellence. A purchase of waste land at St. Kilda, made solely, as he informed me, in order to qualify as a legislator, turned out a most profitable investment.
Swiftly the golden period arrived when, after the first years of doubt and uncertainty, it became apparent to holders of station property that nothing prevented them from clearing out at a highly satisfactory price, and leaving the conflicting elements of dear labour, high prices, and a heterogeneous population, to settle themselves as best they might. Mr. Goldsmith, now free to return to Europe, seriously considered the claims of the Rue de Bellechasse, Faubourg St. Germain, as contrasted with Collins Street and the Melbourne Club.
It may be that the owner of Trawalla would have decided upon continuous occupation, with a view to founding an estate, if his sons, who visited Victoria in 1851, had exhibited any aptitude for the life of Australian country gentlemen. But Messrs. Edward and Alfred Goldsmith, who had been educated chiefly in Paris, when they visited their father in 1851, did not take kindly to his adopted country. Cultured, polished young men, yet decidedly more French than English, Parisians to their finger-nails in all their tastes and habitudes, they grieved and irritated their Australianised parent.
Chiefly they lacked the adventurous spirit which would have enabled them to behold, mentally, the grand possibilities of a colonial possession. All their sympathies were with their lost Eden, the Paris which they had quitted. In Victoria they beheld nothing but the distasteful privations of a new country, hardly redeemed from primeval sauvagerie. The roads were rough, the beds hard, the cookery—'Ah, mon Dieu!—lamentable, indescribable.'
It was a good time to sell, and though the Trawalla estate of to-day represents a considerably larger sum than Mr. Simson gave for the run and stock, perhaps our old friend was not so far out when he decided to let well alone and retire upon a fair competency.
To that end the stud was sentenced to sale and dispersion; many a descendant of the lamented Cornborough went to enrich the paddocks of friends and well-wishers. I think Mr. Hastings Cunningham bought the greater number of the brood mares and young stock, at an average rate per head.
Now, Dermot was the old gentleman's hack. (Was he old, or, perhaps, only about forty-five? We were decided then as to the time of life when decay of all the faculties was presumed to set in.) I many a time and oft admired the swell, dark bay, striding along the South Yarra tracks with aristocratic elegance, or, more becomingly arrayed, carrying a lady in the front of a joyous riding-party. His owner was un galant uomo, and the gentle yet spirited steed was always at the service of his lady friends.
So when, one day at the club, he suggested to me to buy Dermot—more than one lady's horse being required in our family at that time, and only fifty pounds named as the price—I promptly closed.
Dead and buried is he years agone; but I still recall, with memory's aid, the dark bay horse, blood-like, symmetrical, beauteous in form as aristocratic in bearing. 'Hasn't he the terrifyin' head on him?' queried an Irish sympathiser, somewhat incongruously, as he gazed with rapt air and admiring eyes at the tapering muzzle, large, soft eyes, and Arab frontal.
Delicate, deer-like, strictly Eastern was the head referred to, beautifully set on a perfectly-arched neck, which again joined oblique, truly perfect shoulders. Their mechanism must have been such, inasmuch as never did I know any living horse with such liberty of forehand action.