Sketch 16
In which I stumble upon a home truth

FORTUNE’S TRUCKLE WHEEL squeals and turns about, and for some comes to a shuddering halt. After his troubles in South Africa, Captain Grey has now been dismissed from his second appointment as Governor of New Zealand. He has been too high-handed. He was always too high-handed. And old Governor Gawler, over whom he leap-frogged all those years ago, has died of pneumonia back in Portsmouth. Captain Strutt is another who turned back home. Because he could not win an appointment as governor of somewhere, anywhere, he set about seeking a knighthood. And died before the formalities were completed; disappointed. Though that is in its own way as complete a formality as I can think of.

The wild colonial boys have met no better fate. Captain Thunderbolt, who had been carrying out raids all about the northern interior of New South Wales, has been shot by police. He had been too successful.

Much closer to home, poor Adam Lindsay Gordon shot himself on the beach at Brighton, on the very morning that his book of poems was published. I have been down in the depths myself but never that deeply. I do not know whether his suicide speaks of nerve, or loss of nerve. Either way, it shocked us all greatly.

And unhappy Henry Kendall, doing his best to drink himself to death. Now that I do understand. Like him, I have found a good close friend in the company of my tumbler. Tumbler. Yes, a truer word than at first appears.

Gordon and Kendall were members of that band of Bohemians, the Yorick club, more in the way of prentice gravediggers I suggest than fully subscribed members. Especially Kendall who, more than most of the would-be free spirits about town, was hard-pressed for funds to sustain himself and his young family. Their leading light is Marcus Clarke, a slender man and younger than the others, but like a bantam rooster his aim has been to overcrow everyone else. Gordon was a towering big fellow, too big and heavy you would have thought to be a competitive rider, for all his reputation. Daring of course, though he used to laugh and say it was the blessing of being short-sighted. Reckless. His revenge on Clarke was to pick him up by the braces and throw him up into the air, even threatening on one occasion to leave him dangling from a nail in a ceiling beam.

I have wondered about Gordon. He used to get crippling headaches. Perhaps that had something to do with his taking his own life.

I have bad headaches too; but I have no intention of going down to Brighton beach at an early hour of the morning.

The boon companions of the Yorick club have their regular haunts and dinners; and on Sunday afternoons they avail themselves of Dr Neild’s hospitality. It was in their company that I met the doctor, a very terrier of a man, with great bushy eyebrows and keen eyes. On my second visit he took the opportunity to invite me, confidentially, to his rooms in Collins Street whenever convenient, for he deduced from my shaking hand that I might benefit from his assistance. We can’t have you smudging your lines, Mr Dibble, said he. He gives medical advice to many of the artists and actors in town, and does not require a fee of us if we are hard up. When we are hard up. He does not always get such courteous treatment in return. He was not amused the evening that Gordon led a pack of well-liquored pranksters on a rampage up and down the street, removing all the brass plates and replacing them with others, finding them what seemed to be a more appropriate address. The doctor’s practice was newly identified as an undertaker’s.

After two or three such invitations—to the doctor’s I mean, not to playing ducks and drakes with the professional men’s brass plates—and at the recommendation of one of the clever young scribblers who came along to the doctor’s salon, if that is what it was, I presented myself one afternoon at his surgery. Where his shingle had been properly reinstated. He tested my tremors and asked about my headaches, listened to my heartbeat and looked inside my mouth—and recoiled from my bad breath. Pushed and prodded as doctors do, and ummed and aahed. And could not tell me anything I did not already suspect, that Doyle’s ministrations in Sydney had done very little for me. I did not need a doctor to inform me that I have been losing weight. And that I tire easily. I know I am not the man I used to be. I am become a mere shadow of myself.

At least Neild provided some medications that I understood. Potassium and iodine; he preferred to do without mercury. To dispense with it. But bless me, he wants me to go to the Turkish baths too, recommends particularly Hosie’s Turkish Bathing Palace and Bar.

Dr Neild may have a sly sense of how to bait me, because that is a title with an inviting codicil; and it is in the east end of Bourke Street, which has become my particular part of town. I’ll think about it. And promise nothing.

I do not take well to young Mr Clarke. He intimidates me. He is very clever, but he exercises that cleverness to amuse himself, and is not always careful to avoid mockery for a quip. I was diffident about approaching the Library to propose a revised and larger selection of my sketches than previously; and the more embarrassed when the Board of Trustees declined the honour, as their letter expressed it, for the rejection was written by Clarke, who is their secretary. He has an office in the Public Library, and his custom is to leave the remnant of his cigar smouldering in the guardian lion’s mouth when he returns from lunch. That is how he signals that he is in. An apt and typically amusing complement to the symbol of British sovereignty. Ashes to ashes.

There was nothing in his letter to object to; it was perfectly formal. But it was that very formality that felt like a rebuff. Not a whiff of friendliness or a hint that he knew very well who I am, either in a personal or a professional sense. It seems I am a nobody.

Just when you think you have arrived, you are reminded that it is still no more than a promise.

When I reflect a little on this turn of events, it occurs to me that at the time of my earlier album, the Library had wanted my material for its historical record of the diggings, they were not interested in my art. Chastening mistake. And now this subsequent rejection means that in their view public interest had moved on from the colourful goldfields era.

The current fashion is for steel engravings, in black and white. I have been noticing that there is no longer such a ready sale for my hand-tinted lithographs. Is my time now passed? Clearly they think it the past. I have nothing new to offer. If they are interested in anything of mine, it is only in what I have already done; more of it.

And how ironic, that the wheel has come full circle, and we are back with the black and white of my silhouettes. Which I have to say on artistic grounds are preferable to the modern fashion, for they invite the imagination. This new fashion of engravings is all very fine, but appears oppressive; too dark by not being black enough. Colourless, like a ship’s cabin.

Some of my own sketches have appeared in the newspapers in this form, and while I am pleased to see them there, I cannot say that I am pleased with their appearance. They come out too dark. Though sometimes that effect is, unwittingly, appropriate—as with pictures of trains and tugs and other such engines belching out their smoke. One of my pictures is of a pretty bend in the river Yarra Yarra, with horses grazing under the trees on one side, and a bank of willows and reeds and shrubs on the other, and a man and a boy in a boat pushing themselves out into the stream, all very pleasant, even idyllic. But coming round the bend is a paddlewheeler, thick black smoke puffing away—Woolloomooloo?—and the paddles splashing, and scaring off the ducks, and spoiling everything for everyone else. It is the steamer that runs from Melbourne up to the Cremorne Gardens, which Coppin used to own, the pleasure grounds. I have drawn a black bottle bobbing in the water, hinting at how close the scene is to the Gardens. That is the kind of pleasure most people understand.

It is now a private lunatic asylum.

Coppin has had other fish to fry. He won back the control he had lost of the Theatre Royal; and just recently it burned to the ground. He has no luck with fire. With his usual energy he has determined on rebuilding, bigger and better. His old Olympic Theatre, the unforgettable Iron Pot, was closed and then converted to a Turkish baths, and it too burned to the ground. Which seems something of a surprise, given the building’s basic material, and equally given all that watery content. I cannot imagine the furnace had to be stoked up as the Iron Pot was itself famously a furnace. And proved it was so right to the end.

The new Theatre Royal will be a showpiece in itself, and undoubtedly will compete with whatever is staged there. The crowds seem to think all that plaster and gilt is their proper sphere, and are delighted as well as astonished at how quickly the new theatre is being constructed. Coppin is like a conjuror. You wonder how he performs his trick. But there it is. Until the next animating spark brings down the house.

No need for another iron pot or cauldron, as the Turkish Bathing Palace so recommended by Dr Neild is just a little further down Bourke Street. Convenient for Coppin to pop in there whenever necessary or desirable. Hosie’s is quite a superior establishment, and patronised by all the important people. Not only Coppin sits around the edge of the hot pool wearing his mandatory cloth fig leaf—he must be well at home with that, not much different from his Freemason’s apron—but so do the superintendent of police and Sir Redmond Barry and the town clerk and the prominent preacher the Reverend Ewing, and so on and so forth. Not exactly a set of people I am likely to be comfortable with.

And if they are not sitting on the edge of the pool, with their great pink paunches obscuring the superfluous fig leaf, or walking about and wobbling on their way back to their cubicle, then they have ascended to a favourite meeting place for them all, the balcony area above, where they have a good view of the those who are separating themselves from what Lord Brougham is said to have called the great unwashed. That, more than the company, is what makes me uncomfortable, for they sit up there at their tables and sip at their champagne, and look down upon those of us about to take the plunge, and talk among themselves all the while. It looks like they are taking an advantage by virtue of their superiority. It does not seem proper behaviour; the inequality is too pronounced. It feels offensive. And it looks offensive.

I don’t suppose Coppin talks about theatrical performances. He has taken up politics. He is the body politic on intimidating display. He certainly does not condescend to notice me. He is too busy rehearsing the points of his next speeches.

No more Billy Barlow of course. Or not for the time being. For Billy Barlow has made so many resurrections as to beggar belief.

The baths are no place to sit and sketch the scene, not if you value your reputation. In another way it would be as dangerous as sketching bushrangers. You would be observed paying too much attention. Besides, most men are such grotesques when undressed that they turn themselves into cartoons. For much the same reason that I have chosen not to draw convicts, so here—if the comparison is not too ludicrous—I choose not to draw these fat men, local worthies and civic eminences all, bigwigs, as I have actually seen them. Naked, they are too revealing. They leave nothing for me to interpret. Cartoons, and naked fat men, are vulgar.

I am more at home in the hotels and cafés and pie shops; these are my home in most senses. I took cheap lodgings in the side streets, but as in the old Adelaide days, so here one way or another would come the time when I fell behind with my rent; and I would be asked to move on. The rooms available to me were more and more unsatisfactory, the locations less than desirable, until at the last, near Little Lonsdale Street, I was set upon one evening as I was making my way back to my then current lodging, stumbling on the uneven cobblestones and bumping into unseen bins and barrels.

They were a group of rowdy young ne’er-do-wells, amateur bullies who roam about the lanes and alleys in what they call a push, much like the gangs in the Sydney Rocks. I was jostled about, and then pushed over, and beaten and kicked. Put in the boot, they called out to each other; unnecessarily. I could do nothing other than roll myself up as tight as I could. I could not kick back, which spoiled the fun I suppose. Besides, I had nothing of value in my pockets. They took my pad and pencil, but threw those away into the gutter further up the lane.

I have very little of anything. Only my eyes, when they are not bleary. My aches and pains.

The beating upset me very considerably. Frightened me, to say the truth. I could hardly stand, and I had difficulty in catching my breath again. And I did not know really what to do. It was at this moment that I met George, or rather that he found me, a bluff sturdy figure looming up out of the gloom. Are you right there, mate? says he, which is to say that he could tell I was not.

My groans must have been enough of an answer; for he led me staggering back to his place, a mason’s works as it turned out, at the other end of the city, where he cuts and sculpts ornaments for many of the new buildings springing up all about. There he gave me some warm water to bathe my cuts and grazes, and offered a mug of tea; and then on better reflection, a nobbler of brandy.

A good man. A very present help in time of trouble.

And later, when I was comfortable with several more nobblers, he pulled out a truckle bed at the back of his work shed. I was welcome to stay there for a day or two until I recovered from my bruising.

I had been too overwrought to observe him properly that night. The next day showed him to be about my own age, much more solid in his build. Small clouds of white dust drift from everywhere whenever he moves, most fascinatingly from his heavy eyebrows when he waggles them about. He has dust in the hairs on the back of his hands, and in the long hair behind his ears. He has one misshapen finger, rearranged and spraddled I suppose by years of misdirected heavy pounding, and that is the one he works into his ear from time to time, unplugging those hidden canyons of crushed marble. It would be easy to draw him as a cartoon, but why would you? He is a good Samaritan, as we may understand the term.

He hides his light not under a bushel, but beneath a great sombrero, which supports its own layer of dust. Under it, he is balding, which is always a surprise to see. Like so many of the working men, he also wears a black waistcoat with a shiny satin back. He is himself a study in black and white. All definition.

He revived me. His conversation was not at all what I had expected. He knows a good many of the artists and writers in Melbourne; like Dr Neild, but not so intrusively, he refutes the Psalmist—he does not concede that vain is the help of man. Brother, says he, if we cannot help each other, then where else should we look? What’s the good of us then? He gives succour when it is needed; and he has a stock of good wines which he shares generously. And which he readily refers to whenever the opportunity arises, turning aside from his blocks of marble. Tomorrer is another day, he would observe philosophically, and they’ll still be there. They ain’t going to wilt.

Like Coppin, he seems to know about everyone and everything. That Mr Marcus Clarke was to be declared insolvent for example, in spite of the publication of his serial novel about convicts, His Natural Life. Too many cigars, and too many luncheons, I shouldn’t wonder. He can’t make a go of it either. What will his employer, Judge Barry, have to say about that? This splendidly burgeoning city is kind to lawyers and bank managers, but not to writers and artists. The very country is unkind that way, as I found in both Adelaide and Sydney. I wonder what it is that counts against us? As though we are an inconvenience in all the jostling to get ahead. We do not have a place. We are not vital.

At George’s prompting, I shifted quarters for the time being, from the challenging backstreets to a hotel. He helped me move my few possessions, and we adjourned to the bar and drank to happier times, and my new way of life.

Well, not entirely new, of course. Here, all I have to do is get myself up and down the staircases, easier said than accomplished. Especially at the end of the day. I am out of the wind and the rain that seem such a constant in Melbourne’s weather, and when the heavens are better disposed I walk slowly up and down the length of Bourke Street, and rest whenever I need to.

There are days when I can hardly drag one foot after the other. I can stop and sit in the sun, if there is any, on the ledges at the General Post Office, and talk to all the other loiterers there, or watch the comings and goings of the passing parade. Just as I have always done. On better days I walk further afield; but here I am centrally placed, and yet living inexpensively enough. If or when it should become necessary, I can always remove to a cheaper room, and a cheaper hotel.

I have to say it suits me. I am well placed to visit the offices of those I think might purchase my scenes of Melbourne streets, in which I now pay rather more attention to the buildings themselves, thinking that for example architects might like some of these for their business offices. Other businesses likewise.

In one of my scenes I have drawn the carriage waiting outside the booking office of Cobb and co., and as insurance I made sure that the Albion Hotel next door is much in evidence. I paid particular care to the lettering of the proprietor’s name; and I succeeded in selling to each of them a print—hand-coloured. It is to my advantage that steel engravings look as though the pictures may have been cut from a newspaper. They wanted something better.

The proprietors of the various hotels are kindly disposed, and will often take two or three of the prints I arrive with, on the understanding that with the purchase price I buy my drinks in their bar; and that suits me very well too. I am not disposed to go anywhere else. I am happy to settle down for a few hours, out of the cold.

You might think this a lonely life. No; it is solitary, which is what I have learned to prefer, but not lonely. All those patrons pushing up to the bar, braying at each other, talking up the chances of the sure certainty at next week’s races, snuffling and sometimes guffawing at each other’s long tedious yarns. I do not see the point of those meandering stories; or perhaps I see their meagre point far too early. They fill in the time, they fill up the void; they are empty.

What interests me rather are the different ways people laugh. Some people cannot get started. They quake, and go red in the face but make not a sound until after a vast long breath is drawn in, and then they bellow, or roar, or laugh like a hacking cough. Some people laugh inwards, not outwards, and the note of their laughter goes higher and higher. And some of course have a strident chippy kind of laugh that hurts your ears. They all laugh to show they are laughing, and to earn the right to tell the next joke. The company of clowns.

Or they drone on and on, too loud, standing up too close to each other. Former diggers, many of them, with vulgar rings cutting into their pudgy fingers. These are the kind of loud speakers who never end their sentences but stitch them together with a relentless ‘and’, so that there is no time for any of their drinking companions to break in with a comment of their own. That means that the unfortunate circle is put into the place of an audience. There is no conversation.

All these fine fellows compete against all the other groups of talkers and drinkers, and little by little lift their voice to make themselves heard; and all too soon everyone is shouting. The noise is all but intolerable. It is just like I remember back in Portsmouth, all those silhouettes jerking and waving their arms about, and nobody can make any sense of anything.

The lonelier soaks look incapable of finding any kind of amusement in anything. They lean on the bar counter and twist their glass round and round, staring all the while into a void just over the top of it, and only come back to the present with an involuntary start.

I like to keep my distance; which is not the same thing as keeping my own company. And my pictures are full of voices, or at least they are so to me. Not always saying the kind of things that people might expect.

Somewhat at odds with my earlier principles, I have lately taken to drawing cartoons too, where the fun is more obvious. Those are quick to accomplish and easy to sell. That is their chief point. They are at least good for a drink or two. Needs must, that the devil drives.

For example, one was a figure of a carter in his leather jacket, leaning at his ease against the wheel of his cart, with his hands in his pockets and smirking in a superior way. His wideawake has seen enough of the weather. I called him a Melbourne conveyancer. A quick sketch, just for the fun of it. The line does not have to be too precise; I don’t worry overmuch about holding my hand steady. In a companion sketch, a blind man in a threadbare coat is playing his accordion, with his cane hanging from his arm and his dog alongside looking dejected. In the imprecise background, on the other side of the street, an expensive barouche is passing by in one direction, a gentleman in a silk hat in the other. Which of the two is the Melbourne solicitor?

And another, of an ageing man leaning back against a wall, with a newspaper across his lap and likewise with a disreputable hat, a taller hat this time, and again with his arms folded to suggest he is keeping out the cold, and one leg cocked across his knee, and a bull terrier sitting alongside him, watching the world walk past. They are hoping for a charitable penny or two but not actively seeking it, not expecting it.

Perhaps I should allow it to be a portrait. I put something of myself into it.

I make friends of dogs very easily. They are the kind of company I like to keep. I miss my old dogs. I wonder where Gyp is now. He will have more grey hairs about his muzzle than I do.

And I drew a rather large and imposing cabdriver leading with his fist, demanding his fare from his customer. Who is a dapper young gent in a long coat and silk top hat, and a collar just slightly awry, evidently after a long session at his club, given that disarray and the moon high in the night sky. He is having trouble extracting his purse from his pocket; a well-known type. A fare dispute.

That is the kind of thing that I can turn out readily, as I need to. It does not require careful pencil work. Bold strokes are what is required, and strong lines. A message that comes straight to the point. Unlike those endless stories unreeling in the saloons. A passing joke. Faces from the street.

And with the profits of these very quick sketches, dashed off some of them right there in the bar, I buy myself a little more time, and a little more comfort, until it is time to attempt the staircase. Step by unsteady step.

Unreeling.