The Discovery Of Slowness (31 page)

Maconochie believed he already understood what had to be
changed in the colony. He gave John advice. John told him of Matthew Flinders's rescue voyage after the shipwrecks. ‘In navigation one must fix one's starting-position as precisely as one's objective.' But the secretary knew only land war.

The inspection tour: the prison of Port Arthur; the last original inhabitants on Flinders Island; the coal mines, where the most serious offenders were working. Together with Lady Franklin – and against the advice of the official who guided them – he crawled through the darkest tunnels, bathed in sweat, and stopped everywhere until he had understood each operation. He controlled himself, concealed his terror, asked questions about procedures, glanced at Jane now and then, looked away quickly.

Life expectancy in the coal mines: four to five years on average. Fifteen to sixteen hours a day at hard labour. Lashes with the whip for anything and everything. Coal dust in the wounds. In Port Arthur his first question concerned horizontal stripes scooped out of the backs of a column of prisoners. Answer: ‘Oh, they're Barclay's Tigers.' Lieutenant Barclay himself had cheerfully announced that he was keeping those tiger stripes open with regular whipping.

What kind of governor had Barclay expected? He was dismissed immediately, and the prosecutor was requested to issue a complaint against him and against a man named Slade. George Augustus Slade of Point Puer prison had boasted that twenty-five whiplashes by his hand achieved a greater effect than one hundred lashes administered by anyone else. That was now over.

By the way, caution: the prosecutor was a man of Arthur's clique. Re-examine his past actions. Take notes.

Onward. Point Puer, the prison for boys on top of the steep, rocky shore. Every month several youthful inmates hurled themselves over the edge of the cliff – most recently, two nine-year-olds. He saw them alive, with Lady Franklin and his niece Sophia. Emaciated bodies, scars. Strange, large eyes, perhaps in contrast with their small faces. Such faces need weep no longer to convey their misery. Sophia was so touched that she simply embraced the two and kissed their foreheads, to the visible chagrin of the
warden. The boys whispered to her that they would be very severely beaten, then fell silent. When John inquired about them a day later he found out about the suicides. The warden delivered a well-concocted story: the sinful boys had taken Sophia for an angel because of her long blonde hair and had killed themselves in the presumptuous hope of meeting her in heaven. John recalled the warden's face at the time and composed a different verse. Order: disciplinary transfer for neglect and improper supervision. More he could not do without witnesses and evidence.

What kind of doctor did they have in Port Arthur? What kind of clergyman? These were not meaningful reflections. Forward. John heard the order as clearly as at that time on the
Investigator
. He didn't want revulsion and rage to work on him too much, for he wanted to act. Here it was more complicated. It was not enough to hoist a flag. He couldn't dismiss or incarcerate all the wardens in one day. Above all, he couldn't dismiss his own minister without a good, well-documented cause.

Then Flinders Island. He looked forward to this, probably because it bore Matthew's good name. And the rest of the original inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land were reputedly receiving the best of care.

Sixty-seven emaciated, miserable creatures with matted hair, listless expressions, dirty skin, and bent backs were the remaining survivors. They squatted apathetically on a desolate, nasty piece of land and waited for death. Children were no longer born, and that made sense: what should children do in a world where there was nothing but Flinders Island? The sad pictures penetrated John's eyes; he tried energetically to stop them inside his head, but they found their way into his bones. There they sat, and asked, What are you going to do, John Franklin? He answered, Not allow myself to be paralysed.

How different they looked now – the pretty white houses, the purple-dark mountains, the blue river, the wide-sleeved ladies and the gentlemen with buttoned overcoats and stern faces beneath respectfully doffed felt hats. Behind the high-sounding phrases different truths emerged.

The police were no longer the protectors of civil order. The
sumptuous villas at Battery Point no longer allowed admiration for progress and constructive development, and the streets, the Cathedral of St David, the houses – they had all been built by convicts.

Now Franklin knew not only what the convicts wanted but also what they lived through. The newly built dockyard with the sweet smell of wood from half-finished hulls became repellent once one knew that the shipbuilders were walking in chains. Even the smell of fish on drying nets on Salamanca Place had nothing comforting about it any more. How often did those nets hold one of the dead who had plunged down the steep shore?

Sir John Franklin barricaded himself behind his desk. His office became his main headquarters. He wanted not simply to oversee, punish, make war, but also to win over people who had the same feelings in their bones as he did. And they must multiply.

He had to find a better place to live for the original inhabitants. He discussed this with Montagu in a friendly but cautious way. The latter did not agree and raised several objections. But the next day John's plans for the establishment of a large reservation were on their way to London.

Jane played her role as the governor's wife to perfection. When John had to appear in public she was a watchful ally. She concerned herself with the women's prison and corresponded with someone named Elizabeth Fry in London about matters of prison discipline. She invited wives and daughters of officials and settlers to hear string quartets and scientific lectures. She ran the entire complicated household and cooked cheerfully, though with moderate success, for twenty people when the cook was ill or had escaped. She spoke her opinion about everything frankly and without shyness; it never occurred to her to be an immaculate, snobbish society lady on the model of Mrs Arthur. She had travelled too widely for that, had read too many books, and had observed too many different people on three continents. She concealed her high spirits as little as her beauty. Jane's enterprise became nearly infamous: a fortnight after their arrival she became the first woman to climb Mount Wellington – 4,165 feet high;
that was no mere stroll. John was independent of Jane's judgment but listened to it with respect. He loved her without passion but confided in her more than he had ever confided in Eleanor. He did not need her around him all the time, but she was also never in his way. Happily, it was the same for her. If this was not love, well, it was mutual understanding.

‘Don't expect anything from Montagu,' warned Jane. ‘He's Arthur's man. He wants to make you dependent on him and paralyse you.'

‘I know,' answered John.

‘He thinks governors come and go, but Montagu remains.'

‘That may be,' answered John, ‘but I still need a first officer who's quick, knows the ropes, and is part of the government. Without such a person I wouldn't have a free hand for the real work. Hepburn can't do it. Maconochie has too little insight. And, foolish as it is, it can't be a woman.'

Jane knew that. ‘I can't take government business off your shoulders. But I can warn you, and I'm now warning you about Montagu.'

‘Good,' said John. ‘And I'm warning you about Maconochie. He's an idealist. We mustn't betray our politics with sentimentality.'

Jane looked at him intently: ‘Nor the other way round.'

At night she put her head in the hollow between his shoulder and neck. This way she could fall asleep while he lay awake and watched that her head rested comfortably. Now and then she read an adventure novel and put out the light long after John had begun to snore. One morning she said, ‘You've been grinding your teeth at night; you're worried.' He confirmed it.

John Montagu declined to speak more slowly to a slow Excellency. In this the colonial secretary reminded Sir John of officers Walker and Pasley on the
Bedford
. He was well informed and could present his information to others clearly and rapidly; he was circumspect in his actions and forgot nothing – no name, no appointment, not the merest slight. Sir John treated him benevolently but, after careful consideration, no more so than anyone else.

Ambition kept the colonial secretary in a state of tension; he acted like a cat before jumping. He concealed this tension behind a seemingly relaxed and open manner, making himself accessible to everyone and laughing jovially, his watch-chain clinking over his bulging waistcoat, never taking his watery eyes off the other person for even a second.

When Sir John made the legislative council an open forum, Montagu was already ‘worried': a meeting had just taken place of three hundred and thirty-six settlers demanding representative government. To him that was a danger signal. When John became interested in excesses in the punishment of prisoners and dismissed a few officials, he did so against Montagu's advice. Montagu also opposed the resettling of the aborigines on better land. And when Sir John made it a regular practice to go on board the arriving prisoner ships to tell the convicts not only about their duties but also about their rights, Montagu began to rally Arthur's old allies round him. Still, he also sought to persuade Sir John to change his ways by reciting to him with emphasis the two ‘iron principles of a penal colony'.

‘First: any deviation from a principle once acknowledged as being correct is treason.

‘Second: any deviation from current accepted practice is a weakness and encourages the miscreants.'

John looked at these practices thoroughly from all sides. Then he suggested Montagu consider that a combination of those two maxims would exclude any change. For him, however, a person was also a traitor who identified a
new
principle as being correct and was too cowardly to act on it.

It appeared that Montagu took this reply as a personal affront. In circles of the Arthur party he said with a bittersweet smile, ‘For Sir John I've recently become a coward and a traitor. He's simply always a discoverer; nothing remains hidden from him.'

Maconochie heard about this by way of a servant, and conveyed it to the governor. He did not believe it. In other words, he decided to ignore the hint.

Ella was Eleanor's daughter through and through. When Jane told her not to impale a piece of meat on a fork and point at the guests with it, she specifically asked for an explanation of why not. Sir John told her about Trim the tomcat, who wouldn't have let such a chance slip by. ‘That's the one the city's named after,' Ella exclaimed. ‘Was supposed to be named after,' John corrected her. ‘They later thought Lord Melbourne was more important.' Jane glanced over to the guests and suggested it might be better to change the subject. Sophia laughed.

Early in the morning John walked with his daughter under the eucalyptus trees in the garden of Government House. Everything seemed so clear and simple. This colony would some day be a land where children could grow up without half of everything having to be concealed from them all the time. As it was, Ella had asked about convicts and prisons long ago. ‘How does one become a miscreant?' she once asked. She was used to the fact that Papa always had to think for several minutes before giving an answer. She preferred that to explanations which merely repeated in different words what she already knew. ‘A miscreant,' said her father, ‘doesn't know his own correct speed. He's too slow on the wrong occasions and too fast on the wrong occasions as well.' Ella wanted a more exact explanation. He went on, ‘He does too slowly what others want him to do; for example, obeying and helping. But he tries much too fast to get what he wants from others; for example, money or––' ‘But you're slow, too,' Ella declared. ‘A governor is allowed that,' answered John, biting his lip.

John Franklin's system matured; it took on contours appropriate to a colony. He believed that he had found, theoretically at least, the correct method for life, discovery and government.

‘There have to be two persons at the top. Not one and not three. Two. One of them must conduct the day-to-day business and keep up with the impatient daily inquiries, requests and threats of the governed. He must give the impression of vigour and still concern himself only with cheap, unimportant and urgent
matters. The other maintains calm and distance; he can say no at crucial moments. For he does not worry about immediate urgencies but looks at specific individual details for a long time. He acknowledges the duration and speed of all events, allowing himself no respite. He makes things hard for himself. Listening to his own inner voice, he can say no even to his best friends; above all, to his first officer. His own rhythm, his own well-preserved long breath, is his refuge from all apparent urgencies, from all supposed emergencies, from short-lived solutions. If he has said no, he is obliged to give reasons. But with that, too, there need not be too much of a hurry.' This is how Franklin formulated it and wrote it down.

‘That's the monarchy!' exclaimed Maconochie. ‘King and Prime Minister – you have invented the monarchy. That's how far we've come.'

‘No,' said John. ‘It's the art of governing in general. The monarchy is only most easily recognised in it.'

‘And where's the people?' asked Maconochie.

‘It can take the place of the King,' answered John. ‘Without slowness nothing can be done, not even a revolution.'

The secretary was not satisfied. ‘That only means waiting. Whom do you seriously want to recommend this to? At sixty-five I won't make a revolution any more.'

‘I, I,' John stuttered involuntarily.