The Discovery Of Slowness (30 page)

Now he was the greatest and the best, no longer the youngest. Perhaps they honoured him only to get rid of him? From all these many honors came not one single serious offer. A gin manufacturer named Felix Booth was prepared to buy and equip a ship for the North-West Passage, provided Sir John would be so kind as to stress this high-minded gesture in his travel report.

Eventually an offer from the highest quarter. Sir John dropped the letter sadly: he was to sail to East Asia as the captain of a warship and threaten the Chinese so that they would again have respect for the British Crown. But if the threats are not immediately believed, thought John, they must be carried out. He politely requested permission to decline the offer. He was not particularly suited to be a combat commander. Besides, he was just about to be married.

His friends said, ‘Now his career is over. Anyone who is
against war gets nothing. Very clumsy. Why didn't somebody advise him?' Only Richardson shook his hand and said, ‘It might be of some advantage. Perhaps now the British Crown holds you in greater esteem.'

Sir John walked with his wife – Lady Franklin now – along the sea on the dyke of Ingoldmells. No, he did not love her as he had loved Eleanor. But he liked her. She was an honest person with a clear head, a reliable companion, and he needed her as a surrogate mother for little Ella. It was not more but also not less. They talked about it often. ‘We're both curious about the world,' Lady Franklin said firmly, ‘and usually the same people get on our nerves. True, that's not exactly love …'

‘… but perhaps something even better,' Sir John answered. They looked at the mud flats to the left of them, then to the right at the marshy meadows, and talked about the way their life would continue. Life passed by only too quickly. Their circle of friends was enormous and brought them more obligations than pleasure. Their fortune was considerable, but it was not enough to finance an Arctic expedition of their own.

Sir John panted. Walking was good for him. ‘Unless you take some vigorous exercise,' Richardson had told him, ‘I won't remain the only doctor in your life. Don't eat so much.' John's reply: ‘Never go hungry again.' But he had promised nonetheless to consider the medical advice.

Ten years! They had gone by so quickly, as though he had driven through them in a coach. Now he was in his mid-forties. His hopes were numerous enough to last for a long life, but his damned body weight tipped the scale on the other side. ‘You must have some exercise,' said Lady Franklin.

‘Good,' he said. ‘I shall go to Mr Booth and report for his expedition. That's the only exercise that helps me. However, I'll demand that he not insist on my naming the North-West Passage Gin Lane.'

But a few days later a dispatch arrived in Bolingbroke from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Glenelg. He was pleased
to be able to offer John, upon the expressed and personal wish of the King, the post of governor of Van Diemen's Land.

‘That's south of Australia. A long voyage,' said Lady Franklin, musing, ‘and a great deal of money, twelve hundred pounds a year.'

‘It's a penal colony,' answered Sir John.

‘Then one must change that,' spoke the Lady.

A little later John met the indefatigable Flora Reed and asked confidentially for her view.

‘You must try it,' she said. ‘What's the North-West Passage worth? It serves only fame and greed for geographical information. What's that against the building of a young society where justice still has a chance? And if anybody can manage that, it's you.'

‘Nonsense,' Sir John contradicted her. ‘I'm a navigator. I don't want to change people or compel them to do anything. If I can prevent worse things here or there, that's already a great deal.'

‘And worth the effort,' added Flora.

When he got home, Lady Franklin had thought of a new argument: ‘From down there it isn't too far to the South Pole.'

‘I'll think about it.'

In the church in Spilsby there was now a stone plaque: ‘In Memory of Lieutenant Sherard Philip Lound, Missing at Sea since Anno 1812.'

‘Nonsense; he lives,' John said, snarling. ‘Somewhere in Australia. Perhaps even in Van Diemen's Land.'

Captains John and James Ross, uncle and nephew, had quickly decided to take up the gin manufacturer's offer. When Franklin inquired once more, he was too late. For the last time he turned to the Admiralty. ‘Unfortunately not,' Barrow answered him. ‘And even if we were planning a polar expedition, the admirals would rather – forgive me – choose a slightly younger commander. Of course, everybody knows you're not only the most famous but also the most capable––'

‘Never mind,' Franklin interrupted him. ‘Others have to have
a chance, too. Take George Back. He's young, and when he is a little older he'll be better than I am.'

Then he walked home through fast-moving London and thought some more about the governor's post. I can command a crew, but I have difficulty moving in crowds. Whether I can succeed in governing a colony is a question … Another image intermingled with that of the penal colony: the landscape of the South Pole. Eternal glaciers and, in their light, unfrozen lakes with fish and penguins, perhaps even land with tribes of men who did not know how to hurry.

No, stop this! He could not agree to govern a colony only because he wanted to travel to the South Pole. Van Diemen's Land was a matter which had to be considered on its own merits. Perhaps he would die of the first attempt to prevent the slightest evil. It was that serious.

‘Good,' said John Franklin. ‘Van Diemen's Land. But, then, in all seriousness.'

‘Y
ou'll be a little surprised about Sir John,' Dr Richardson wrote to Alexander Maconochie. ‘Sometimes he doesn't seem to notice everything. He laughs or hums to himself and gives evasive answers if he wants to turn something over in his mind. But he is a man with a heart. You can find a friend in him if you …'

Richardson erased the last two words. He continued in a different vein: ‘After all, I have recommended you to him as a fellow combatant.' He wasn't completely satisfied with this sentence, either, but at least it covered up what he had suppressed.

‘Don't expect quick actions from Sir John. Help him to avert evil with your presence of mind.' Richardson hesitated. Why did he write this at all? Doubts about Maconochie? He crossed out the sentence again. Later he would rewrite it all in clean copy.

‘He is never lost, even in extremely doubtful situations. Even in politics …' No, that's not right! ‘This is undoubtedly true of …' That's two ‘doubt's. Delete.

If Franklin found no support in Maconochie, if he didn't comprehend the political situation, if he was blind to relations of power? Then this missive wouldn't help, either. Richardson tore it up, tossed it away, and folded his hands. If a letter did not achieve its end, it could usually be replaced by a prayer.

The packet ship
Fairlie
was overcrowded. Emigrants, adventurers, churchmen, opportunists, reformers – and in the midst of them all, the new governor of Van Diemen's Land with his wife, his little daughter, Ella, and his niece Sophia Cracroft. Also aboard was his private secretary, Maconochie, with his numerous family. And Hepburn had come along, the loyal and
helpful companion of the Arctic. He had grown slightly fatter – that, too, was comforting.

All day long, Sir John heard himself continually addressed as ‘Your Excellency' here and ‘Your Excellency' there. It seemed as though they had all taken this ship only to say a word to him sometime. ‘A foretaste,' said Jane. Good practice, thought John.

Van Diemen's Land, discovered in 1642 by the Dutchman Abel Tasman, had been thought part of Terra Australis until the end of the eighteenth century. Matthew Flinders and his friend Bass had circled the island and mapped it. From 1803 on, it had been a penal camp; since 1825, a colony independent of Sydney, where free settlers who had not originally arrived as convicts also lived.

John had hardly any questions about its history. The geographical details, too, were known to him, including the locations and names of the most important settlements, capes, mountains, and rivers discovered to date. One of the rich investors travelling with them on the
Fairlie
said, ‘A new era rides with us to Van Diemen's Land. With us and Sir John.' The island would have to become the granary of the south and one of the most beautiful places in the world, and Hobart the most beautiful city … And why not? John did not intend to serve his regular term of six years there as a glorified prison warden. Where there were settlers, an open, practical sense prevailed; something could be done with that. And the convicts? It depended on the crime. If a person stole a loaf of bread or poached in the forest of some lord or other because he was hungry, he showed no more than sound common sense.

John's predecessor, George Arthur, who had ruled the colony for twelve years, had viewed it only as a penal institution and had done little more for the settlers than send them convicts as workers. This probation and exploitation system was called ‘assignment'. Other than that, he had increased his own property and left the island an extremely rich man. How had he managed that?

The original inhabitants of the island, a brown, woolly-haired
people, had been nearly exterminated by Arthur, who had not been ashamed to call this misdeed a war.

Not another word about Arthur. If only for the sake of discipline, John decided to act at first as though he would continue his predecessor's work. As governor, he had to take matters of state to an executive and a legislative council, but if he made a decision contrary to their votes, no one could object. He was subordinate only to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, but to him without ifs, ands or buts.

In the mornings, that bothersome crick in his neck again. He had perspired and tossed back and forth. But that was part of any important task: fear and panic had to be suffered through in turn. Once he heard a voice: ‘If there is one thing you can't do, John Franklin, it's politics.'

He was now over fifty. Along with experience, his death had grown, too; it took shape slowly: perhaps another ten years, perhaps twenty. But the house was solid. John would have no further alterations to make until the beams began to rot.

A colony of forty-two thousand people. Good. After all, ‘governor' meant the same as ‘helmsman'. John said, ‘It's a matter of navigation.' He read publications about administrative and criminal justice, memorised social classes and their possible interests. He put himself in the place of the landowner who wanted to have cheap labour, of the merchant who needed well-paid customers, and of the government official who longed simultaneously for praise and land ownership. And in his intense brooding he also discerned what the convict desired: justice, equal treatment, and above all a chance.

John stood on deck for hours, examining the braces, stays, shrouds, backstays up to the
Fairlie
's three mastheads, and wondered about the running and standing rigging of government, from finance to class mobility. Only a person who was well prepared could recognise the danger signals. Politics could hardly be that different from navigation. Hepburn saw it that way, too.

Dr Richardson had written that Alexander Maconochie was possessed by the fire of love for mankind; at the same time, he was quick-witted and determined, the best ally for any reformer. Although a Scotsman, Maconochie was in no way churchy or dull. He looked, indeed, like a reformer – more than that, like a Jacobin. His scrawny, sharp-eyed face, his pointed nose, the wide mouth that he kept constantly in a state of sensually bold and somehow heroic tension – all that reminded John of his teacher Burnaby. Maconochie embraced new theories with zeal – for example, the idea that whites had descended from blacks, that it was intelligence that had made their skin white.

It was not a very good start: Sophia soon noted that the secretary had a conspicuously dark skin. Lady Franklin, on the other hand, liked him because he was entertaining. When he talked about the inhumanity of the criminal law, he used illuminating phrases that stuck in the memory: ‘It does man no good if nothing good is expected of him.' He did not believe in penitence or deterrence. ‘Punishment springs from bourgeois fear and love of comfort. Only education can be effective.' One day John responded to one of his maxims by saying, ‘It depends on each individual case.' He knew that a philosophical radical didn't like such statements. But even here Maconochie retained his optimism as a pedagogue: Sir John did not yet possess – and no wonder – ultimate insights into all these matters, but he was on the right track. John thought to himself, Maconochie is a bit presumptuous, but he will improve when we actually work together.

When the dark, steep shores and rugged mountains of Van Diemen's Land emerged, Lady Franklin was almost sad. For her, the great traveller, the voyage could have gone on for months, even in this overcrowded ship. John saw it differently. He wanted to get to work, and he looked forward to it.

A pretty harbour town with white houses lay before them, and above it Mount Wellington, a dark gentleman commanding respect, with a slanted parting on his rocky head. When the
Fairlie
anchored, a launch came out to her from the shore bearing
a reception committee. First, a little man in a black frock-coat stepped towards Sir John. When he wasn't bowing, he stood as straight as a soldier, his glance tranquil but a bit watery. His mouth looked as though it had already said everything important and was now closed until further notice. Hands and arms were engaged in elaborate movements, not insecure or nervous but with theatrical deliberation. He was John Montagu, colonial secretary, and after the governor the most important man here. For ten years he had been Arthur's closest confidant; he was his son-in-law and continued to be the administrator of his property. John greeted the other officials who had lined up. He purposely spent much time fixing names and faces firmly in his mind. He wanted his subordinates to get accustomed to slowness as soon as possible.

As the launch approached the pier, a breeze came up. The rigging of the cutters and whalers lying at anchor began to whir and beat against the spars; it sounded like joyous applause. On shore, settlers, military men and officials stood waiting, a hundred on horseback alone, and behind them thirty carriages with waving ladies. John did not trust his ears: they were shouting with joy all along the beach, yes, shouting with joy. Suddenly it occurred to him: perhaps I'm not supposed to walk to Government House but must ride on horseback. And what kind of speech shall I make, of all things from on top of a horse?

The sun was shining. They had set up a little stage on the quay, and next to it stood waiting what John had feared: the horse. A sturdy fellow held the reins.

Montagu opened the proceedings. He welcomed, expressed hopes, delighted in repeating all their names, greeted once more, was moved in closing. John looked cautiously at the horse. It snorted, tossed its head, and almost pulled the reins out of the fellow's hand. Now John realised that it was his turn.

He spoke the single sentence he had formulated aboard ship: ‘I want everyone to have a chance.'

The horse squinted, snorted and kicked.

‘I won't be firm in the saddle at once,' John announced. ‘I first want to look at everything carefully on foot.' Approving
laughter. Someone shouted: ‘Hear! Hear!' Sir John stood still, like a memorial, and waited until they were quiet again. Then, with a quick decision, he ordered the young fellow to take the horse away. ‘This way I get more out of it,' he added under his breath. Then he started to move and the others strode behind him, solemnly and a little surprised.

John studied reports, files, administrative directives, land registers, verdicts of the courts. He constantly met new technical terms – ‘land grants', for example: allotments of land with which until a few years ago the governor could make grateful and compliant friends wherever he needed them. By several circuitous routes, Arthur's own fortune had come from land grants. At the same time, John searched in vain for Sherard Philip Lound among lists of titles. Neither here nor in New South Wales was there a settler by that name.

Newspapers made somewhat odd reading. In the
Van Diemen's
Land Chronicle
one could read about the new governor: ‘He is one of the toughest fellows in the world, at the same time an impeccable gentleman. We now have a governor as we have wanted him. If Sir John does not take too much advice from Mr Montagu, Arthur's ghost will haunt us only at night in our dreams and no longer, as until now, in police uniforms and judges' robes in the bright light of day.' John could not really be pleased about that. It seemed they loved to exaggerate here. He turned back to the files.

The third day in office. The first session of the legislative council. Dignified gentlemen in black frock-coats; solemn speeches. Too little money in the government till. Direct taxation of the settlers: not possible by law. What to do? Before that question had been fully deliberated, a new one: ‘Can a governor give orders to the Tasmanian Land Regiment if he is only a navy captain?' Without transition they went on to talk of possible measures to be taken against escaped convicts ravaging settlers' homes. From there the debate leaped to the last seventy Aborigines, who had been resettled by Arthur on Flinders Island, north of Van Diemen's Land, and were not exactly flourishing. What
did that have to do with bush pirates, regiments or taxes? While John pondered the question, they moved on to the state's responsibility in case of postal theft, then to the distribution of convict labour among landowners, and, before John knew it, to a few minor revisions of regulations for procedures in the execution of … of …

The word still resisted his tongue. Why could he enunciate the more difficult phrase ‘revisions of regulations for procedures' without a flaw but not ‘execution of punishments'? John wiped the sweat off his forehead. The whole thing reminded him of a chicken-run: if he looked closely at a problem and shut his eyes to think about it, instantly it became a different one, and when he opened them again the old one still fluttered about unsettled and wouldn't let itself be caught, while the new problem stood in its place and glared menacingly.

He had to arrange quickly for slower agendas. This was most effectively accomplished by holding the sessions in public: then the old hands were no longer just among themselves and had to explain what they meant. Too many different points one after the other destroyed concentration, especially for a man who carried a chaos of individual pictures in his head. He alone was the governor. Only he had to decide how much time must be allotted to giving hope or disapprobation in each individual case. From this day on, sessions of the legislative council of Van Diemen's Land were public.

Fourth day in office. Only two days before the first detailed inspection of the penal institutions and prison settlements. Everything depended on what they would allow him to see. He knew that under the files and reports worse truths were buried. He therefore read them with heightened zeal, for as a first step he wanted to make sure that files and actual events agreed with each other. During the inspection trip he wouldn't be able to manage without the fixed look: he was determined not to be moved or depressed by what he saw. He was governor; he had to gain an overall perspective so as to see what he might do. Action. No tears, no hate, no trembling.