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Updated: May 18, 2025
I had often been told you could not beat the job of cooking for a shearers' or a navvies' camp; and that a wideawake boy could earn 'good money' while learning it, as a rouseabout assistant. It seemed to me that there would have been something too absurdly incongruous in attempting to talk of such things to Mr. Rawlence. Hence, perhaps, my audacious suggestion of the literary career.
It said so clearly, and more tactfully than words: 'But you follow me, I see; I know you understand me. And I felt with rare delight that I could and did follow this fascinating man, and understand all his airy allusions to things as far beyond the purview of my present life and prospect as the heavens are beyond the earth, or as Mr. Rawlence was above an 'inmate' of St. Peter's.
I assumed, often quite mistakenly, no doubt, that every one else present had this particular knowledge. Thus the spirit of emulation helped me as it might never have done but for Mr. Rawlence and his sumptuous studio, so rich in everything save examples of his own work. I fancy it must have been fully a year after my arrival in Sydney that I met Mr.
Charles Frederick Rawlence, Filson's House, Macquarie Street, Sydney, was what I read on the card. And then, in very small type in one corner, 'Studio, 3rd Floor. I think it had been the most vividly exciting day in my life up till then; and, though still an orphan, and officially an 'inmate, I walked among the clouds that night; a giant among dwarfs and slaves by my way of it.
While there, no doubt, he had met Father O'Malley, and very casually, I dare say, had mentioned his fancy for sketching me. At the time these trivial events stirred me deeply. That Father O'Malley should have been approached seemed to me a fact of high portent. If only I had had a portrait of my father! As Destiny ruled it, Mr. Rawlence spent but the one day at St.
I clenched my hands involuntarily, and was thankful the artist could not see their palms. That would have been a horrid humiliation; the very thought of it made me flush. No, this shorthand would hardly be introduced at St. Rawlence thought it in the 'seventies.
And then, greatly to my secret joy, the Sister-in-charge sent for me one morning and said: 'There is an artist gentleman coming here, Mr. Rawlence. You are to do whatever he tells you, and carry his things for him while he is here. Be careful now. I have word from Father O'Malley about this. Be sure you don't neglect your milking. You can tell the gentleman when you have to go to that.
'Perhaps it would be more convenient if I came one evening, Mr. Rawlence, I said awkwardly, half rising from the chair. 'Tut, tut, my dear lad! Sit down, sit down. Why should other visitors disturb you? There will only be good fellows like yourself. Ladies are rarities here on a Sunday. And in any case Why, you are quite the man of the world now. This with kindly admiration.
It was I, the orphan, who was carrying on this thrilling conversation with an accomplished man of the world, a distinguished artist. I felt that Mr. Rawlence must clearly be a distinguished artist. 'And so what what would you advise me to do? I asked when a pause came.
Still, it was perhaps odd in a youth of my age that I should have had no desire for recreation or amusement. My study of shorthand did not interest me in the faintest degree; but I was greatly interested by my growing mastery of it, because I thought of the mastery of shorthand, as Mr. Rawlence had described it, as a very valuable means to an end, to various ends.
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