A ROMANCE OF PENTRIDGE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2359, 11 May 1899, Page 12

A ROMANCE OF PENTRIDGE.

FELON AND SCULPTOR.

(Melbourne Argus.)

The romance of the early digging days was not all of gold. There are strange* Btories of men, too, in those old and vivid pages of Australian history. Many of them have been told; one at least is worth' retelling. It was in 1853 that the first Bendigo Cup was run, and "Gentleman" Bond, so well known in Melbourne afterwards as a sporting journalistic and handicapper, won it on Abd-el-Kader. There was a steeplechase, too, for which tremendous log fences had been built, and the onlookers marvelled at the ease with which a young bushman took a mere pony over these stiff and towering jumps It was the beginning of a strange life history for the young bushman on the pony. Landing over one of the fences he bumped " Bendigo Mac," the famous police magistrate, whWcsyas riding by. When this young man, in exultation of youth and daring, cannoned against Bendigo Mac, the autocrat of the goldfiekfs instantly ordered his arrest. " Nonsense ! " shouted the indignant. , diggers, who were there in thousandS ; "it was an accident." Some bolder spirit shouted, " Let's rescue him." There was a rush of blue shirts and claystained corduroys, and the prisoner was released. for him had he left Bendigo then for ever.

A few months later, amongst a batch of diggers brought before Bendigo Mac were two who had had a stand-up fight in the street on a Saturday night, and were charged with disturbing the peace. The magistrate recognised in one of them the youth who had been in collision with him on race day, and gave him three months' imprisonment for an offence as common on the diggings as lighting one's pipe.

A posse of troopers on their way to the Ovens one day met a young man riding a fine black horse down the Sydney road. One of the constables had been on Bendigo not long before, and recognised in the horseman one over whom he had kept guard in a prison gang. "That man is a Uendigo criminal," he said; "he has stolen that horse, for a million ! " The rider was asked for an explanation, and gave one, which seemed lame and improbable enough in those free-handed days. The horse had been lent to him by a friend in Bendigo, the only condition being that he took good care of it. The rider was arrested, and sent to Bendigo for trial. There the man he had mentioned stepped into the box, and verified his stpry as to the horse being lent him, but Bendigo Mac ordered his instant arrest for perjury.

It would take too long to follow in detail the strange history of a man against whom Fate had taken so distinct a prejudice. The clay came, however, when for the first time he committed a crime, and then under extraordinary circumstances. - Released from Pentridge, he was tramping to the diggings with his swag, when, just outside Oastlemaine, he was stricken down with colonial fever, the scourge of the gold digger. He lay, dying almost, in his tent by the roadside, when a party came up with a dray, and amongst them were some Pentridge expirees. Recognising in the sick man a fellow prisoner, they, with better charity than their reputations perhaps would have promised, lifted him, tent and all, on to their dray, and took him to Epsom Flat. As he lay there recovering from fever, he heard his companions plotting to stick up and rob a Bendigo bank manager, who was expected to ride down the road on a particular night. Then came a strange lapse from the honesty he had hitherto observed, and in which he had received such scant encouragement. Whatever the impulse — it was one which he himself could never explain-^liG determined to forestall his companions in the robbery. While still suffering from the fever, he got up quietly one night, took a pistol, went down to a lonely spot on the road, and there bailed up the bank manager and robbed him of £500 in cash. Of this sum he divided £480, amongst the men who had succoured him, took £20 for himself, and started down the road for Castlemaine. He was arrested, convicted, and then, for the first time in his chequered career, entered a prison to undergo a punishment that was justly due. The work of brutalising a man had been made complete, though philanthropists may find in the process a moral that may be of value even now. It was a long sentence this time, for the crime was serious, and many years elapsed before those who knew something of his experiences on Old Bendigo heard anything of him again. One day Mr Panton, P.M., went out to Pentridge to visit the governor of the prison. They dined together, and that night, as they smoked and chatted, the governor tossed some papers across the table to his guest. " This is worth reading," he said. "It is a prisoner's confession, or, rather, the story of- his life. Pure romance the. most of it, I dare say, but still a strange story." Mr Panton read it, 'was interested, and said so. "But you don't believe it, purely?" his friend remarked, for long_ experience had made him exceedingly dubious of prisoners' pathetic tales. They were not all victims of circumstances — the most of them past masters in guile. " I honestly believe" every word of this to be true," was the P.M.'s answer. " I know that the greater part of it is true, because some of the events described happened under my own eyes. When I find events with which I am officially familiar so accurately described, why should I not accept the whole of it as a truthful narrative?"

Inquiries as to the character of the folon showed him a persistent breaker of prison regulations in small things. Indeed, he had in this way greatly multiplied his original sentence, and with the ill-luck that always followed him, had won a had record on trifles. He was continually* secreting old knives and chisels, or any tool he could get hold of. " Show vis Dawes's latest," said the governor to the warder. His name was not Dawes, of course, but it will do as well. The warder brought ,in the little carved bust of a woman found illegally in the possession of Prisoner Eufus Dawes. It had been chiselled by the man himself out of stone. The fact was that this ill-starred man, who had never had an hour's tuition in art, had developed a natural gift for sculpture — it was his passion, his hobby, his oneobject in life. For this purpose he filched tools and broke prison regulations — an innocent enough purpose, God knows— but it was not recognised in the bond. The governor was a good and just man, greatly wrapped up in questions of prison discipline and routine, and with no great sympathy for art. either in the crude or cultured form. Mr Panton, on the other hand, had always dabbled in it as a hobby. From 'his pen and pencil have come many etchings which are now valuable memorials of the stirrintr early ' days. He

was attracted at once by the "merit of thct little carving. "This .may. be a breach of prison regulations," he said, "but it is nob a crime; it is art — or something very little shorb of it. .This, man interests me." Me Panton not only interested himself in the felon sculptor, he interested the governor also, and Kufus Dawes was brought in. "Now, look here, No. 54-,'' the official said, "if I giva you a little shop to yourself in the yarcfj where you can go on with this work without interruption will you promise to behave yourself for the future, and respect the regulations?" "If you do that, sir," was the answer, "I'll promise you that never again while I'm in Pentridge shall L wilfully break even the smallest of the regulations." So the bargain- was made, the sculptor was given his chance, and made the most of it. After all it was not so strange that this man, who had known nothing of art, should discover the bent of his genius while immured in a prison. All the little distractions of life — except tha ever-present struggle for tobacco — were removed from him. He had abundant time for self-examination. If it were possible to so suddenly isolate all men, there would be fewer " mute inglorious Miltons," though hardly more Oromwells. The trivialities of life are possibly art's worst' enemy. When Mr Pantonsnext visited Pentridge he fpund that Rufus Dawes had planned a fountain, the drawings of which he had pfeparad. In the original design it was somewhat ambitious, and included a bronze Cupid, but the resources of Pentridge did not run to bronze, and the sculptor had to modify his schemes and keep-to basalt. Of this there was abundance. Both in its natural and manufactured state it was" the chief product of the prison. He was jiist then modelling some aurum lilies for his fountain. His plan was to pin them on a piece of brown paper with the stem irt water, and then, with no preparatory modelling in clay, to carve from the solid blueslone. But the poor prisoner was in despair. He had got his lilies, but what of the eagles and a baby Cupid? "I,'ll see to the eagle," Mr Panton said — and he got an eaglehawk stuffed in the required poise. " Surely some of the warders would bring one of their youngsters for a model for the Cupid." "Ah, no !" said the despairing sculptor. " You see I've got a bad name with the warders. Given, them a lot of trouble in my time, planting away bits o' stone and stray tools that I wanted to work on. None of 'em would bring their youngsters for me to model. Not likely." " Then I will promise you a model," said hiß new patron. He called upon his friend a late superintendent of police, whose wife was an intellectual woman. She had in her care jusb then a nephew, a little toddler, who is now the young pastor of a Church of England in one of the Melbourne suburbs. The P.M. told the lady the whole story, and said, " Now, are you game to take that little chap up to Pentridge as a model for this poor beggar?" "With all my heart," was the good-natured response ; "as often, as may be required." It was not necessary, however. When the warders heard that a real lady was willing to bring her baby to be a model for this troublesome fellow, Dawes — in spite of the fact that he had so often broken the regulations — they, too, forgave him. All the children in the prison would sit for him if he needed them, and thereafter he had no scarcity of models. The fountain upon which he was engaged — his first bit of work — was set up afterwards in the spare plot of ground between Parliament and Treasury buildings, just behind the Gordon monument. It is there still — an interesting memento of a strange career. Later, Mr Panton and Mr L. L. Smith interested themselves in securing the prisoner's release, and for a while " the doctor " had him at work in a little studio behind his" house in Collins street. Afterwards he started business as a modeller and sculptor in one of the suburbs, married a pretty little woman, and was happy for a time. But Fate was never long kind to the poor chap. His wife died, and her tomb is such a memorial as love and art alone can build. He has long since been laid beneath the tomb he builded with such solicitude. Much of his work may be seen in both cemeteries, but fow know that the name S d cut at the foot of it covers such a. strange, eventful history. His wreaths of roses cut in marble are often exquisite. Some of his best carvings — now yellow with years and grime and rain — are marble tablets thrown into relief against a basis of blue basalt. The angels of Love, and Hope, and Mercy, that he so often carved, have^in them often the true touch of , genius, though there must have been times when this man doubled greatly the influence of any good spirit on earthly things, and distrusted most of all the blindfold goddess with the sword and scales. Much of his work has, by a fault in the setting, fallenrinto disrepair, especially where graves have been, long neglected. Stones have been burst asunder and tombs wrecked, as though by the mad fury of a mob. Even here chance has deprived the, convict-sculptor of half his laurels — the grass is growing rank over them. If ever man was the sport of circumstances it was surely this man.

Such, in brief, is the story of a man who, under a luckier star, might have been born to greatness. Eate, in unkind mood, robbed him, not only of the chance <tf fame, but denied him even the privilege of being an honest man.