Illustrated letter

AFTER nearly two years in India one is glad to be once more amongst kindred people. Half a century in Australasia leads me very naturally to look upon it as “home.” All my belongings are Australians; to them, therefore, it is “home.” Besides—be it in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, or even in Perth—everyone I meet is a friend, and it is a comfort to meet friendly faces.

What a change had taken place in Melbourne in two years! Since I had left it the silver-mining had been brought to light, and the land boom had fairly set in.

My return in the midst of this feverish excitement, from a country where all excitement is unknown, was tantamount to a revelation.

Past experience, both in mining or land speculation, made me chary to enter into either. Still, it is not in my nature to remain idle, more particularly in the midst of such a lively community as that of Victoria.

Ere I had been in it three months I began to feel that bank interest was barely enough to get for my money. The marvellous and rapid fortunes made on the Stock or Land Exchange gradually thawed the frigidity of my first impressions.

I need not add that at almost every step I was button-holed by brokers, offering investments. Land increased in value from day to day. A block bought for £100 changed hands within a week for £1000, bought up by a syndicate, floated into a Company for £10,000, and cut up in allotments. Thus some property realised fabulous returns.

Still, I thought all this would come to an end. I could not be persuaded to venture in such risky speculations. I thought that city property would be best. I always had more faith in stone or brick. Consequently, I spotted a block of land in the very centre of Melbourne; half an acre at the corner of Exhibition Street and Little Bourke Street, a piece of land which for the last thirty years had a most wretched name—one that no one would tackle at any price, and which accordingly the owner, who derived no revenue from it, would sell or lease cheap.

Unfortunately, he declined selling, but after long haggling, I secured the place for thirty years at a very low rental. During the interval I had matured my plans, so that the day the lease was executed I commenced the erection of what is now known as the Alexandra Buildings (a block of thirteen three-storied houses with shop fronts), and in the centre of the block what is, and will be for a long time to come, the largest theatre in the Southern Hemisphere.

Alas! I had not reckoned on the many difficulties I would have to encounter. First of all, the City Surveyors, then the Board of Health, and ultimately the Local Option.

Buildings which I had reckoned would not exceed £25,000, owing to the rigidity of the bye-laws of the City Surveyors and Health Board, involved me in an outlay of £40,000, and after going to an enormous outlay for hotel, bars, and cafÉs, in connection with the theatre, the licence could not be obtained.

Coupled with such disastrous impediments, I had the ill-luck to open the theatre under very bad management, which almost gave the death-blow to my venture. I had hardly been back eighteen months in my Australian home when I had every reason to call it my “dear” home. Trouble, worry, and loss of money preyed on my mind to such an extent that my health failed me altogether. Struggle as I would, everything seemed to go crooked. Doctors and friends vainly tried their skill or kind words to rouse my fallen spirits and energies. I would have thrown up the sponge, when the Government initiated the Centennial Exhibition.

The word “Exhibition” sounded in my ears like the blast of the clarion to the war-horse. If an exhibition was on the tapis I must be in it. Naturally I endeavoured to have a “finger in the pie;” made application to the Victorian Government; laid a scheme before the Cabinet, showing how the great show could be carried on profitably. This, however, “did not suit.” The Exhibition, undertaken by a Ministry flushed with money, was made a political handle to secure popularity. Money was no object: popularity—favouritism—were. My prediction that instead of a surplus of at least £100,000, it would end in a deficit of a quarter of a million, has since been realised, almost to a fraction.

New South Wales needed a representative. My much esteemed and old friend, Mr. Burdett Smith, M.P., the Executive Commissioner for the mother colony, recommended my appointment, so that once again I put on the harness. The excitement of Exhibition work proved the best and only cure to my ailments. As my old friend and medical adviser, Dr. B. Fyffe, had often told my people, “Only take the Alexandra off his mind and he will soon be cured.” In the turmoil and hard work attending the Exhibition I forgot the Alexandra and my other troubles. The wheel of Fortune once more turned in the right direction. After many vicissitudes and many trials, Simonsen’s opera, Carrie Swain, and last of all, my old friend, Alfred Dampier, helped to put my theatre in the right groove. The two former lessees had a short but profitable season, whilst Dampier, with great wisdom, adopted a system of popular prices, coupled with excellence of acting and mise-en-scene, which has given him unabated success for the last two years—a success which there is every probability he will maintain to the end of his lease, which we have gladly extended for a long period.

Under such able management I had no hesitation to leave the property under the charge of one of my sons, and under medical advice, have sought the bracing atmosphere of the South Island of New Zealand, to complete the cure of ailments which, after all, were more mental than physical.

The Commissioners for the New Zealand Exhibition wanting a manager, it was thought that the experience I have acquired in such matters might prove of service. Combining business with pleasure, I have moved my camp once more.

What the result of the New Zealand Exhibition will be is as yet a blank page in the history of the near future, but based, as this great venture has been, on the soundest of principles—principles that the Governments of New South Wales and Victoria declined to follow—I may predict that the New Zealand Jubilee Exhibition will be a most thorough success, in every way, practically and financially.

Coming back to New Zealand, fifty years after I first landed on its shores, has been a source of great gratification to me.

I cannot bring this narrative to a close without mentioning a most extraordinary coincidence, which occurred a few months ago, while on a visit to Christchurch.

A landslip had occurred at Akaroa a few days previous to my arrival in Christchurch. This slip unearthed a number of cannon balls, imbedded deep into the side of a hill, above what is called the “Frenchman’s Garden.” These 32-pounders were all in a cluster, bar one, which by some unaccountable reason was found some forty yards off from the spot, where a target must have been placed, the hypothesis being that some “duffer” had fired this truant shot.

When I saw the rusty old “ball” I at once recognised the shape (now obsolete) of the old 32lb. shot used in the French navy. Coupling the locality with the old familiar projectile, I at once remembered that in September, 1840, when on board the Aube at Akaroa, Captain Lavaud had ordered shot practice, and when the target had been placed on the hillside on shore, he invited me to fire the first shot, which went some fifty yards off the mark, much to the merriment of the crew, who very justly pronounced me a “duffer”—the very epithet which I heard applied to the unknown gunner, after the lapse of fifty years.

This old “friend,” found imbedded in the New Zealand soil at Akaroa, now stands before me on top of my Écritoire, and from it I draw many comparisons.

Here we meet once more after fifty years! I have “rolled” all over the world. It has remained buried in the earth in New Zealand. Yet we are both very much alike—old-looking, rusty; still hard, tough, and fit for service if need be. The rust is only superficial; under it the old metal has all its natural properties.

This “find” at Akaroa has been a most appropriate one, inasmuch as it has enabled me to conclude as I began, by the history of a “Stray Shot,” which really should have been the title of this book.

I will now conclude by giving my readers the history of the crest which I have placed above my name upon the front page. We (I mean the Jouberts) do not claim to descend from the “Crusaders,” and although we must have had some lineal connections with the first inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, the line cannot be traced quite so far.

I suppose that we must have been lost in the “crowd” for many centuries, and it is very evident to me that until the sixteenth century the name has no record. In the year 1550, however, Dr. Laurence Joubert was appointed Court Physician to Henry III., and at the death of Rondelet in 1562 he was made Regius Professor of Physic at Montpellier, where he died in 1582.

Having rendered eminent services to King Henry III., the monarch, by letters patent, authorised his favourite physician to assume the Gallic cock rampant, with Esculapius’ mythological serpent at its feet—the motto, “semper vigilans” being, I think, a most suitable one for a “medico.”

The old bird has never been of much service to our ancestor’s descendants. Still, we have always adhered to it, as an emblem of old Gaul. Even the Imperial eagle has not deterred us from our allegiance to the Gallic cock, and as years have rolled on, “semper vigilans” has been our motto. I trust that my sons will never forget its meaning, which in the vulgar tongue may be translated into “Be always wide awake,” or, better still, “Keep your weather eye open”—a maxim I have always endeavoured to follow, and I think verily that it is owing to this that I have got out of the various “shavings and scrapes” I have narrated in the foregoing pages.

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