Valerie Desmond

“ The sucker curse is daily becoming more acute in Australia. It so happens that the young Australian whose father is trying to make a farmer of him registers a resolution that he will be a sucker. With justification, no doubt, he regards his father as a fool. (All Australians regard their fathers as fools.) The fool-farmer's son starts his sucking, therefore, as a commission agent, and goes on the election committee of the surplus Australian politician standing in the "country interest," and whose watchword is "settle the people on the land." ”

“ Nobody ever considers the convenience of others. People in the streets of every civilised portion of the world—I don't say every "other" civilised portion of the world—walk on the right-hand side of the footpath. If one of them happens to be eccentric or possessed of the anti-social instinct or overcome by any cause and obstructs the traffic by walking on the wrong side, he is promptly checked by authority in the guise of a policeman. But in the streets of Sydney there is no such law and order. The public wander over the footpaths like sheep—and with the same directing intelligence. ”

“ The Australian is a born loafer. Go you north, south, east, or west in his mortgaged land, and in proportion to the distance you travel, so does this truth broaden upon you—the truth of his loafing propensities. ”

“ Australian women don't walk. Those who don't waddle with an unnatural movement of the hips, like a drake expressing his satisfaction with an extra fat frog, affect a ridiculous mincing gait that resembles nothing so much as the painful perambulation of a youngster who takes off his boots on a hard, pebbly road for the first time.
The best figure I have seen in Australia was that of a young girl of about 18. She was beautifully moulded, with a bust to inspire a poet, and hips of exquisite roundness. Generally speaking, Melbourne women are more favoured in this respect than their Sydney sisters. ”

“ There has been so much adulation lately of Australia, Australian institutions, and the Australian people by writers with axes to grind and English politicians with party ends to serve that the people of the Commonwealth have come to believe that they are the salt of the earth, and that their country is the earth. ”

“ In the restaurants customers place parcels, umbrellas, even hats, on the tables. Whether other customers have any elbow room or room for their plates doesn't trouble them one jot. Nobody ever apologises in Australia. One gets used to that after one's toes have begun to get callous from frequent treading on by strange feet. One's dress may be spoilt by a passing painter or by a fellow dancer at a ball overturning a cup of coffee, but one never hears an expression of regret.
The culmination of Australian bad manners was probably reached when the New Year of 1908 was ushered in. ”

“ In the absence of any intellectual powers, the Australian clubman's idea of thoroughly entertaining a guest is to get drunk with him. To put a man to bed—take his boots off and all that—is the height of his hospitality. ”

“ A woman who pulls up her dress deliberately in order to show her legs is pitifully immodest. The woman who, with malice aforethought, shows her legs is vulgar, and the woman who takes all sorts of trouble to hide them is a prude, but the woman who allows them to be viewed, if the position in which she is seated permits their display, is unaffected and natural. In the society in which I moved in England, France and America, both the women and the men are frankly natural. ”

“ But in Sydney, where only a comparatively handful of people fill the streets, all is confusion. There being no rule of the path, there is no order. There being no manners, there is no mutual courtesy to ease the position. There being no chivalry, the women get hustled, and the elderly and weak bumped and injured. The police never interfere until somebody is assaulted, and, as may be expected with chaotic traffic regulation and ill-mannered people, this is not an infrequent occurrence. ”

“ There is no such thing as cultured, reposeful conversation in this land; everybody sings his remarks as if he were reciting blank verse after the manner of an imperfect elocutionist. It would be quite possible to take an ordinary Australian conversation and immortalise its cadences and diapasons by means of musical notation. Herein the Australian differs from the American. The accent of the American, educated and uneducated alike, is abhorrent to the cultured Englishman or Englishwoman, but it is, at any rate, harmonious. That of the Australian is full of discords and surprises. ”

“ It must be an awful thing to try to regulate one's behaviour by a book on etiquette, and, but for his bound and hide, the torture of the new-rich Australian with a family would be worse than vivisection. ”

“ When I went into the Public Library at Sydney and asked for the catalogue of the Australian poets I thought the attendant, in complying, had handed me the Federal electoral rolls. He said, however, that it was all right. There are just about as many people anxious to make the poetry of the country as there are to make its laws, and among them all they have made a mess of both. Parkes, addressing a public meeting, once said, "I would rather be a third-rate poet than a first-class politician." ”

“ There is a nouveau riche in culture as well as in material things, and the accent of the cultivated Australian proclaims to the world that his acquisition of learning belongs to his generation alone. At Home, we are occasionally forced to encounter individuals whose sudden access to money is revealed by their tongues, but we are spared from such unpleasant revelations when we meet the intellectuals. ”

“ THE AUSTRALIAN ON THE LAND.
The man on the land in Australia is represented by two classes, the squatter and the cockatoo farmer. Why the latter is so called I am at a loss to know. He never has a feather to fly with. The squatter is more birdlike. He puts on a lot of "wing," and some of him go so far as to flout a crest.
Many of the squatters of to-day in Australia are the descendants of cattle "duffers," as their nondescript herds amply testify. A fine portly legislator of the present time has a couple of well-stocked stations, and generally looms large in Australian landscape. ”

“ The languid swell element has invaded all Australian clubs. Publicans' sons most do congregate in them when people who work for a living are out after a crust. These youths take mental exercise reading the theatrical gossip and social columns of the weekly snob papers. They are walking encyclopædias of useless information, and may be trusted to make fools of themselves on all occasions. ”

“ As may be expected, accidents are frequent. It is scarcely possible for anybody who has not visited Australia to picture what this means—a badly managed tramway service, run by badly-mannered officials, and carrying about double the number of badly-mannered passengers. An old time bear-pit must have been a refined assemblage as compared with a Sydney tramcar.
The bad manners of the people are manifest in other places besides the trams and trains and ferries. It is impossible to find a woman who will stand aside to let others in or out of a passage way. ”

“ Better fence the nigger into Australia and deport the white who has sunk so low as to take coolie work to some country where they have not laws against undesirable immigrants. Australia is the only country where the white is consumed with that ignoble desire.
"But," shrieks the Labour agitator, "the Australian spends his money and is better for the community." ”

“ Thither flock all who have foresworn honest toil, and the disinclination to work, as has been already observed, is innate of the Australian. [Pg 60]
The sucker fastens on industry wherever it is to be found, and if a district threatens to thrive, a big town full of suckers arises to drain the profits, and thus is the producer, who, in Australia, economically is the country, impoverished. He and the primary industries never get a chance. Things are foisted upon him that he does not want and is not in a position to pay for, and he can't move without giving some sucker a commission. ”

“ There is a note of whimsical comedy about the Oxford undergraduate's practice of calling a bag a bagger, and nobody can repress a smile the first time he hears a coster call eyes "meat-pies" or trousers "round-the-houses." But there is no humour in Australian slang. It is drawn from the lowliest sources—the racecourse, the football match, and the prize-ring. Like most of the imagery of primitive people, it is largely metaphorical, so involved as to require an interpreter.
When a man's chances are regarded as hopeless, the invariable Australian comment is that "he's got Buckley's." ”

“ The Australian accent has frequently been described by travellers, but none have done justice to its abominations. Many unobservant persons, shuddering through three or four months' experience, [Pg 16] have left Australia saying that the people of the island continent use the dialect of the East End of London. This is a gross injustice to poor Whitechapel. Neither the coster of to-day, nor the old-time Cockney of the days of Dickens, would be guilty of uttering the uncouth vowel sounds I have heard habitually used by all classes in Australia. ”

“ Everybody in Australian society is better than everybody else, and everybody can give full and [Pg 50] particular reasons why (including dates) . The position is obvious—everybody is trying to hide what everybody else knows, and is prepared to make even better known should occasion offer.
This is a natural consequence of money being the "open sesame." It does not matter how the money may have been acquired. The sons and daughters of pawnbrokers, for example, loom large in Melbourne society to-day. And butchers become squatters. ”

“ THE AUSTRALIAN IN SOCIETY.
There is no work for the phrase noblesse oblige to do in Australia. The nearest one can get to it is noveau riche. For in Australia the parvenu is paramount.
The people have no ancestry to boast of; all its nastiness is near the surface. ”

“ Considering that the police do not control the vehicles, it is scarcely surprising that they permit the pedestrians to wander where they will. Carts and horses take any course they like. One never hears of anybody being prosecuted for driving on the wrong side of a Sydney street. A London policeman could not believe his eyes were he suddenly transported into an Australian city at a busy hour of the day. [Pg 25]
As an example in chaos and ill-manners, the Government provides the public with a tramway system. The tramcars do not run on the wrong side of the road. ”

“ Australia is not yet through the cavorting stage, but it will grow out of it in time, just as other countries have done. If I were an altruist instead of an impartial observer, whose tongue and pen are always guided by clear vision and ripened judgment, I would, I suppose, have helped on the evolutionary process by feeding your vanity with the tablespoonsful doses administered by other visitors. ”

“ There is said to be honour among thieves, and on the prima facie case thus made out, I cannot bring myself to call the Australian business man a thief. Americans have a term for a despised class of their community, "Suckers" they call those who comprise it. In its worst sense the term fits the Australian. Wherever some sporadic energy is exhibited, there do you find the suckers.
The sucker is chiefly found in big cities built on borrowed money and by boom swindles. ”

“ When he's fixed up in an occupation he thinks will suit him, the Australian gets the sack. His employer finds him absolutely useless. He has not the habit of industry, and he is incapable of sustained effort of any kind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sir Henry Parkes once proposed to erect a mausoleum for the illustrious dead of Australia, but the hopelessness of getting eligible corpses caused the idea to be abandoned. There are, however, in Australia many unexplained monuments. Among the latest was one in Brisbane, raised to a deceased Rugby football player. Will the Australian ever get any sort of sense of proportion?
But a people, I suppose, must first of all have love of country before it gets a standard of measurement. ”

“ The coolie lives a less brutal life than the great proportion of northern white workers, and shows a greater margin of savings out of a lesser wage. He is thus emphatically more desirable than the aforesaid proportion of Australian white worker, which has no margin out of wages after paying for beer, but usually has the next week's wages mortgaged to the local publican. ”

“ W.T. Stead's attention to her comparatively puny bust, but so completely had Cruikshank gulled him that he wouldn't hear a word against her.
It is not difficult to understand why Australian women should regard themselves as beautiful. You know the Papuan natives who stain their teeth with betel nut think white molars hideous. When any country sets up its own style of beauty it takes a good while to convince it that any other style can be beautiful, let alone to force the admission that the local gods are false. So few Australians have travelled that a restricted horizon is natural. ”

“ Colonial society has absolutely nothing original about it. It is content to copy all the shams, all the follies, all the impostures of the old British world. You will find in the Southern Hemisphere that venality, adoration of the golden calf, hypocrisy and cant are still more noticeable than in England, and I can assure you that a badly cut coat would be the means of closing more doors upon you than would a doubtful reputation. ”

“ He has the borrowing habit bad.
The result?
If the Australian wants to develop something, a mine, say, he makes a bee line to the member of Parliament for the district, and through his pernicious office enough is squeezed out of the milch-cow government to sustain him until he can hawk [Pg 59] what he has round London. He seldom has any money himself, and when he has he prefers not to risk it. The role of promoter suits him best. He gets his profits out of his flotation, and impudently stands in with the "paid-ups." ”

“ Of all the products of Australia, the politician is the least worthy and the least competent. Oratory in this land is in the same embryo condition as gem-cutting or the manufacture of scientific instruments. Generally speaking, there is not in the public life of Australia a speaker who reaches to the standard of mediocrity in England or America. And in speaking, so is it much in the other qualifications that make a politician. The present Prime Minister, Mr. Fisher, I heard in Melbourne just before he left for England. ”

“ A squatter's son is a chip off the old blockhead. When he's about twenty he's sent to [Pg 72] England for a brush up, and he either becomes an absentee or returns to help make Australian cities more vicious. As a rule he acquires a beautifully discriminative taste for whisky, and what time he is sober races horses on the most approved spieling method. There was one of him in the Sydney Equity Court recently, who said he had been drunk for eight years, and that the whole of that time was a blank to him. ”