Playing the Violin to the Gold Miners—My Friend the Late Missionary—The Great Concert in Coolgardie, under the Direction of “Carl Rosa De Bonne”—Farewell

I still had my violin when we arrived back in Kalgoorlie, and after a deal of trouble I got some strings and started playing to the miners, for Smith and I were desperate for money and decent clothes. In an old shanty place on the skirts of the town I played the violin and a sailor played the banjo as Smith took his hat round collecting and in two hours we had more money in our pockets than we could have earned on the gold fields in twelve months. My accompanist, the sailor, was a splendid vamper, and I played all those melodies which I knew would touch the hearts of those miners; old English songs, sea songs, and finished up with the “Ah che La Morte” from Il Trovatore. They were delighted as we finished each selection. Smith’s face beamed with satisfaction and so did mine, as he repeatedly came up to me, while I played on, and emptied the coins into my pocket; the sailor played away as though he was going mad with delight, nudged me in the ribs and kept whispering into my ear “Shares, mate, mind you shares.”

From far and near they came to hear the grand concert. Some sang solos, and we accompanied, others called for dance music. Hard by was a drinking saloon, and I can still see those rough-bearded men with their eyes shining with delight as “All went merry as a marriage bell” and they drank deeper and became from “Half-seas over to dead drunk over.”

And then a strange thing happened. A tall, stooping, broad-shouldered man came towards us, and gazed steadily in my face for a moment. I too gazed at him. We had met before! For the moment I could not think who he was, and then in a flash, just as he was turning his face aside as though to let the past go by, I remembered. It was the “Reverend” whom I had seen in the South Seas, the very man whom Hornecastle had chaffed when he visited our shanty by the beach in Samoa. Staying my violin-playing for a moment, I lifted the bow and saluted him to let him know quickly that I remembered him, notwithstanding that he was growing a beard and was dressed in a red-striped shirt and shabby miner’s pants. “Well, I’m blessed, Middleton,” he said, as he at once came forward and took hold of my hand. “What on earth brought you this way?”

“Gold hunting like the rest of them,” I answered, and then I turned and said, “What about you? What are you this way for?”

“Never mind that,” he answered quickly, and I also quickly saw that his business and retirement from the missionary profession was nothing whatever to do with me, and minded my tongue. He turned out to be a splendid friend to me, and in his rÔle of gold seeker and common miner he was a man every inch of him. He had heard of the gold finds in West Australia out there in the Islands and had taken the first opportunity to clear out. He was quite frank with me about everything and told me that he had done well, much better work and pay than the old missionary humbugging tour, he said to me as he told me how he had bought a claim for a few shillings from a young fellow and it turned out rich and he eventually sold it for three thousand pounds.

I introduced Smith to him and he took rooms for us and paid all of our expenses, notwithstanding the fact that I told him we had made more money than we ever dreamed of making out of our extemporised concerts. I will not tell you that converted missionary’s name, because he is now in England, and it’s almost a dead certainty that he will read my book, and it’s not because I think he will do so that I say here that he turned out one of the best of men, and often by his conversation revealed to me that he saw through the mockery of his previous profession and the hypocrisy of many of those who followed it. He would sit rubbing his sprouting chin and tell me many of his opinions of those who had been his comrades as he sat by me in the evenings at the hotel rooms where we both stayed.

Eventually we went to Coolgardie together and stayed for some days, and he got a concert up for my special benefit, and I was billed all over the place as “Signor Marrionette, the celebrated violinist.” He hired the hall, and made all the arrangements. Indeed, he cracked me up in such a manner that long before the concert night came off I was as nervous as a kitten over it all, and spent the whole day practising the fiddle so that my performance would not put my great reputation to shame, but nevertheless I framed my programme to suit my audience and put down Paganini’s “Carnaval de Venice” and the Adagio of his “Concerto in D.” and light operatic selections. I discovered that he had a fine tenor voice and we rehearsed “Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye” and one or two other songs which I have now forgotten the names of, and when the concert came off and he sang as I played the obbligato, he brought the house down, and gave the audience as an encore a rollicking drinking song. The young women that he had got hold of to sing and make up our programme were so fascinated with him that they looked like embracing and kissing him. After the concert we both went off to their home, for they were sisters, and spent the whole night, very nearly, singing, playing and feasting. They were Melbourne people and their father kept a general goods store; he was a genial-looking old chap and seemed hugely delighted to be honoured with our company, and thinking that I was of Italian origin he kept praising Italy and the Italians up to the skies, saying, “Where are better musicians than those Italians?” and many other like things, till at last I was obliged to confess that my Italian name was an assumed one, and then he ceased drinking health to the “land of song” and started off expressing his real feelings and finished up by cursing the whole Italian race, saying they were the dirtiest set of mongrels that ever sniffed the sunlight.

My comrade the missionary often winked at me, and we were both intensely amused, and when at daybreak we carried the old chap into his bedroom and placed him on the bed, he kept lifting his head up as I took his boots off and called me a “dirshy Ishalon,” meaning a dirty Italian. His pretty daughters were very much upset about the old man’s behaviour, but the missionary and I soon put them at their ease, and when the old man was up sober again, and once more the personification of assumed politeness, we were all the best of friends and the girls blushed to their ears, screamed with laughter, and hid their faces in their hands, and the old man and his thin wizened wife opened their eyes and mouth wide with delight and fright mixed up, not knowing what next we might say, as we told them of our adventures on the South Sea Islands!

I have often thought of those girls since, and I am quite certain they have not forgotten the young violinist Signor Marrionette, or the handsome debonair missionary Carl Rosa de Bonne, for that was his nom de plume which appeared in big letters on the bills that announced the great concert in Coolgardie years ago.

Now my early travels and adventures are drawing to their close, for we left the gold fields and the new friends we had made very soon after the episode of which I have just told you. I had plenty of spare cash which I had saved through my violin-playing, and so I went off in companionship with the missionary, who had made himself a general favourite with many of the miners and authorities of the fast-growing city. The old storekeeper drove us in his cart up to where the train started, and the girls looked terribly crestfallen as we waved our hands and they waved sadly back, as we passed away from them for ever. Arriving in Perth we stayed at St George’s Terrace.

Here I will end my boyhood days, for the down of my upper lip had stiffened and sprouted to a virgin moustache and I was getting homesick and weary of hunting for fortunes. After several days’ stay in Perth my friend the missionary and I went round to Sydney, and from there he took a passage for England and I shipped before the mast on a sailing ship bound for South America.

So ends this narrative of my boyhood wanderings, wherein I have tried to describe to you some of those experiences that stand out vividly in my memory of all that happened in my travels in distant lands. I had thought to tell you more than I have done, but many things must remain buried with the secrets of my heart, for a while at least, since those who are intimately connected with them still live. I would not wish to write in my humble autobiography of things which they may not care to be revealed to the eyes of the world. And so, dear reader, whoever you are, and whatever you may think of me, I wish you good luck and farewell.