The progeny of the innumerable crop of pompous low-order knights and colonial-made Gentlemen in Australia does not benefit to any enviable degree. Living up to a hyphen is bad enough, but when it comes to an order it invariably means an inheritance of debts, ending in passe daughters becoming manicurists (an occupation not respectable since the gay Lord Quex), and the sons up-country police-court practitioners, or £100-a-year civil servants. On even footing with the low-order knights are the "honourables." They approximate to Wentworth's House of Peers, membership of State Legislative Councils carrying the title. The "honourables" guinea-pig mainly for a living. The title also means Government House entree, and rating at functions where there is recourse to precedence. Wives and daughters thus get their hands on the social lever, and so, later on, catch, with great adroitness, the overworked reception smile of Governors' clever consorts. Clever because it must often be so hard to refrain from laughing outright.
I should like to share some of the fun at the various Government Houses after a reception.
It is rather rough on them, though, not to be able to enjoy the comedy while it is in progress. Seldom can they. There is, however, a time on record when they did to the full—so did many others who had a "Burke's Peerage" on their library shelves. The Duke of Buccleugh was cabled to have sailed for Australia. "A title!" cried some. "A Duke!" gasped other Australians. Society was agog. But it was only a very well-bred bull shipped for stud purposes.
Is it any wonder that "the commonest street orator" can raise a laugh when Australian titles are mentioned?
Chapter XIV.
THE AUSTRALIAN AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.
From a close observation of Australian restaurants I have come to the conclusion that the Australian does not eat his food—he wolfs it. He's not very particular either what he eats. (In Queensland earth is in his dieting scale). What he chiefly wants is something to chew, and he usually bites off more than he comfortably can.
He's argumentative at the breakfast table, and the less he knows about a subject the more he'll say. One of him wanted to argue with me only the other morning on this very subject of eating. The argument turned on the word "dinner," and he let his porridge get cold while he went for a dictionary. "To dine," he said, with his mouth full, "is to 'take dinner,' and according to this dictionary that is 'the chief meal of the day.'" That's just it—the Australian regulates it by size; he cannot distinguish between a meal and a dinner.
Delicate glass, spotless napery, flowers, and above all sparkling conversation—those larger delights!—he does not encourage. He is a mere gross feeder. I am talking now of the man who can afford these things (even the employment of a conversationalist), not of the sixpenny "Dining" rooms, of which Australia is the home. How horrible these "dining" rooms are on a hot day! You can smell them two streets off. If you are brave enough to look in you will see what you usually go to the zoo at 4 o'clock to watch.
There is no restaurant in Australia where you can get a meal suited to the climate, and as for "home" meals, well, if an Australian asks you to his house to dine don't go unless you're an ostrich. Cooking among Australian women is a lost art. The Australian girl goes in for "accomplishments" only. If she is ever called upon to cook anything she uses the frypan.