The Clay Dreaming (43 page)

Lawrence
.

‘I attempted to pay him a compliment, on the good behaviour of his charges. I will not burden you with d-d-duh…de-d-…’ Hunt hung his head in frustration a moment, before continuing ‘…the nature of his reply, except to say I f-f-fear…he has been rather too much in their company.’

Dr Hunt could try reciting the liturgy, thought Sarah, a temporary cure reputed to work for the Queen’s chaplain, Charles Kingsley. Or there was one of Bate’s Patent Appliances: they too advertised in
The Illustrated London News
.

‘The Chair recognises Lord Brockbank.’

‘The Australian Cricketers insist on demonstrations of their “Aboriginal Sports”, the chief of which…beating each other about the head with “
waddies
”, and boomerang experiments…have been modified to suit European mildness of taste.’

‘
Waddy
, you say?’ another man interjected.

‘It is a primitive sort of club,’ said Brockbank. ‘The native is so fond of his
waddy
that even in civilised life he cannot be induced to part with it. Indeed, never seems happy without one in his hands.’

‘The Chair recognises Mr Wood.’

‘The
waddy
,’ added Wood, ‘is the Australian panacea for domestic strife. Should one of his wives presume to have an opinion of her own, or otherwise offend her dusky lord, a blow on the head settles the dispute at once by leaving her senseless on the ground.’

‘Hmm,’ mused another gentleman. ‘Where can I get one?’

‘I too saw them in action at the Oval, recently…’

The Chair straightened his spine. ‘Mr Bouverie-Pusey,’ he announced.

‘Thank you,’ replied the new voice. ‘…At the Oval much fuss was made over their boomeranging, an elegant refinement on the art of stick-throwing. I was so impressed, I went home early.’

‘Underestimate the boomerang at your own risk. In the right hands it can be a deadly-accurate weapon!’

‘Mr Wood,’ said the Chair.

‘It is,’ Wood elaborated, ‘a very versatile invention. They also use it for skinning, for digging, and as a musical instrument.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Bouverie-Pusey. ‘I now wish I had stayed.’

‘I desire to make some remarks on the subject of native mortality.’

‘The Chair recognises… Who are you, sir?’

‘Mr Murray, of Sydney, Australia.’

A loud murmur arose. Sarah craned her neck, trying for a better view of a fellow buried somewhere deep in the audience.

‘Members only knowing about the rate of mortality in European countries,’ said Murray, ‘will be startled on learning how frequently deaths occur amongst us. In an unhealthy season, sickness, such as influenza, assumes a much more serious and deadly character among the natives. The customary number of deaths is very greatly increased…’

Another voice filled the chamber. ‘Everyone who knows even a little about aboriginal races is aware: those of a low type, mentally, are at the same time weak in their constitution.’

The Chair identified the speaker as a Dr Lawson.

‘When their country comes to be occupied by a different race much more vigorous, robust, and pushing than themselves,’ he said, ‘they rapidly die out.’

‘That,’ retorted Murray, ‘is my point. The rapid disappearance of aboriginal tribes before the advance of civilisation is one of the remarkable incidents of the present age – ’

‘They are too weak, as I say, to withstand any disease,’ said Dr Lawson. He returned to his own point. ‘Once sickly, there is little or no hope of recovery. Constantly exposed to the weather, the roofless Aborigines are extremely susceptible to “colds”. Before a southerly wind they crouch under every cover they can find… The influx of Europeans has enabled them to procure articles of clothing or blankets the value of which, at such times, they thoroughly appreciate. But the first warm day sees all these benefits thrown aside. Not infrequently, fever and other diseases are actually produced through the careless use of damp coverlets. Their deaths arise through the improper use of clothes.’

Another Fellow stood, ready to speak.

‘Compared with Europeans,’ continued the doctor, ‘the ordinary native is slight in frame and feeble in constitution, easily brought low by sickness, and pining away often from unaccountable causes, principally pulmonary complaints, aggravated by their own thoughtlessness and roving mode of life.’

‘Thank you, Dr Lawson…you have finished?’ checked the Chair. ‘Thank you for your enlightening contribution. Mr Bouverie-Pusey?’

‘Have not these races lived their appointed time?’

‘Have a heart!’ someone cried out, the voice sounding somewhat familiar: Sarah tried, but could not identify who had spoken.

‘A heart, sir?’ Bouverie-Pusey took up the challenge. ‘Unless it be a bullock’s, and well cooked, to have a heart is a mistake! We are men of science, not Romance.’

‘Then perhaps it is time you heard from a man of religion.’ An elderly gent lurched to his feet, steadying himself on the back of the seat in front. ‘I am not so sure myself,’ he croaked, ‘what message Mr Murray was attempting to impart, but let me say this. Sprung from the Mother Country, modern Australia is Protestant by law. Directives from London continue to insist on religious instruction as essential, in deterrence of immorality and to the preservation of order. But around Perth, where I myself have ministered, our Sundays are far from high and holy.’

‘What do you mean by this?’ demanded the Chair, as if rankled by an interloper. ‘Are you talking about the Blacks, or the Whites?’

‘The settlers, sir,’ came the reply, ‘their schooling in life so harsh, they know of no kindness. Their days are given over to drinking, gambling, and hunting for sport. And I regret to report, not all of the shooting is confined to kangaroos…’

Sarah gasped.

‘The Aboriginal character is not without blemishes, to be sure, nor above dishonesty when it suits them, but there can be no denying they have been set the very worst of examples. Even a blind eye might see that.’

‘The Chair recognises Mr Reddie.’

‘I agree with the kind gentleman. Yet how might we benefit the Australian Aborigine, given what success we have had with the morals of our own refuse population?’

‘Mr Reade?’

‘The specimens of Africans which have been received in America are pretty much the same as if the inhabitants of Whitechapel had been sent out to any country as specimens of Englishmen.’

Clambering to the stage, Hunt strode forward to address them all. ‘However poor the stock,’ he roared, ‘I will not stand for this comparison. If there is one truth most clearly defined in anthropological science, it is the existence of
well-marked psychological and moral, moral distinctions…in the d-different races of man.’ Hunt grasped the lectern and drew himself up higher. He swept the room bodily, like a searchlight. ‘Utopian ideals,’ his words rang out, ‘universal equality, fraternity, and b-brotherhood…’ he blasted ‘…are chimeras! They have no place!’

If this was the Best Man in England, Sarah felt she might prefer the Worst.

A small voice from the back broke the stunned silence. ‘If the Aborigines are inferior to all other races of mankind…if this truly is the case, all other races of mankind must be more highly endowed than I, for one, ever thought they were.’

Dr Hunt leant forward, his elbows jutting like pincers. ‘Mr Murray is a very profound thinker.’

A howling chorus arose from Hunt’s running dogs. In the face of unbeatable odds, Mr Murray sat down. The matter appeared almost settled.

Another voice, thin and wheedling, piped up. ‘The native is redeemed by his contact with the White man, not corrupted,’ it said. ‘I wish to make that clear.’

‘The Chair recognises Wood.’

‘But does Wood recognise the chair?’

Laughter.

‘It is a question for our times!’

‘Gentlemen! Mr Wood?’

‘In proposing the following example, I leave it for the individual member to decide, but mark it for the attention of the reverend gentleman in particular,’ he condescended. ‘A goodly number of natives are now enrolled among the police, and render invaluable service to their community, especially against the depredations of their fellow Blacks, whom they persecute with a relentless vigour that seems rather surprising to those who do not know the singular antipathy which invariably exists between wild and tamed animals…

‘The Australian native policeman,’ Wood concluded, ‘is to the colonists what the “Totty” of Southern Africa is to the Boer and Englander, what the Ghoorka or Sikh of India is to the English army, and what the tamed elephant of Ceylon or India is to the hunter.’

Sarah could feel her heart, hardening.

‘I wish to add to this point, as it returns us to another.’

‘Mr Bendyshe?’

‘To whit, when we get an Indian into broadcloth or an Australian into uniform, we think the great experiment of our civilisation has been successfully accomplished, and that our “travelled monkey” is a promising type of all his kind. But in truth he is only a talking parrot, a well-bred wolf, a performing tiger, whose congeners still in the forest are what they ever were. Their ability to follow the trail of a tribe or individual, their recognition of the latter by his
footsteps, even in the sand, and their skill in building a native hut of branches, which it appears no European has yet been able to accomplish satisfactorily, only place them on a level with the dog and the bird.

‘Had they shown an ability to depart from their traditional habitudes of thought and action, and to adopt in their place, however imperfectly, the higher modes of life introduced by the colonists, there would have been some hope for them; but of this they seem utterly incapable, and therefore their doom is sealed. Without the forest to live and breed in, they ultimately perish, like beasts in a menagerie.’

‘For shame, sirs,’ a lone voice was shouting. ‘For shame.’ Sarah was almost surprised it was not hers. A general kerfuffle arose, ruffled feathers, some boos. Sarah heard again the same protestant voice she had thought to recognise earlier. ‘We are not monsters,’ it cried, ‘we’re moral people! God knows our business.’

Hastily she crept forward.

‘Sir,’ replied the Chair, curtly. ‘Identify yourself!’

‘The Reverend G. Alston.’

Only by leaning precariously over the edge of the balcony could Sarah see him, as he broke out of the crowd and into the central aisle

‘Look to yourselves, gentlemen,’ he declared, firmly. ‘Look to yourselves!’

‘Are you leaving? Goodbye!’

The Reverend Alston was a former associate of Lambert’s, one of the few whose position and opinions she had always respected; her immediate impulse was to follow him out.

The Chair moved to restore order. ‘Mr Row?’

‘With all respect due to Mr Bendyshe, despite the current trend in scientific thinking there is a very great gap between man and the animals.’

‘Mr Reddie…’

‘With regard to Mr Row’s excellent observation, supposing for a moment the Darwinian theory to be true, when Mr Wallace addressed the Society, he said that since man has reached such a high condition the law of natural selection no longer applies to him.’

‘But does it not apply in the case of the monkey,’ asked the Chairman, ‘which is developed into man?’

Laughter.

‘It ceased after man was developed. And I recall a pertinent remark of Dr Hunt’s on the occasion. He said what a poor natural law it must be, if mortal man can so easily revoke it.’

The man himself stood, creating an expectant hush.

‘W-w… W-w-would…’ Dr Hunt gave up and simply beckoned.

Dunbar Heath, as Chair, interposed. ‘Would you like to come to the front, Mr  Wood?’ he said. ‘Come to the front. Our next speaker, gentlemen, is the
Reverend J. G. Wood, who has very kindly agreed to share with us a preview of some findings from his forthcoming treatise,
The Natural History of Man
.’

To applause the Reverend Wood took to the stage, another small man in black suit in a large room too entirely filled with them.

‘Whenever a higher race occupies the same grounds as a lower, the latter perishes…and the new world is always built on the ruins of the old. Such is the history of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia, whose remarkable manners and customs are fast disappearing, together with the natives themselves. The poor creatures are aware of the fact, and seem to have lost all pleasure in the games and dances that formerly enlivened their existence. Many of the tribes are altogether extinct, and others are dwindling so fast that the people have lost all heart and spirit, and succumb almost without complaint to the fate that awaits them.

‘In one tribe for example, the Barrabool, the births recorded during seventeen years were only 24, being scarcely two in three years, while the deaths have been between eighteen and nineteen per annum. Mr Lloyd gives a touching account of the survivors of this once flourishing tribe. “When I first landed in Geelong, in 1837,” he reports, “the Barrabool tribe numbered upwards of 300 sleek and healthy-looking blacks. A few months previous to my leaving that town, in May 1853, they showed me with outstretched fingers the total and unhappy state of the local population: nine women, seven men, and one sickly child. Enquiring after my old dark friends of the early days I received the following pathetic reply.”’

Screwing up his face, Wood parleyed an idea of Aboriginal speech. ‘“Aha, Mitter Looyed, Ballyyang dedac, Jaga-jaga dedac!”’ Wood looked up from his various papers. ‘
Etcetera
,’ he said, ‘many others named equally “dedac”, meaning as one might expect that they were dead.’

The man might as well have painted his cheeks with bootblack. Sarah thought she might leave. If she could only glean something of Brippoki, but nothing good could be learned from these men. Nothing. She stood.

‘This one tribe,’ Wood went on, ‘is typical of the others, all of whom are surely, and some not slowly, approaching the end of their existence. They are but following the order of the world, the lower race preparing a home for the higher. Do not mourn them excessively, for the Aborigines perform barely half of their duties as men. As it has been noted, this vast country was to them a common. They bestowed no labour upon the land. Their ownership, their right, was nothing more than that of the Emu or the Kangaroo.