Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  However, when he heard of Robert’s marriage, he feared that Robert would be forever stuck in Knockaleery, always in poverty, forever dependent on Father. He doubted that Father would allow Robert to come, but he still asked for him, for the wife could follow later and the disgrace would be forgotten. And it would give Robert the independence he so needed. For much as he loved his father, William was glad of his own independence. It was something that he had never dreamed of in Knockaleery, but that he now valued very high indeed.

  He had considerable money laid by, and his next enterprise came to him by chance, the way so many things happened on the field. He was on Main Street one Saturday night, when he met William McCrae, an Ulsterman like himself, with whom he had been engaged in bringing up some drays to Ballarat. William brought supplies of various types by dray, but McCrae brought grog onto the field, which required payments to the police, since sly grogging was illegal.

  William and McCrae went for a drink at a grog shop and started talking about the new hotel licences that were to be issued by the government in an attempt to stamp out sly grogging. They looked round the dingy place where they were drinking, with its rough timber walls and greasy tables, and talked of what was required in a good hotel and how a place could be given class.

  ‘It’s a disgrace that men with means should not have a comfortable and clean bed,’ said McCrae, ‘but rather some flea-ridden dosshouse that serves slop and provides no comfort.’

  ‘And the diggers need a fine place to drink, with the best liqueurs,’ said William, ‘for there’s much profit to be made there. And a fiddler for entertainment, decent card tables and a pretty girl serving, for such a girl attracts the customers and keeps order too, as well as being an ornament.’

  ‘And a fine cedar bar, with fine drinking vessels,’ said McCrae. ‘It is a disgrace, what passes for a drinking place on the field.’

  ‘Maybe we should open such an establishment and provide the best of everything,’ said William, ‘for such a place is much wanted. And I’ve been looking for somewhere to lay my money.’

  ‘We will be partners,’ said McCrae, ‘for it would be a grand thing, two Irishmen, both having the means. And you have the skill of calculation while I, if I say so meself, drive a hard bargain.’

  By this time, both having consumed a considerable quantity of alcohol, there seemed no impediment to the thing, and they shook hands upon it and agreed theirs would be an excellent partnership.

  ‘You would be a fine host,’ said McCrae. ‘You seem to have ease in your nature, so men would wish to patronise your establishment.’

  ‘And yourself being a large and heavy man is something of an advantage in a bar also,’ said William. At which McCrae laughed and they decided that they would apply for a licence, find a site, engage builders and set about the business of being hotel keepers.

  By the middle of 1854, the two of them were in possession of a hotel licence and in the process of construction on an excellent site on Main Street. The construction was complicated by the price of timber, nails and every other material which went into a hotel. There was an irritating shortage of door handles, as well as the shortage of labour and time to get it all done. All of this buzzed through William’s head, and he and McCrae were constantly solving all the problems that arose in a day. They were like-minded, energetic and cheerful, so as well as being an agreeable partnership, there was a considerable amount of friendship there. It made William happy to be so energetically involved, for although he had loved the digger’s life, he had by now tired of digging. The Star Hotel was taking shape day by day and sometimes William could barely believe this place, with its stables, the bar and fine bedrooms, was half his. It seemed a very fine thing, that a man of twenty-four years such as himself, who had come to this colony with nothing, might now own a hotel. It felt wondrous to create such a thing and, as it progressed, he felt able to woo Bridget with more confidence.

  Bridget Byrne now allowed him as one of her suitors. There were other diggers and commercial men who courted her, but almost against her will, for although she hated to cut off any possibility, she found she liked Billy Irwin above the rest of them. She liked the ease that went along with his energy; she liked the way he never lost his temper; she liked that he could sing and dance, and that he laughed at her stories.

  William had told Bridget many times that he wished to marry her, and as they walked out one Sunday past the Chinese Village to where the track went into the bush, he mentioned it again.

  ‘I’m in no rush to get married, Billy Irwin,’ she said. She’d given him the name Billy, so now it was how he was known. ‘I don’t want to be a slave.’

  ‘Why would you be a slave if you marry me? I’d treat you well.’

  ‘So they all say,’ she said. ‘But what’s the truth of marriage for a woman? It’s all child-bearing and child-rearing and sweeping out the house. I’d go mad, completely mad, I tell you.’

  He laughed. She was such an odd girl. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘I’d like some money on my own account. I’d like to run a little shop.’

  She always amazed him. ‘What sort of a shop?’

  ‘I think selling hats to gentlemen would be satisfying.’

  ‘Hats?’

  ‘Well, better than selling hats to ladies, don’t you think? The men complain less and they have more money.’

  ‘Bridget!’

  ‘Maybe a theatre.’ She danced around him. ‘I did like it when you took me to the circus. And that pageant at Coleman’s was something, wasn’t it?’

  It had been one occasion when she had been truly entertained. She had a reputation for being hard to please, and she never pretended that she wasn’t.

  ‘Our new hotel is coming on fine and I’ve been thinking I’ll be putting a concert hall to one end,’ said William. He had been tossing it up, wondering if a concert hall would pay, and how he would run such a thing. McCrae told William that he would have to put up the money himself, for McCrae was suspicious of such things. Now, he made the decision in favour of it, just to please her, although he knew it was no way to make such decisions. ‘You can come every night, provided it’s suitable for ladies.’

  ‘I hope you’d only have performances suitable for ladies such as me, Billy Irwin.’

  ‘Our hotel will be a high-class house. We’ll have ice from the American lakes, oysters in the season, a violinist in the lounge, all kinds of fruit, fine stables and coaching facilities . . .’

  ‘I’m not a customer you need to be convincing. I only run a tea stall, you know. You wouldn’t want to be getting so far above me.’

  William sighed at the wonder of her. She wanted him ambitious, she wanted him rich; she didn’t want him too fancy; she didn’t like his beard; she liked his cabbage tree hat; she thought he should have a gold watch; she wouldn’t have him spit in the street. She might have spun him round and round and stood him on his head, and wrapped him in ribbons, tied him with rope, dunked him in the creek and let him free again for all he knew what was happening to him. She mystified and enchanted him. He knew there were other women who wanted him, simpler, easier women who would not confuse him so much, but it was Bridget he wanted; he could not let go of his wanting.

  ‘Did you hear of the Scottie lass married the Chinese?’ he asked. ‘Can you believe it?’ It seemed like a simple subject that all agreed on, a subject that might give him some respite.

  ‘I can believe it.’ Bridget looked at him with a challenge in her face. ‘She, poor girl, was with child, an Englishman’s child. And everyone was ready to scorn her on account of that, never mind the Englishman at all. He ran away on account of being married, which he’d never seen worth his while to mention. And the celestial was like a brother to that woman, so kind that she began to think he was better than the Englishman. So, yes, I can believe the Scottish lass married the celestial.’

  He was horrified. She was so contrary. ‘They aren’t like us at all, the celestials,’ he said
, appealing to the common opinion. But he thought of his father’s letter, berating Robert for marrying Jane Cander. Marriage was a serious thing for a man like Robert with nothing behind him, dependent on Father, but Jane had been pregnant like the Scottish lass. Would his father have really thought it better for Robert to run off? ‘They’re a different race entirely, the celestials,’ he said. ‘Heathens for a start. Not like us.’

  ‘Not like us that they don’t run off and leave a girl in waiting, maybe,’ said Bridget.

  ‘I imagine there’s been plenty of Chinamen left a woman in distress,’ said William. ‘And they pick over the mud when all the work has been done,’ he added lamely.

  It was generally agreed that the way the Chinese worked the fields was a bad thing, although it was hard to say exactly why. It just seemed to William that with their strange language and their long pigtails they never fitted in with the rest, who were a diverse lot, being men of all nations, and all religions – the Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Welsh Methodists, the Wesleyans and the Jews. Even the Muslim hawkers seemed less different than the Chinese. The Chinese settled and traded and did the things others did, but were not like them.

  ‘They’re not so different that I don’t see everybody eating at John Alloo’s Chinese eating house,’ said Bridget. ‘Or some taking to the Chinaman’s opium. I imagine, except for the pigtails, they’re much like any man on a dark night.’

  ‘You wouldn’t marry a Chinese, would you?’

  ‘I told you, I’m not marrying anyone at all.’ But despite that assertion, and despite his heat at her sticking up for the Scottish girl who had married the celestial, which he could not reconcile himself to, when they reached a place in the bush which was shaded and where the stream ran clear, she allowed him to kiss her in a way that drove him nearly wild. She allowed that she would accept his invitation to a dance the next month, leaving him so excited that he sent a little less money to his family at Knockaleery, and the next week went to the tailor in Main Street, two doors from where his hotel was being built, to order himself a new suit.

  Main Street provided everything a man might need, and was the liveliest place of business William had ever known. It was certainly the best place to get a suit of fine Scotch wool with a silk-lined waistcoat.

  The little Cornish tailor was busy taking measurements and sticking in pins, running between booths with his tape measure around his neck and a mouth full of pins so he could fit his two customers at the same time.

  ‘You’ve a fine head of hair, Mr Irwin,’ said the little tailor, ‘which will set off this suit very nicely.’ William was embarrassed by the compliment, but the Cornish tailor continued, ‘I’d be thinking this gold silk paisley pattern for the lining of the weskit. To go with your golden locks. And I have especially fine bone buttons from Ireland, which an Irishman like yourself would appreciate.’

  It was at this moment the other customer stepped from his changing booth. He was wearing the long underwear of the diggers and a pinned-up coat. ‘You just told me,’ he said with good humour, ‘that the bone buttons were Welsh.’ He winked at William. ‘Which I appreciated, being Welsh myself. And if I’m not mistaken, you remarked that the yellow paisley silk would also set off my dark beard.’

  ‘So it will, so it will,’ said the tailor, taking the measurement of William’s leg, ‘and the Irish gentleman’s gold locks too. It complements any complexion at all.’

  William Irwin and John Basson Humffray introduced themselves and agreed they did not wish to step out in matching suits, whereupon the tailor confessed to only having the gold paisley silk until the dray arrived from Geelong the following week.

  ‘I was hoping to take my girl dancing this Saturday,’ said William. ‘And she’s been mighty hard to get this far.’

  ‘In that case, you must have the gold paisley waistcoat,’ said Humffray. ‘I am content to wait for next week’s dray.’

  Somehow, this understanding about the waistcoat extended to the street, where it extended to a glass of whisky, and then another. They spoke at length of all sorts of things. Humffray had more education than William, and a political education in particular, his father having been an active Chartist in England.

  ‘We’ve got to have manhood suffrage so every adult man has a voice in his own government,’ Humffray proclaimed.

  ‘You don’t think a man needs a certain amount of property to vote?’ asked William. ‘Not as much as the squatters, but some?’

  Humffray did not think so and explained his point very clearly. They talked on, with William asking many questions and getting a clear explanation of Humffray’s opinions and ideas, which, upon examination, were opinions and ideas he agreed with. He had thought a lot about the injustices on the field, without seeing any remedy, but John Humffray knew how such ideas should be framed and how they should be presented to the government.

  ‘Liberty,’ said Humffray, ‘isn’t a modern idea. It is the oldest and most fundamental of our rights, however badly it has been trampled on. The ancient philosopher Aristotle himself wrote of the importance of liberty.’ And he explained it in a way that took William back to the old Knockaleery schoolhouse, where Mr McNickle had spoken of such things.

  And there were things over that first whisky that came from William, in that he understood the more everyday passions of men, both good and bad, serious and light.

  ‘How is it,’ William asked, ‘that you introduce yourself as John Basson Humffray?’

  ‘Basson is my mother’s name and I like to give it due weight,’ Humffray said.

  ‘Ah,’ said William, getting them both another whisky. ‘I’m from a poor family myself. We have only a few names available, so we only get one each. Even then, if there are too many children in a poor Irish family and we’ve used up Joseph and William and Robert and James and John, the little ones might need to be called Jimmy or Billy or Bob and such.’ He said it so seriously and John Basson Humffray looked at him in such bewilderment that William started laughing.

  ‘It’s a joke, John, a joke.’ And Humffray laughed with him, and heartily, but the same thing occurred at other times in their friendship, because Humffray did not have humour foremost in his mind. And he did not understand that men had to laugh at death and suffering because, for all their tragedy, they were comical too. William, being Irish, had the understanding in him quite naturally.

  Over time, Humffray took him through the arguments for universal suffrage, payment of members of parliament and how power must come from the people. Not even the Queen was above that. She was the representative of the people and must bow to their sovereignty. And William was able to question and quiz him, and put his objections, with Humffray never dismissing him, but listening and arguing as an equal. William found that those sentiments and feelings he had nursed since he had been on the goldfields concurred with these political ideals. He now called himself a democrat with confidence, believing the rights of individual men must be equal, not depending on their inheritance, position or wealth. McCrae also took a great liking to Humffray and the three of them talked often of the politics of the goldfields and the wider principles of liberty and equality.

  ‘The principles are not a matter of circumstance,’ said Humffray. ‘It’s the moral force of the argument. It’s not to do with the times, but to do with the most natural laws by which man should live. My father brought me up to it. Here on the goldfields men can see how they are meant to live free and they see how natural justice and liberty is being oppressed by the tyranny of this government, with its licence fee and corruption.’

  Humffray was inclined to speechifying, even when his co-conversationalists agreed with him. With rising anger at the corruption of the police, many people listened to him. The gold-fields were rich, rich beyond measure, but that richness took skill and organisation and capital to exploit. A party might be digging for months to find the lead, at the same time shepherding five or six claims, and in dispute with other parties, with no guaranteed prize
at the end of it, sometimes just the heartbreak of hitting a shicer and seeing all their work go for nothing. But the troopers who collected the licence fee – traps, as they were known – found quick money in corruption. They loved the cheap glory of the gold braid of the uniform and revelled in the petty power of driving a free man at the point of a bayonet. Behind them was the hand of the colonial government, and behind that, the British government and, ultimately, the Queen.

  William was greatly influenced by Humffray. It seemed to him that the police and troops assumed a superiority that they felt gave them the right to act above the law and to treat men worse than dogs. For William, democracy meant that all must have rights, that the rule of law must stand, that the law must be just. In those circumstances only was loyalty due to the Crown.

  CHAPTER 6

  On the day the Star Hotel opened, it was all rush and bother. The front of the hotel on Main Street was a fine wooden façade, the bar was capacious, and there were several snug parlours, but the back bedrooms were not yet completed, although somehow most of them had been let. The stables which were to be used by the coach service had been pilfered, all the buckets taken, so more had to be bought. Cook was threatening to leave and the chambermaid was in tears. The grog was stuck on the road due to bad weather, so they had to come to an agreement with the Charlie Napier Hotel, another new Main Street hotel. But by evening, with the bar buzzing, William was busy pouring drinks and welcoming all. Here it was, William thought, all the companionship and good cheer between men who worked together, and now drank and talked, with an Irish fiddler striking up a tune.