Now this just might be the thing to keep all those prostitutes and drunks in their seats for once. The Wild White Man from Port Phillip, live on stage! Who knows, with a little luck everyone might get through the night without another brawl erupting and spilling on to the dirty streets of Wapping.
Just who had the ridiculous idea of putting a theatre down here among the brothels, slaughterhouses and slums of this sewage-ridden suburb of Hobart?
Not that the town couldn’t do with a dose of real culture. Might actually lift spirits a little and add some polish to this raw and rowdy frontier. But down here? Talk about a rose among thorns. The Theatre Royal is a majestic Georgian building, an edifice of sophistication and grandeur, its stone blocks stained with convict sweat. And what did they do? They put a tavern beneath the auditorium called The Shades – a seedy joint overflowing with rum-swilling sailors and hookers. It has its own entrance to the theatre pit and for the gentry in the boxes above it’s often hard working out just what spectacle to concentrate on – the music and the theatrical plays, or the cockfights and the drunken melees.
There’s little relief once you get outside, not unless you happen to be a connoisseur of stinking tanneries and butcheries and all those cheap tenements and flophouses of flood-prone Wapping.
Mean streets, these, just the sort of squalid lanes and alleys where you might bump into that legendary receiver of stolen goods, Ikey Solomon. One of the most famous convicts of all time, Solomon is now a free man on the condition he stays away from Hobart. But how can the old fence resist wandering by to catch up with old friends and soak in a little more of his growing fame? Charles Dickens’ latest novel, Oliver Twist, is being serialised in the British papers right now and its main character, Fagin, is said to be based on Solomon, the ‘Prince of Thieves’ who trained hordes of London orphans to pick pockets.
But even Solomon’s stature pales next to the celebrity status of Mr William Buckley. You have only been in Hobart for a week and you haven’t been able to step outside without someone wanting to shake those large hands and make those ears bleed with hundreds of questions about Port Phillip and your life among the Wadawurrung.
In fact, that is how this whole damn theatre business began in the first place.
There you were, loping down the street, revelling in the knowledge that little Johnny Fawkner wasn’t around the corner plotting his next move against you, when a man came out of nowhere and asked if you would like to go to the theatre with him. Well, of course you did. Hard to remember the last time you actually went anywhere for pure enjoyment, let alone the theatre. You had a regular seat at some fine performances under the stars for 32 years and if the Theatre Royal could put on a show half as good as the corroborees you have seen, it would be time well spent.
Turned out to be a pleasant evening. You liked what you saw and at the end of the show one of the performers wandered over and asked if you would like to return – but this time to the stage. That sounded like an offer too good to refuse. What a kind and generous proposal. Say what you like about William Buckley, but don’t say he never grabs an opportunity when it presents itself. It’s just that … you can be naïve, can’t you? It’s why some folk will suggest you can come across as being a little … simple. You think they are going to put a seat on the stage for you where you can watch the entire performance without your hulking frame blocking the view of those behind you.
Not really a man of this world, are you? You may have just spent two years among some of the most deceitful and duplicitous men God ever put on this earth, but it’s been almost 40 years since you rubbed elbows with the sort of urgers and lags that inhabit Wapping. So put this down as another of life’s lessons where, once again, you will leave people feeling as though you have let them down.
You can’t blame John Moses for trying. The man needs bums on seats. This Wednesday night – 17 January 1838 – is his big night. A benefit for John Moses and the new Theatre Royal has never seen the likes of it. Making its debut: the play One O’Clock – or The Knight & the Wood Demon, a gothic romance from the pen of the English writer Michael Lewis.
A day before the performance the local papers are filled with late breaking news. ‘The grand spectacle which had such an unparalleled run in London, the Wood Demon (in which will be introduced, in the character of Giant Hacho, Mr William Buckley, just arrived from Port Phillip), to be followed by a pantomime, with all its amusing fooleries …’
The Giant Hacho himself! Never heard of him? Here’s an extract from ‘The Penny Playbook’ from the show’s run in London: ‘… in an almost impregnable castle on the sea coast dwelt a terrific giant named Hacho, who delighted in securing all the beauteous damsels who came in his way, and confining them in his castle, till they yielded to his infamous desires, after which, he mostly put them to a horrible death …’
Staging the play in Hobart is a coup for Moses, who arrived in town in 1820, courtesy of His Majesty’s convict fleet. He’s a theatrical type. He has a ruddy face and hazel eyes that poured tears of regret when he appeared before a judge in Westminster for stealing a watch. ‘I beg for mercy,’ he cried out during his trial. But that performance hardly helped. Seven years’ transportation to the colonies. He served his time and since then has worked hard to fight his way back to respectability – well, as best a man can do in these colonial times when being Jewish puts you just a couple of rungs above the Indigenous population on the ladder of respectability.
The local papers don’t mind publishing sarcastic stories about members of what they call ‘the money-lending tribe’. But the Colonial Times does have some sympathy for Moses. The day before his benefit it writes that through ‘the exertions of Mr Moses, the theatre has been for months past kept in highly respectable and peaceable order, it being his duty to superintend the management of the tickets taken, and the audience generally. His situation, in a colony like this, must be anything but agreeable; but he invariably does his duty and has therefore claims upon the public. The pantomime is spoken of as certain to please. Since writing the above, we find Mr Buckley, the Port Phillip giant, is to perform in the first piece.’
So let’s get this straight. A week ago you were Interpreter William Buckley. Now you’re William Buckley, Actor? This is surely your greatest – and quickest – transformation. It was only six days ago that you disembarked from the Yarra Yarra and strode in to the colony with a cool sea breeze at your back, the ship’s skipper, John Lancey, by your side. Lancey may have been the captain of the boat that carried Johnny Fawkner’s team of first settlers to Port Phillip but he never let the man’s bile affect his view of you. He took you to a local bank to cash a cheque and by the time you arrived at the Duchess of Kent for a little light refreshment, word had already spread through town that the Wild White Man had arrived and was looking to settle down. So many people wanting to catch a glimpse of you, to confirm with their own eyes that you actually do exist and have not been a figment of the imagination of men like William Lushington Goodwin.
You have woken this morning at the home of William Cutts, the licensee of the Black Swan hotel, a man who has been kind enough to give you somewhere to stay for a few weeks until you find your bearings. The news is already spreading about your coming appearance.
Well, that won’t be happening, will it?
You quickly let it be known you will not be up on stage ‘exhibited as the huge Anglo-Australian giant’. Damn thing sounds like a freak show and haven’t you just spent two years trying to escape from one? The news is relayed ‘very much to the mortification’ of Moses, who now has to find another lumbering figure to play the role of the Giant Hacho. But Moses is a professional and of course he will find a way to get on with the show.
But if William Buckley is a man who cannot escape his past, so too is John Moses. A few months after the premiere of The Wood Demon, Moses discovers one of his actresses has stolen two valuable stage dresses. The matter goes to court and after a lengthy debate Moses decides to withdraw the charges when it becomes clear he can’t win the case.
The Colonial Times no longer has any sympathy for Mr Moses. Once again it is time to poke fun at his Jewishness and dwell in some good old-fashioned racism of the era. It quotes Moses telling the court that the dresses were valuable and had been worn by a duchess at Queen Victoria’s recent coronation: ‘Dey ver vort eight coinees and ver vorn by a Tuchess at the Queen’s crownashun.’
Just in case the reader is in any doubt about the man’s heritage, the Times ends its report by saying he would like his stolen property to be returned. ‘Vell, vell, I am shatisfied,’ he is quoted. ‘Let me have my trasses.’