“A gentleman, lately arrived from Europe and touring the colonies, now staying at the Tasmanian Club, was known to be one of the original shareholders. And if so, his income could not be stated at less than £10,000 a year. It was by the merest chance that Mr. Valentine Blount (such is the name, we are informed, of this fortunate personage) bought an original share in the prospecting claim, which must be regarded henceforth as the ‘Mount Morgan’, of Tasmania. Mr. Blount is a relative of Lord Fontenaye of Tamworth, where the family possesses extensive estates, tracing their descent, it is asserted, in an uninterrupted line from the impetuous comrade of Fitz Eustace, immortalised in Marmion.”
Valentine Blount, it may well be believed, if popular before this announcement, became rapidly more so, reaching, indeed, the giddy eminence of the lion of the day. Rank he was declared to possess, heir-presumptive to a baronetcy, or indeed an earldom, as well-informed leaders of society claimed to know, with a large income at present, probably an immense fortune in the future. Of course he would leave for England at an early date. Handsome, cultured, travelled, what girl could refuse him? So without endorsing the chiefly false and vulgar imputation upon Australian girls that he was “run after,” it may be admitted that he was afforded every reasonable opportunity of seeing the daughters of the land under favourable conditions.
With the more lengthened stay which the “millionaire” malgré lui (so to speak) made in this enchanting island, the more firmly was his opinion rooted that he had fallen upon a section of “old-fashioned England,” old-fashioned, it may be stated, only in the clinging to the earlier ideals of that Arcadian country life, which Charles Lamb, Addison, Crabbe, and more lately, Washington Irving, have rendered immortal. In the orchards, which showed promise of being overladen with the great apple crop in the sweet summer time, now hastening to arrive; in the cider-barrels on tap in the wayside inns and hospitable farmhouses; in the clover-scented meadows, where the broad-backed sheep and short-horned cattle wandered at will; in the freestone mansions of the squirearchy, where the oak- and elm-bordered avenues, winding from the lodge gate, the ranges of stabling, whence issued the four-in-hand drags, with blood teams, coachmen and footmen “accoutred proper” at race meetings or show days, exhibited the firm attachment which still obtained to the customs of their English forefathers.
These matters, closely observed by the visitor, were dear to his soul, proofs, if such were needed, of steadfast progress in all the essentials of national life, without departing in any marked respect from the ancestral tone.
At Hollywood Hall, at Westcotes, and at Malahide, where he was made frankly welcome, he rejoiced in these evidences of inherited prosperity, but still more in association with the stalwart sons and lovely daughters of the land. “Here,” he thought, as he mused at early morn, or rode in the coming twilight beneath the long-planted elms, oaks, walnuts and chestnuts, of the far land, so distant, yet home-seeming, “are the real treasures of old England’s possessions, not gold or silver, diamonds or opals (and such there are, as Van Haast assured me), but the men and women, the children of the Empire, of whom, in the days to come, we shall have need and shall be proud to lead forth before the world.”
Here, and in other offshoots of the “happy breed of men” whom the parent isle has sent forth to people the waste lands of the earth, shall the Anglo-Saxon world hail its statesmen, jurists, warriors, poets, writers, singers—not, indeed, as feeble imitators of the great names of history, but bright with original genius and strong in the untrammelled vigour of newer, happier lands.
“And why is Mr. Blount so deeply immersed in thought,” asked a girlish voice, “that he did not hear me coming towards him from the rose-garden, where the frost has tarnished all my poor buds? You are not going to write a book about us, are you? for if so, I must order you off the premises.”
“Now what can be written but compliments, well-deserved praises about your delightful country, and its—well—charming inhabitants?” replied Blount, after apologising for his abstraction and shaking hands warmly with the disturber of his reverie.
“Oh! that is most sweet of you to say so. But so many Englishmen we have entertained have disappointed us by either magnifying our small defects, or praising us in the wrong place—which is worse.”
“That I am not going to write a book of ‘Tours and Travels in Search of Gold,’ or anything of the sort, I am free to make affidavit. But if I were, what could I say, except in praise of a morning like this—of a rose garden like the one you have just left, of an ancient-appearing baronial hall like Hollywood, with century old elms and oaks, and the squire’s daughter just about to remind an absent-minded visitor of the imminent breakfast bell? I saw it yesterday in the courtyard of the stables, and what an imposing pile it ornaments! Stalls for five and twenty horses—or is it thirty? Four-in-hand drag in the coach house, landau, brougham, dog carts, pony carriage—everything, I give you my word, that you would find in a country house in England.”