Oscar Wilde in Australia - written account

OSCAR WILDE IN AUSTRALIA

NOTE

The following document was long associated with the skull of Ned Kelly. The skull was stolen in 1978 and the document with it.

There have been several attempts to sell what is claimed to be the skull on ebay and one extortion note offering its return to the Old Melbourne Gaol for Aus$10,000.

A photocopy of this document was sent with the extortion note and a chip of bone to enable DNA testing (there are many Kelly family descendants).

Overseas readers might like to know a little about Ned Kelly as he features in the document.

Ned Kelly was an Australian youth belonging to a family viewed by the authorities as recalcitrantly antisocial. Ned joined up with other discontented rural lads to form a gang which engaged in various forms of commercial enterprise of dubious legality.

Police troopers came after them and they went bush.

In a showdown, Ned Kelly offered the police troopers resistance in a suit of armour made from a ploughshare. Despite this he was shot, brought in and hung,

Prominent Australian artists have tried to build on the story accumulated around the exploits of the Kelly ‘gang’. Kelly is portrayed as a poor rural ‘battler’; an Irish Catholic, fired with an independent anti-authoritarian spirit, fighting against an oppressive Protestant British establishment. There have been at least ten films (one starring Mick Jagger, another with Heath Ledger), plays, novels (the latest by Peter Carey) and verse. None seems able to sink the historical narrative to the level of archetype or raise it to legend, probably because the facts of the Kelly history are too indisputably sordid to allow transmutation into a myth of national character. Perhaps the best attempt at this kind of jingoistic mythologising was a series of paintings on the Kelly gang story by Sidney Nolan. The Nolan paintings succeed in some way by being (probably inadvertently) comic.

These attempts at mythologising cannot be of much interest to non-Australian readers however the association of Ned Kelly with the so-called ‘invisible ink letter’ by Oscar Wilde, may be.

Australian cultural and historical circles have been aware of the rumour of Oscar Wilde’s clandestine visit to Melbourne since the 1880s. As late as the 1950s Miles Franklin used to tell of meeting a man in Chicago who claimed to have dined with Wilde every night on the voyage out from San Francisco. Nellie Melba is said to have been astonished to run into Wilde in Collins Street Melbourne (he begged her to keep his identity a secret) and it has been claimed that Charles Conder pushed his painting towards impressionism as a result of conversations with Wilde during his sojourn in the state of Victoria in Australia.

The ‘invisible ink’ letter is possibly a forgery. A transcription of the photocopy which came to light with the Kelly skull offered for return to Old Melbourne Gaol for Aus$10,000 is published here for expert consideration.

The photocopy has been transcribed with clarity in mind.

R dear creature

I could not wish you were here for it is rough rough and not often enough-rough.

I am, as you would want of me, engaged in sublimating the rough from the rough rough.  But oh, the matrix is heavy and the precious metal scarce.

Much unlike America, where there was an innocence, or at least the oddly inverted aspiration to innocence, which gave off a freshness as of a boy whom one meets in Piccadilly, who has, one knows, just bathed and who inspires one to wonder after what exertions he has just bathed, leaving his curls sprung upon themselves with damp, his cheeks flushed against his just pailed skin; here however, they give off a sense of dust, the exposed layer of a lump of clay sodden at the core, drying. There is a genuine innocence but that deliberately sullied with an affectation of brutish candour, despicable for the ineptness of its falsity: the calculations of the hungry are always horribly transparent. The hunger here is not for food, au fond and most terribly, the hunger is for respectability: rough hewn logs longing to be upholstered in blistered silk. Yes, the aspiration mounts on electroplate wings towards the bourgeois brightness of etched glass lampshades.

I fear you believe you would be amused. You would not. It is suffocating and when ones flings about oneself for fresh air one ends up being irritated unto distraction.

C took me to a refreshment retreat where, in all this fair city, which has raised itself on huge blocks of stone masoned with the spoils of gold, now alas, all more or less gone from the good earth and dissipated amongst fools, barbarians, confidence men, sluts of all descriptions and some few Constable Bungles of Commerce so that it flows like a delirious blood stream through a society which must instantly void or become poisoned by it, thus becoming poisonous themselves - a refreshment retreat where, it was claimed, uniquely in all this working metropolis one could relax in privacy and amongst discretion in the company of the local flora.

Which one did over execrable fortified wines from some local source and biscuits made, it appeared to me, from a stable floor (our hostess was Scottish).

As a botanist, you will be interested in the local growth: thorny, wiry, brushy – in a word impenetrable – and small flowered.

I took one back to my lodgings for closer inspection and oh the shrieks and wails when I attempted subterfuginous hybridisation. Oh Mollinia australis had never! They are, in this neck of the woods, all for patting and petting and pulling, but they were not dirty!

So we were not dirty. However we had made such a noise that in the morning the landlady’s man, all eyes cast at pigeon toes, ordered me off and warned me his missus was so fired up she might even tell the constable … unless there was a crown on the table after I’d left (as you know, I never travel without one).

C decided, in these circumstances, I should accompany him on a plein air expedition to capture on the cigar box lids he favours the wonders of the Austral woodlands for future generations.

Oh my dear.

After a night in an hotel which boasted ‘coffee’ (temperance) we set out in a coach for parts unpolluted by railroads. Oddly enough, I was familiar with the type of coach, for the same company (Cobb and Co) transported me through the Wild West. Familiarity had bred respect: the discomfort achieved is beyond human comprehension.

Nor were we distracted by the scenery. Wordsworth could not have been in this land, or would have turned drunkard, pulpit zealot, or to classifying insects – a task fit for the damned here. It is grey, sinking through roan, rising to olive. But mainly it is grey, sometimes shimmering in the infernal heat, or coagulating into kapok so that hill is indistinguishable from sky.

I could hardly turn on C demanding, ‘Whither do you lead me?’ after his spiriting me away from the lilies of the Law and before the hot breath of scandal had blasted my reputation in that dust stricken town lit uselessly at mile intervals by gas hissing out of erect wrought iron.

Here I was, not on a wharf awaiting the heaving of hawsers but in an implacably heaving coffin with a gramps visiting his daughter married ‘in the bush’, a child who could only whicker so I know not what it was about and C with a determined look on his thin face.

Ah well, I wanted adventure, to see the world. And there it was, at least the antipodean aspect, relentless in its dullness and though certainly vast, astonishing in its denial of any hope of sublimity.

After days we got to a wide, brown, indolent river on the banks of which trembled the mirage of a town which proved a desperation of shanties.

We installed ourselves in ‘The Riverside Ferry Rest’, a stage-set edifice teetering eponymously. Our host informed us with pride that it had been newly rebuilt after fire had demolished and flood swept away its predecessors: what common sense has denied, heedless perseverance seeks to provide in the Antipodes. 

I could not draw C aside from our clinging host, ravenous for news of the wide world and the English language, to beg our removal to higher, drier ground, in any case I feared obliterating our one hope of some simulation of comfort, for ‘The Riverside Ferry Rest’ had appeared a palace amongst hovels all wallowing in the mud of the river’s edge.

At dinner we drank champagne with, it transpired, unwarranted dread. Its origins remain unknown but in my three days in this place I gathered a sense of odd luxuries, misunderstood and beyond local appreciation save for the fact the illicit is relished. One wench I saw, herding a couple of cows, upon closer observation, had what were unmistakably diamonds dangling from her unwashed ears. She greeted us, I must say, with pleasant grace. Whether the champagne was smuggled, stolen and shipped upriver to spill itself down throats as any other alcoholic swill, I know not, but it was of the best and, chilled to perfection by our host who, taking to us when we did not appear to want to venture after his excellent dinner into the night in pursuit of ‘loose petticoats’, invited us into his parlour.

He presided, he explained, as his wife had gone to Melbourne. It was later explained to us by the washerwoman-cook that this had been ‘some six to ten years gone by’. He was keen to introduce us (exhibit) his ‘helper’ on the morrow … oh, comely in the stable-hand manner and charmingly bashful despite his employer’s exhortations to ‘stand up and be acquainted with these fine gentlemen as you will never see from the Mother Country’.

It was he, this muscled cherub, who led us into mortal danger.

He led us up and out into ‘the bush’ (for so the forest is called and not inaccurately), bearing a hamper prepared by his beldame paramour of the hotel and C’s campstool. C laboured under a satchel of brushes and paints.

I confess, once on the ridge I found the view had its own tedious grandeur. The river even appeared bluish as the unrelenting sun lit it meandering with enormous, leisurely indifference through ‘the bush’ which itself was seen to some advantage from this elevation. It does have touches of a rather subtle green – eau de nil, I would propose – and the shimmering humidity lent a transfiguring aura to the unending undulations of the hills.

But C would not have us linger – no, this was not what he was after; he wanted something more intimé. So we descended at the risk of our necks and ankles to the floor of the next valley through which drudged a ‘creek’.

Some sensible ducks whirred away at our approach; some parrots feathered in indescribable gaudiness screeched and whistled at us like queans in the Row; somethings we were reassured were ‘just wallabies, if I had me rifle we could’ve roasted one’ thumped away, crashing through the undergrowth at our footfall (apparently they are a species of small kangaroo; while one was relieved that they were small, one regretted the missed opportunity for zoological observation). And so we made camp on a pebbled plain scattered, one gathered, by the creek itself.

I was now not displeased for it was considerably cooler and I realised I would have the Hyakinthos for my sole delectation – or so I dreamed. It is in the nature of dreams to be shattered.

C began dabbing his paints on his cigar box lids (an affectation he pretends is a species of economy) and I engaged the darling nob of the Australian bush in conversation. However his shyness and the imposition of the grandeur of the bush rendered us all silent of speech so that all we heard besides the activities of the brush were the runnels of the creek, their gurglings and whisperings, the occasional startling screech of a parrot, twittered avian arias, mysterious rustlings in the undergrowth (the place is alive with reptiles apparently but I saw none) against the thundering organ chord silence of the bush. It is truly remarkable: a silent roar, greater far than the deafening obviousness of Niagara; it reduces one to awe, to a kind of somnolence, a trance; it diminishes one. The great tree trunks rose from the sides of the valley, their leafy tops dancing in the distant sunlight, the rocks were arranged with leaf litter of the most wondrous subtlety as well as vibrant variety of colour, which on closer inspection, proved to be compounded largely of scimitar-shaped leaves of a great range of sizes. The variety of the shrubbery also proved great, from tiny tea-leaved to wide waving fans of most delicate green laciness. The creek offered small sandy beaches and other plains of pebbles deposited in the, I gather, frequent floodings (I thought for a moment of searching for gold), as well as muddy banks and huge boulders fallen from the heights to rest in the endless embrace of the slow current.

Taking my hand, Hyakinthos offered to lead me to a secluded place where if we sat still enough we might catch a glimpse of a platypus or spy the fabled lyrebird at its dance, for, he said, the bird noises which emphasised the great silence of the bush, were not all made by different birds but by this lyrebird, most marvellous of mimics.

One should always be led astray for that is the only path to the miraculous.

No miracles (of the sort one had had in mind) were to ensue but that is also the way of miracles.

We smelled them first, as they must have us, for C puffed away on a cigarillo while daubing and his combined odours of tobacco and turpentine were powerful and must have travelled far through the fresh and mouldy, the blossomy and acerbic dankness.

Their odour yelled more stridently than the cheapest Cockney fishwife. Hyakinthos was alerted to it first and his raising nostrils to snuffle impelled me to imitation.

It could only be the odour of the grease antimacassars are supposed to protect against; it was at once oriental and chemical, intoxicating and nauseating.

Then we heard them – splashing and tramping.

C was oblivious, enclouded in his own fumes, engaged in his art and we were silent with dread and the disappointment that our shared trance had been broken.

They appeared.

Even at the distance (about one hundred yards) it was clear two were in travesti; they were not making a good show of it.

Hyakinthos became alarmed and said, ‘Let me do the talking, yous just agree and be polite. Hide your chimers.’

I slipped my signet ring into a pocket. With our ‘chimers’ we could do little; we were chained to them.

Hyakinthos went to greet them and, I hoped, turn them aside. But no, in a moment they were all upon us.

What a collection. The two mollies were escorted by two ragamuffins, who if they had fallen off their fine horses into the creek would have been dragged under by their monstrously unruly beards.

Hyakinthos, we noted, was treating them with careful respect but not grovelling (there is little servility of class here; which speaks well for the land’s future) and was soon making introductions. C and I were introduced as: a) an artist man (there was no hiding the fact; b) a newspaper gent (the best disguises obliterate the salient by emphasising the general). This excited great interest and the leader began a gabble at me, fortunately requiring no more than a nod and an hm hmm in response. As I thus listened I began to catch at the patois: it is as if a young Cockney had been taken and placed for several years in Dublin.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Hyakinthos eyeing their rifles and pistols with warning glances. I gathered we were in mortal danger. It was the most delightful sensation, making the voyage to and travelling in this appalling place almost worthwhile.

Seizing my opportunity (a gathered breath) I addressed the raving soliloquist in the best Dublin I could muster. Used as I am to causing sensations, the effect of this surprised me. My signetless hand was clutched and my fingers kissed. Adoration becomes me. I invited the mob to partake of our luncheon.

Hyakinthos was appalled and then annoyed when he saw how little (none, as it eventuated) would be left for him; they fell on the beldame’s hamper like hounds on the unfortunate fox.

To my great perturbation, C brought forth his silver flask to offer them a drink. However, he did in the end get it back, empty.

The mollies were so bedecked, they claimed, in order to evade the police (it is a land of paradoxes). Their escorts were hoping a mixed party would escape notice whereas an ordinary grouping of working men, to their apparent thinking, would not. One would have grasped the futility of arguing against such reasoning in most circumstances, these exceptional ones were no exception.

While biting ferociously, tearing and gnawing, the leader – he with the most off-putting beard - began to contract me to tell his story to the world. Hyakinthos nodded covertly to me. ‘Tell me, tell me all,’ I declared and flourished this very notebook.

First he must draw me aside.

I glanced at Hyakinthos as we made our way into the undergrowth: a last lingering look perhaps; for any clue on how to proceed; as in appeal for rescue, if at all possible. I swear the creature glared at me in mixed concern and jealousy. One is used to exciting all kinds of passion; if this was to be my last relish, it was at least delicious.

My aspiring evangelist made us comfortable on a log (me) and a boulder (him) at some distance then he informed me that what was to be uttered was for my ears only but to be given to the world (he demurred at my suggestion of The Straits Times) as soon as I could ‘write it up’.

And so it began. It was biblical in its tedium.

At first I had difficulty translating but again, I picked up the patois with an alacrity which would have defeated many a highly trained linguist.

I will not here attempt to relate the self-righteous tale of woe and self-vindication to which I was the sole auditor (though who knows what ears the surrounding bush hid?) and indeed it would have taken a phalanx of Pitman’s stenographers to capture the minutiæ of incident but truly I could have listened for seconds: I was enraptured by the drollery of expression which revealed so much of the essence of the society into which I had been led.

Here is a selection of quotes (verbatim, as you will see) from a few pages back in this notebook

         the ground was so rotten it would bog a duck in places

         but he stuck to it like grim death to a dead volunteer

And that Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than Saint Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland.        

For to a keen observer he has the wrong appearance or a manly heart the deceit and cowardice is too plain to be seen in the puny cabbage-hearted looking face.

I have heard from a trooper that he never knew Fitzpatrick to be one night sober and that he sold his sister to a Chinaman but he looks a young strapping rather genteel more fit to be a starcher to a laundress than a policeman.

Again I fear you fancy that you would have been fearsomely amused, but let me assure you that for minutes at a time my mind took to peering beyond the beard in lieu of the listening required and discerning a face which, if shaved and scrubbed, might not have been without its interest, such was the combination of earnest imploring and practised guile, the conflicted effect lathered in blatancy. On the whole, he was a tremendous bore.  I hardly dare squirm for his confession also contained statements such as

… they knew well I was not there or I would have scattered their blood and brains like rain, I would manure the Eleven Mile with their bloated carcasses and yet remember there is not one drop of murderous blood in my veins

and I wanted to enter The Café Royale again.

I did not know how I could bear it.

Then, as is characteristic of this strange place and my life, I was favoured by coincidence, fate, the Will of God, call it what you like.

A strange whistle, emanating from the cliffs which surrounded us, split the air; my oral persecutor was instantly alerted and on his feet, casting looks and bidding me be quiet. He hurried me back to our party, who were also alarmed.

‘Troopers,’ Hyakinthos said, ‘you’d better be – ‘ and was cuffed over the ear for his politesse.

They were on their horses and on their ways very briefly. My raconteur turned his horse to demand when he would see his story in the newspaper and that there was so much more of it; he would ‘catch up with me’ to finish it.

We too were on our way.

Our host was alarmed by the story of our pique-nique abandoné and bustled Hyakinthos around town to discover what he could.

He could discover nothing. So our host himself set forth. Upon his return he suggested we discuss the situation after dinner.

Again we adjourned to his parlour where he informed C and me that these were ruffians, fit for Bedlam more than gaol and he had arranged our departure for the morrow as who knew what went on in their minds. We should prepare for a very early departure.

It was still dark when Hyakinthos woke us. We were hurried through ablutions and breakfast and mounted (on horses).

It was just light when we quit the place, our host waving and reiterating instructions before bustling inside.

Hyakinthos was our guide, leading a packhorse with our little luggage.

He led us along a slippery river path for what seemed like all the morning but it was just before ten when we arrived at a rough jetty where he unloaded the packhorse and we waited for perhaps an hour before a tiny paddle steamer dripped and drifted towards us, towing a barge arrogantly captained by a cow.

‘Don’t give them more than a crown; they’ll ask for a sovereign, the pirates,’ he advised us as the vessel flurried towards the jetty.

The dear boy saw that we were installed with our luggage and, glancing at the pirates, told us to give him a crown each, he’d pay for us as he didn’t trust them at all. He then kissed us both and leapt onto the wharf before we could offer him any remuneration.

He stood there, tears streaming, as the boat meandered and bobbed into the current to be carried lethargically away.

Watching the drifting scenery, I soon found Morpheus laying his irresistible hand on my brow.

When I awoke, I was informed it would be four hours before we reached the railway so I began this letter.

C was examining his cigar box lids (he had covered three of them). He asked which one looked the most promising for development. Really, he can only go in the direction taken by Turner.

…

This then is the document. Wilde’s authorship has been objected to on biographical and stylistic grounds however many are convinced that he did indeed visit Australia and cite this document and the accounts of his presence in Melbourne as evidence.