VARIETIES OF VICEREGAL LIFE.*
WE cannot conscientiously recommend this book to those who are in search of light reading, for it extends to 1,053 pages, and a great deal of it is taken up with matter of very slight interest. Sir William Denison was Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1846 to 1854; he was then transferred to New South Wales, and remained there about six years, after which he was made Governor of Madras, and held that post for some six years longer. During the interval between the death of Lord Elgin and the arrival of Sir John Lawrence, Sir William acted as Governor- General of India. As Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land he had the charge of Smith O'Brien and his companions. Such an official life may have some considerable variety in itself, and the retrospect must gratify Sir William and his family. It does not necessarily follow that the public will take an equal interest in Sir William's promotion, in his views on secondary punishment, in his troubles with the judges at Hobart Town and with the Ministry at Sydney. But there is one point of view from which this book is highly to be commended. It is one of the frankest that ever was written. There is not a sign of anything that approaches to official reserve. Sir William Denison gives us all his opinions and impressions without stint, tells us what he thought about the state of things in each colony, how he dismissed a judge for not paying his debts and was "wigged" by the Home Government, how for a moment he regretted the speedy arrival of Sir John Lawrence on account of the loaves and fishes, but this little bit of love of mammon speedily vanished. And as if it were not enough to have these confessions from Sir William himself, we are further en- lightened by Lady Denison. The extracts from her journal bring us altogether behind the scenes. Her quickness of observation, her love of harmless mischief, her wish to familiarize the home circle with every detail of a colonial governor's life, her sympathy with her husband's troubles, which does not, however, lessen her wifely right of quizzing him, produce an effect which it is not easy to analyze, but which is none the less enjoyable.
Sir William begins to be frank from the very title-page. His
• Varietia of Viceregal Life. By Sir William Denison, K.C.B, late Governor- General of the Australian Colonies and Governor of Madras. 2 vols. London: Longmans. 1870.
motto from a speech of Talkative in the .Pitgrim's Progress aptly describes his work. He promises a discourse on things heavenly and things earthly, things moral and things evangelical, things sacred and things profane, things past and things to come, things foreign and things at home, things more essential and things circumstantial. How many of these matters come within the strict definition of " Varieties of Viceregal Life " might seem a puzzling question to any other governor than Sir William Denison. But in his book things earthly and things profane no doubt include the management of convicts, the entertainment of Rajahs, the fitness of colonies for representative government, while heavenly and sacred things are represented by controversies with the writers of Essays and Reviews and comments on Bishop Coleuso. These contrasts are brought before us by Sir William's own letters. He writes to the same correspondent about the em- ployment of the Royal Engineers in Italy and the theories of Darwin and Huxley, about the reorganization of the Board of Works and arithmetical attacks on the Pentateuch. Letters to Sir Roderick Murchison about gneiss and laterite and nuinmulitic limestone may naturally be enlivened by skits at Sir Charles Lyell and arguments about the brain of the gorilla. But it seems strange that Sir Charles Wood should be asked, in the middle of a letter on the subject of cotton and native farming, whether he had read Buckle's History of Civilization. When we turn to Lady Denison's journal for further illustrations of her husband's manysidedness, the mélange becomes even more remarkable. 1Ve then have the same Governor-General resisting attempts to swamp the Upper House at Sydney, deciding questions of precedence in favour of " a nice respectable, motherly old lady " who turned out to be under a cloud, bursting into exclamations of rapture at the sight of a street Punch in Australia, and lecturing to the Young Men's Christian Association. It is significant, as a comment on such variety as this, that when Sir William Denison left New South Wales addresses were presented to him by twenty-four different bodies, amongst which were the Church Society, the Christian Association, and the Sydney cricketers. We cannot help thinking that when the principal Sydney newspaper used " expressions almost tanta- mount to a suggestion " of a coup d'dtat it was practising on the Governor's known piety. The idea of a lecturer on sacred subjects taking the law into his own hands may seem wholly incongruous, but the example of Oliver Cromwell was held up to Sir William Denison for imitation, and we know that religion found its chief support in the great Protector. The parallel has perhaps misled Lady Denison. It is clear that her feelings on the ministers who would not agree with her husband, on the opposition in the Houses, on the Courts which decided against Government, were of so warm a kind that she would have sympathized with extreme measures. " I am not, I think," she says in one letter, " in a fit state to write to you to-day, for I sin in a tumult of evil passions, from which preamble you will pretty nearly guess what I have to tell, viz., that the M'Manus case has this morning been decided against the Government !! and that in an extraordinary way too, for the judges threw over the arguments of M'Manus's lawyer,
and yet decided in his favour." This practice is not confined to Australian Courts, we imagine, and it is sometimes said in England that "law and common-sense have really very little to do with each other." Yet there is something genuine about Lady Denison's indignation, and we have no doubt that Sir William was cheered by such sympathy whenever he had to complain of a new defection on the part of his ministry.
What we may call the official asides in the midst of this outward appearance of dignity detract from its serious effect. Lady Denison's account of the way in which the ceremony of opening the Parliament of New South Wales was arranged beforehand is irresistibly comic :—
" I was called this afternoon into A—'s office to share in a grand consultation with him and William, and Mr. Naper, as to the getting up of William's pageant for the formal opening of the new 'Parliament' next Friday. A— is a great man for forms and etiquettes ; and this is, of course, a state occasion, which calls upon us to put 'our best foot foremost ;' but most ludicrous were some of the difficulties which occurred. The state carriage was all right, and four horses had been mustered for it somehow or other, for we have only a pair of our own ; but then, how was I to go? There was our every-day carriage for me, and one black saddle-horse of William's, which goes in harness, and is sometimes used as a supernumerary, if either of the regular carriage- horses is ill ; but this was all. Mr. Naper offered me one of his ; but as the offer was coupled with the remark, that it would go quietly if I could get there before the guns began to tiro, I declined having anything to say to it. Then, who was to drive for our own coachman had to lend his dress livery to the man who, as the beet driver, was to drive the state carriage. However, this was mastered by the unanimous decision that the ordinary liveries would quite do for my quieter entrée ; but oh ! the muster of the men-servants, in order to provide what was declared to be the thing, two footmen to walk at the horses' heads,
besides the two who were to stand up behind, and the one who was to go with me ! and the difficulties about dress liveries for them all ! It could only be done at last by putting in requisition every man who wears a livery, and leaving the butler himself to act as hall porter during our absence. And how we laughed over it all! The Council is to meet on Thursday. Meantime it is pouring with rain quite as if it had set in for six weeks, and if it has (in the sort of way it does rain when it once sets in), alas for the pageant and the walking-footmen! "
More ludicrous still is the description of Sir William's behaviour at a grand dinner given to him by the Rajah of Mysore. Lady Denison says that when her husband is at all uncomfortable he has a way of thinking aloud. At this dinner he was particularly in- convenienced by the receipt of constant dainties from the Rajah, who retired behind a curtain and from thence watched the demeanour of his guests, being especially critical as to the way in which his gifts were received. Whether Sir William was aware of this, or was solely moved by the character of the gifts, he kept on exclaiming audibly " What is this? What do you want ? Good heavens ! I can't eat this ! it smells particularly nasty !" while Lady Denison, after vainly attempting to stop him, was seized with such a fit of laughter that the tears ran down her cheeks. Sir William himself tells us that when he received another Rajah, after talking for some time and meeting with very little response, he exclaimed in English to his companion, " How am I to get rid of this fool? " A grin on the faces of some of the Rajah's atten- dants showed that the remark was more generally appreciated than had been intended. " My good man," as Lady Denison constantly calls her husband, does not come out of these incidents with the serene composure which ought to belong to so high a dignitary. But we like him all the better for that. As a Governor he impresses us to the full extent by his zeal, and by the way in which he enters into all the questions brought under his official cognizance. What- ever we may think of his judgment on Colenso, Darwin, and the Essays and Reviews, we recognize his sincerity and the excellence of his intentions. Yet neither his semi-official letters nor his voluntary engagement in controversy would justify such volumes as these. As it is, Lady Denison's liveliness partly atones for their weight, and Sir William, as we have seen, is occasionally beguiled
into a spirit of emulation.
When we deduct the personal characteristics to which we have
alluded, there seems comparatively little left for favourable comment. It may be that the great size of the work produces this impression. We should, however, have expected more striking sketches of foreign parts from so quick an observer and so pleasant a diarist as Lady Denison. At the very outset of the book we were struck by her account of the obtuseness of the quarantine officers at Madeira, who could not make up their minds whether death by drowning was a natural death or was of the infectious order. A page or two further on we hear of the captain of their ship being anxious to take his observations at noon on a Sunday, and finding that service would not be over in time, having put down his sextant close at hand so that he might change his prayer- book for it at a moment's notice ; but this was not enough, and " at length, in the middle of the prayer for the Queen, he was seen to move slowly on his knees from the chair on which he left his prayer-book to the corner where lay the sextant. He clutched this dearly beloved instrument, shuffled on to the taffrail, the sun being now fairly behind us to the northward, and took his obser- vations without ever moving off his knees. In short, his whole retreat was performed in so masterly a manner that I believe very few of the congregation were at all aware that any interruption had occurred to his devotions." One or two specimens of diggers'
extravagant tastes are furnished us from Hobart Town. The wife of a successful digger is described as " walking through the
streets in dirty weather dressed in a beautiful silver-grey satin gown, the sort of gown that I should never think of wearing except at some large evening party, but which she did not even take the trouble to hold up out of the mud." Another woman, adds Lady Denison, "is said to have been seen walking on the wharf arrayed in bright pink velvet or plush." Here, in conclusion, is an Indian story told by Sir William, and, though amusing enough, rather wanting the lightness of touch which his wife could have imparted to it:— "This alteration of the entrance gave rise to a little scene, which affords a droll illustration of one phase of native character—viz., the total want of perception, not only of the value of truth in itself, but of the importance which we attach to it ; and the consequent tendency, on all occasions, to give the answer which they imagine will be most agree- able to the questioner, rather than the true one. This new approach passed so close to the rear of the bungalow occupied by one of the aides- de-camp that he believed himself in some danger of being visible to passers-by while at his bath or performing his toilette; and, under the influence of this idea, he sent his servant to walk by the house and let him know if he could see him from the road. The man, unable to
conceive any motive for such a request but one of personal vanity, shortly returned with the assurance that 'master looked beautiful r It is scarcely necessary to add that it was found, on more accurate observa- tion, quite impossible to see into the bungalow from the approach."
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