The Profilist

by Adrian Mitchell

  With the series advertised, I have been in a position to find other useful contracts, devising the covers and title pages for books, for instance, and even advertisements for the publisher and the stationer where I display my work. And just as I had hoped, in very short order clients have begun to seek me out. A French gentleman, Monsieur Noufflard, a wool broker in fact and a beginning collector of paintings, asked me to undertake eight sketches of his house, a modest but pleasant establishment not far from old Government House. He has already acquired a scene of the harbour by Martens, which suggests very good judgement on his part. But horror of horrors, also one by Flute. There can be no accounting for taste.

  I was the more attracted to the undertaking just because his quarters were so modest, and because he is very clearly independent of any of the cliques that so irritate me. He keeps to himself, a busy man and possibly disappointed with his life here. I did not venture to enquire, but I noticed that while his little daughter was in the care of a housekeeper, there was no trace of a wife, nor mention of one either; and I was not going to ask the question. Indeed, when I sketched the main bedroom, I noted his trombone leaning in the corner, not in its case, and I venture to think that no wife would tolerate that. Whatever the story here, and however poignant or fraught it may have been, was not my business. But I could not resist including the little girl standing politely if somewhat sadly in the kitchen with the housekeeper; and I noticed that the table there was set for just one person.

  What should have been the dining room had been given over to the broker’s office, and there he and his clerk have settled in together with numerous crates and cartons, and the dining table has been moved into the drawing room. It is a bachelor’s kind of arrangement, a making do. I should know, I lived somewhat that way myself for close to fifteen years. The lack of pretensions spills over to the courtyard at the rear, where the bullock teams draw in, and the bales of wool are stacked on a verandah, awaiting shipment. I watched a large black-and-white cat creeping up on some large black-and-white magpies. They are confident enough not to be skittish about a cat’s presence, though they keep their eye on him.

  Magpies prefer to present themselves in profile.

  The truth of the Frenchman’s establishment lies indoors and at the back. It is plain, and it serves its purpose well enough; but it was not a home, or only for the time being. At the front is a different aspect, a fine-looking brick house with eight square-paned windows across its upper storey, and a wrought-iron fence, and a wide flagstone verandah, off which there is access to the gentleman’s office, and a separate entrance to the residence. There are intimations of wealth and taste and status here. Across the road are horse stables, which tells that this is not after all the finest location.

  My patron left it to me to draw whatever took my eye, but so as to represent the house, by which I took him to mean the household as a whole. For anyone else—the somewhat complacent wealthy settlers and shareholders in Adelaide for example—it was customarily enough to display the exterior of the house in its grounds. Here the grounds amounted to a small garden of native plants between the fence and the verandah. Clearly this was a different kind of commission, and intriguing. He seemed well pleased with my effort.

  I have made occasional chance encounters, at race meetings for example, where once I met with a delightful young local woman, not much more than a girl really, but already fully self-confident and yet beguilingly without airs. She permitted me to sketch a portrait, one of the best pencil drawings I have done, a quick full-length figure quarter turned towards me, in her riding habit and, for my own amusement, holding my riding crop. It is well for me that her mother, who made sure that she kept close by while I worked, did not understand the allusion. It was right and proper that the dear mama should be there, though given that I have become a little stout, even portly, in the last year or two, I am more likely to be a danger to myself than to the fair young miss. I worked up the sketch into a coloured portrait and delivered it to the address they gave me; and that was a useful fee too, as well as a pleasure. Elizabeth did not seem disposed to share in it with me.

  I had been keeping my hand in with sketches of my old favourites, the horses, of course, and this as it turns out led to another unfortunate event. In yet one more of those intercolonial rivalries, a group of backers of what was considered the Victorian champion, Alice Hawthorne, were trumpeting the accomplishment of their mare and let it be known that they would race her over three miles against any challenger. And the owner of the crack galloper here in Sydney, Veno, took up the challenge.

  The toss of a coin (there it is again—how many decisions in life are made in such a flippant manner. If I may coin a phrase for the occasion) determined that the Sydney horse must travel to Melbourne for the race, and so of course the Sydney papers were keen to offer a full report. One of the sporting papers approached me, knowing that I had a special enthusiasm not only for the horses, but for drawing them too, and commissioned me to work up a sketch of a close finish, so that it would be ready for when the reports were relayed back from the south. And that is what I did.

  The race was run at Flemington, which I knew very well indeed, and won handsomely by the Sydney champion, by a good three lengths. There were loud acclamations in the local press and in the streets, of course. And my illustration supported the liveliness of the reports. The sporting paper which had retained me was well satisfied with my work, even though I had depicted a much closer tussle than it turned out; and I had my fee. Which ought to have been a very satisfactory result all round.

  However, a rival paper published remarks soon after to the effect that my picture was an engraving of other horses and drawn in advance of the result being known; my paper sued for libel, and the matter proceeded to the courts. The owner of Veno and the jockey both testified that the picture in the paper was nothing like Veno. How embarrassing that was! For the truth of the matter was that I had never actually seen the horse, nor the Melbourne mare either, and had drawn them from such descriptions as I had been able to garner. And when I was called to the witness box I was forced to acknowledge as much by the questions of the lawyer for the other paper. It was all too vivid a reminder of my unhappy summons to court in Adelaide. I was able to insist that it was my own drawing, and no copy (as they alleged); and that because I could not know the outcome in advance I had merely drawn the two horses neck and neck at some imagined stage in the race, not at the finishing line as they were erroneously claiming.

  There was much general laughter at my discomfiture, especially when the cross-examining lawyer sneered ‘in Veno veritas, hey Mr Dibble?’ I need not explain the impertinence of that. The judge was not pleased with the witticism. Perhaps he had been planning to say it himself in his summing up. The law is like that. They are all in a race of their own.

  The jury decided against us, the sporting paper was not disposed to use my services again, and the rival paper, where I had previously placed notices of my books of sketches and the like, frowned at me too. All in all I lost out considerably by this public humiliation; and yet I had intended no deception, nor was I deceiving myself. I had simply done the best I could. Anyone who knows me would know that to be true.

  And of course our troubles never come singly. I was showing the stationer some of my sketches of the Victorian goldfields, and speaking of doing something of the same kind here; and he remembered that there had been a series of prints of the New South Wales fields when gold was first discovered just past Bathurst. Who do you imagine those were by? Why, none other than my old bête noire, a horse of another colour, the ineffable Flute—confound him. He is always in my way. More so than I properly understood, for it appears, from what my informant said, that he does not live far from me. He has a suite of rooms in the museum, where he is the resident secretary and accountant; which to me means a glorified clerk, but he could not admit that, even to himself.

  How often does it happen that someone you haven’t seen, or even thought of,
for years and years is no sooner mentioned than (speak of the devil) he turns up right in front of you. On the open ground of Hyde Park. This is at the upper end of the township, where the churches are building their cathedrals and where the law courts are centred. It is not at all like the patches of scrub that I remember throughout Adelaide, or the jumble of Melbourne. There has been a very considerable effort to impose orderliness here.

  I was crossing towards the town, and he was coming right towards me, strolling towards the museum. There could be no sudden turning away in such a situation. I might have ventured on more bravely, but I was, I confess, somewhat crestfallen, discomfited by reason of my recent misfortune. I think I would rather avoid the courts, given a choice about it. The fantastical Flute was chock-full of aplomb, as I recall was his wont. His nose was in the air; out there in the open, with just the two of us walking towards each other, he refused to notice me. It was utterly ridiculous. He was utterly ridiculous. That made me laugh, although it is inconvenient that the museum is close by. The wonder is that our strange encounter has not happened before this. Perhaps he has been gadding about with his impeccable china paintbox.

  Sketch 13

  In which everything is churned up

  I HEAR THAT Captain Strutt is at it again. He has applied to be made Governor of the new colony of Queensland. The fellow is preposterous. He has no sense of modesty, apparently. Decent, no doubt, though I am sure the men who rowed him all the way back up the river would have wished him to lend a hand at an oar from time to time, instead of sitting in the sheets and dithering with his charts.

  There is a question about his capability now, after damaging his health and his vision in the centre of the desert. He might think of such an appointment as a fitting reward for his exertions, but there is much active work to be done in the forming of these new colonies. If he imagines putting himself out to pasture there, it most surely cannot be in any official capacity.

  And Flute has decamped. Resigned, thrown in the towel. It is a splendid story. Apparently the curator at the museum insisted on allowing his dog the freedom of the museum, which led to frequent fouling of the main stairs; and that led to a confrontation with the Trustees, and resulted in Flute taking on the responsibilities of curator as well. Not to mention occasional necessary cleaner. The Governor, who was also the most influential of the Trustees, determined on closer acquaintance that Flute was insufficiently qualified to hold this position, and funds were found for a new director at a salary well above his.

  Flute could not endure the slighting of his abilities, nor the slight upon his value, and he has resigned forthwith. Tootled. Hurrah. Now that is what comes of having a seasoned and perceptive governor, one able to take decisive action. Captain Strutt would not have been up to the occasion. His more successful competitor, Governor Grey, seemed on the other hand to like the toady. There is, as I have observed elsewhere, no accounting for taste.

  Of Governor Grey, there too is a story to tell. He served a term in New Zealand, and then in South Africa; and the gossip of the moment is that he has dismissed his difficult wife. Packed her off, so to speak, for he was affronted by her intolerable behaviour in developing over-friendly relations with Sir Harry Keppel in Cape Town, while the commodore was in port. Indeed, Grey says quite bluntly that Sir Harry had stolen his wife’s affections, though from what I remember of her Sir Harry would have been hard put to it to discover any such warmth in that frigid woman. It must have been the cocked hat and epaulettes. And his red hair.

  She has sailed off to England, and I can imagine Governor Grey washing his hands of her. Though to be fair, he was no more lovable than was she. But that reminded me of how closely Flute kept fluttering around young Mrs Grey. Surely there could be no connection between these two extraordinary events? Flute would have enough self-conceit to imagine it.

  The racecourse at Randwick has reopened. I wonder if it will answer, being such a sandy track. Just think, if this had happened a year or two back, I might have had a chance to see the mighty Veno for myself. Homebush is too far out of the way for me. The crowds have surged in support of the racing at Randwick—for the last ten or twenty years it has been used only as a training track. One peculiarity here is that the horses race the other way round from Melbourne. That did not seem to have disadvantaged the mighty Veno. What a horse. I find that my recent discomfiture has rather taken the gloss off my drawing; however, I still take a flyer from time to time on an outside chance.

  With Flute out of the way, I have been turning my thoughts towards the interior, to the goldfields over the mountains. As Mrs Dibble keeps pointing out, that is what I was best known for in Melbourne, my drawings of the diggings, and while I was doing well enough we were not exactly flush in our circumstances. I don’t know how it was, but there never seemed to be enough earnings to make us comfortable. My wife would sometimes take the liberty of saying sour things about horses, and about taverns. Look, she would say, I have barely two pennies to rub together. I am at a loss to know what she does with our money. I do not like a complaining wife. It makes for disharmony and awkwardness.

  With her encouragement, and with my publisher seconding the motion, it was soon arranged for me to take the road across the mountain range to Bathurst, and from there on to the Turon valley, where great discoveries have been reported, from Sofala and Wattle Flat and Bald Hill. Because I am no longer the young man I once was, I took the coach. And no longer being the young man I was, I was ineligible for a seat on the top. Inside for the likes of me. That was quite a squeeze; we were clumped in like so many potatoes in a bag.

  At first the coach wheels ground slowly along, bumping over the crushed grit of the road surface but then, once free of the town, we clattered along at a good pace along the great western road, with post-and-rail fences on each side and cleared fields. Well, nearly cleared—there were still sad-looking ringbarked gum trees standing gaunt and forlorn in those new-made paddocks, but all the brush had been gathered together and burned off.

  We wound our way more slowly of course up the escarpment; and from the heights I had a good view of the far-stretching ranges and the deep valleys winding away towards bold cliffs, and vast forests sweeping up towards them. The skies are a deceptively bright blue, deceptive because there is not the warmth you might expect with that light. Haze of a more subdued blue hovers over the forests, and becomes a kind of mist along the ridges. The rock faces across the valleys vary from terra cotta to burnt sienna; and those valleys, marked out by steep walls, are all dark green. Along the edges of the road the trees are festooned with strings of long dry fine bark. Everywhere parrots and cockatoos, especially those raucous white furies with yellow crests that shriek all sorts of vile execrations at us as we pass by. Which in itself is sufficient to identify them as native to the colony.

  At some stage, when the journey had already become quite long enough, we began our descent down the western slope of the mountains, at one time over a frighteningly narrow pass. Along the way whenever the road allowed, we passed bullock teams dragging a log of wood behind them to help arrest their pace. That does little to improve the surface of the road. But it does result in a steadily accumulating pile of timber at the bottom of the pass, where those about to ascend in the opposite direction commonly stop to boil up the billy, as they call it, to smoke a pipe and make themselves a cup of tea.

  In spite of the best efforts of Messrs Cobb and co., it was an uncomfortable passage. Their clever leather suspension meant that instead of jolting and lurching we were bumped about in a somewhat disconcerting fashion. As the carriage rocked this way and that we never quite knew when we were going to be pulled up short. There would always be some kind of shock over the stones and potholes, that was only to be expected; but you never knew quite when to expect it. When it came, it was as a delayed jerk rather than a bone-crunching one.

  That however is not altogether what I meant by my uncomfortable passage. I had been suspicious of the returns of certain signs abou
t myself that I thought had been dealt with in Adelaide. Let me just say that not all the marks on my face were ancient scars from my childhood encounter with smallpox. Indeed, that was one of the rare occasions on which I could be grateful for those marks.

  I could not account for the recurrence of my hidden symptoms, as I knew that I had been faithful to Elizabeth ever since we became acquainted. At first I thought they might just go away again, as they had in the past, in Adelaide; and of course I was diffident about presenting myself to what Trumble would have called a pox-doctor. Got the blue boar, hey? Hor hor hor.

  There was very little I could do about my troubles in the coach, except to take advantage of whatever relief stops were made along the way. Undoubtedly there would be a sawbones or two on the goldfields—not least because the kind of anxiety I was envisaging was common enough among the Victorian diggers, and I did not suppose the moiling and toiling hordes here would be any more restrained in such personal matters. If my condition worsened I was sure I would find rough and ready medical assistance. But perhaps I could ease myself through this evident recurrence; I had found by past experience that the pain was not so severe when I kept alternating porter and spirits. For the time being, I would watch and wait. And sit tight.

  Bathurst is a major supply centre for all the different goldfields hereabouts, with large stores and warehouses and foundries, and any number of wheelbarrows. Would-be diggers arriving from Sydney, as had I, bought what equipment they thought they might need—saws and buckets and picks and axes and the like—and if they could not carry their purchases they loaded them into a barrow and trundled off along the track to the diggings. Most of course had set out from Sydney in their own overloaded drays. I chose to follow the bridle trail up from the plains into the hills, and then over the ridge and down along the valley, or halfway down to be more exact.