THINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 10, 11 March 1893, Page 219

THINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

by

THE AUTOCRATIG IDLER.

Pat, and Other People.

I have been asked to relate that queer d Governor Bowen story, for the special amusement (and I think I may add instruction) of the vast and varied concourse constituting

the Graphic audience. First of all there is His present Excellency ; although I am not quite sure that his beautiful Countess should not take precedence—at all events if Cleopatra-like magnificence of presence, and queenly stateliness, come before the Governor anywhere, the Countess, of course, takes the position, and I beg to be allowed to withdraw my move on this chess board, and to shift the queen to her proper and commanding square. Then there are the honourable Ladies Boyle; all the viceregal people; by no means omitting that valiant grenadier Colonel Boyle, who takes such evident pleasure in signing himself ‘ Pat,’ in a large, bold hand, quite emphatically, as though he would say * there’s a name as distinguished as any on this globe ; there’s a name that, in its time, has done good and gallant service (under the never-to be-conquered Union Jack), tor the Royalty of England, and for Mrs Rule Britannia; there’s a name that Lord Nelson loved ; that Marlborough found ever so serviceable to him in many a campaign ; there’s a name that was to the fore-front all day long on that memorable 18th June at Waterloo, when the Irishman Wellington met the Corsican Scourge of Europe in the morning, and licked him hollow, and rubbed him out for ever, before nightfall !’ The illustrious personages at Government House will, no doubt, look at the story from various points of view. His Excellency (who knows quite well how many beans make 5, and—still more precisely how many Legislative Councillors make 12,) will be absorbed in the story till he gets to the end, and then he will probably say ‘ What an artful, diplomatic old cock that Bowen was, to be sure !’ The beautiful Countess will smile as sweetly as she is wont to do, and will wonder, may be, what sort of person Lady Bowen was ? Well, as to that, Lady Delamentina was as graceful, bewitching, and angelic a little Greek as ever Athens saw; and was somewhere about one third the age of her rather stoutish and somewhat bucolic looking husband. It was my good fortune to meet her repeatedly in city and in the country ; once amid the beautiful scenery of the Gippsland lakes; another time at Ballarat, and. again at Bendigo I went down a celebrated quartz mine with her : we tied a cord round the skirts of her chocolate silk dress and put her in the cage : she flitted about the illuminated levels as daintily as a fairy, and was altogether so captivating, so artless, so much at home, and, above all, so courageous, that it seemed to us all that she knew very little about pride, and nothing at all about fear. The thud of the miner’s pick has a mysterious sound in such far underground regions ! The voice of man seems unearthly in those long drives. The water drips, drips, and men in oilskins move about amongst long lines of stout props sustaining threatening masses ready to tumble in ; and the voice of a woman and even her merry laughter seems so strange down below ! This was the Great Extended Hustlers Mine which had made huge fortunes for a score of men. The long drives and levels were all brilliantly lit up by sperm candles on the occasion referred to ; more especially the 840 foot level which was the grand reception place, for the time being, of Viceroyalty. A magnificent piece of quartz, white and pure as snow and studded all over with lumps of gold, was picked out of the overhanging wall of the reef by the mine manager and presented to Lady Bowen. I know every corner of that mine as well as I know the West Coast; and, one of these days may tell you something of its extraordinary history

_. The‘Sydney Bulletin.'

Now it’s a curious thing that although Sir ~ , , George Bowen wrote a book—or got a book . .. . • ~ ~ . written—purporting to give all the salient

points of his history and varied experiences in these colonies,

he altogether overlooked the little incident I am about to record. But he was a forgetful man—at times. The story was told, tohesure.in asortof way, in the Sydney Bulletinsome years ago, but it was not told by me—and that made all the difference. And, besides, you know what an awful newspaper or journal that Bulletin is! Why, the numberof persons who wouldn t read it, or look at it, on any account whatever, is almost incredible. I heard Sir Henry Parkes keep on never mentioning the Bulletin, when speaking of the Sydney press, as if totally unconscious even of the existence of that periodical. There are hundreds of people in Sydney who fo'low his example in this respect—who never mention the paper, and who never let any human being see them with it spread out before them. As a loyal subject of Her Most Gracious Majesty, I must say that I often see things in it which I don’t like, myself. But after all, what a unique, and altogether clever weekly it is ; and what a remorseless way it has of dealing with evil doers ! If there be any man in Australia with any real poetry in his nature, with any imagination, with any intellectual gift or gifts above his kind, the Bulletin takes him by the hand, and gives him a hearty welcome. There are but two ways of ascertaining, in Sydney who, really, are the readers of the Bulletin, in that city. A great fire broke out, in the dead of night, and destroyed an immense block of buildings in Pitt-street a couple of years ago. On that occasion a number of young ladies were aroused from their slumbers by the fire-bell, and by a glare, and by the sound of breaking glass. It was noticed that their hair was done up in the pink cover of the Sydney Bulletin. Poor dears, they had gone to their bedrooms to have a quiet read of the last number, before going to sleep—and when they had read the most of it, and laughed at the inimitable cuts and caricatures—they made curling paper of a portion of the cover. At the publishing office, of a Thursday morning, one gets a still better idea of the vast crowd of persons who don’t read the ultra - radical and famous publication. One of the first to put in a regular appearance, as soon as the publishing work commences, is a mysterious individual known as the man from Balmain. He secretes the damp copy and makes straight towards Hampden Villa—the residence of Sir Henry Parkes. A stranger presented himself while I was present. On being asked what he wanted he said he was from the ‘ Register Gineral’s ’ office and wanted the Departmental numbers. The crowd of persons waiting, even at that early hour, to obtain copies of the Bulletin for persons who would not read the Bulletin, or even look at it on any account, rather amazed me. More astonishing still is the quantity sent elsewhere—the tons and tons of pink covered matter sent all the world over. In shepherds’ huts on lonely runs in the back country, in towns like Bourke, far in the interior of Australia, in Greek’s Gully in New Zealand, in London, in Cornwall, in Japan, one can find the Bulletin.