The building, gargantuan in proportions, lent itself well to the desired purpose. It contained ample residential quarters for the staff and still there were plenty of classrooms and dormitories left over for the students. The large garden was more than adequate as a playground. After we moved in neighbours told us that the place was haunted. The renting agent had omitted to mention this. Needless to say numerous discussions about ghosts now took place. Martin and Carr called themselves spiritualists and believed in the possible existence of ghosts. I was a rationalist and did not.
One dark night I was awoken by a commotion in the adjoining quarters. I dressed quickly and immediately went to enquire of my companions as to the problem. Martin informed me that someone was in the basement. We held a council of war and decided to go down and investigate. One of Martin’s sons had a pair of fencing foils. He removed the button shaped guards from off the tips. He then handed me one and kept the second for himself. Martin grabbed a hatchet, Carr a cricket bat, and the ladies formed a rear guard with lighted candles in one hand and fire pokers or tongs in the other. We opened the back door to enter the yard and encountered a loud repetitive rapping noise, highly suggestive of an intruder, either in the cellars or the kitchen. I led the charge. We finally localised the sounds to the kitchen but on entering and exploring it nothing was found, no enemy, not even a sign of forced entry. Martin and Carr then reverted to their spiritualism. “You don’t believe in spirits revisiting this world?” Martin asked me. Carr taunted me quoting Hamlet. “There is more between heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy.” I refused to accept this explanation and suggested we explore the cellars as well but once again we found nothing. I called it a night, returned to my room, read a little and fell asleep. Then in the early hours of the morning I awoke again, this time to a flapping noise on my own ceiling. I looked up and what I saw was beyond belief. Two flaming, fiery eyes were glaring down at me, threateningly, menacingly! Shakespeare’s words, “There is more between heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy” were still ringing in my ears and my first impression was that I must have been dreaming. I lay still, determined to ascertain whether I was awake or not. It is most ludicrous to think you’re dreaming when in fact you’re wide-awake. I pinched my legs. I was awake all right, and the two flaming eyes were still there looking at me. I pulled myself together, put a check on my own imagination, and reinforced to myself that there were no such things as ghosts. There were no lights in my room. Gas had not been fitted, my candle had burnt out, and my matches had been borrowed for the earlier reconnoitering and not returned. But I still had young Martin’s fencing foil. I moved a table into the centre of the room and placed a chair on it to overcome any disadvantage that I might have in relation to the extreme height of the ceiling. I then positioned myself, took aim for the eyes and thrust with my sabre. A living creature squeaked and fluttered as I bored into its body.
By now the entire household had once more awoken. They clattered down the passage into my room, their candles suddenly illuminating it. I had killed a large vampire bat that had presumably come down the kitchen chimney and then made its way into my room. The next morning at breakfast we all managed a laugh over the previous night’s adventure. It had certainly been a victory for rationalism over spiritualism.
Martin and Carr fostered an atmosphere of culture at Turret House. An example is how they encouraged the members of the Nonthetic Literary and Debating Society to use it as the venue for their fortnightly evening meetings. In this manner Society members gained access to our little intellectual coterie and what’s more they helped to expand it. The Nonthetic was the new brainchild of two highly intelligent sixteen-year-olds, the tall and beardless Alfred Deakin and his best friend, the fair yet brown-eyed, and highly vivacious Theodore Fink. These two lads were inseparable. They had sat next to each other at Melbourne Grammar School, the year before, where Fink had convinced Deakin that matriculation was essential for entry into a suitable profession. Now in 1872 they were both studying law. Deakin had been a shy and quiet boy until he met Fink, who so impressed him, with his self-confidence, impudence and resource, that Deakin decided to follow suit. Both rose to positions of great prominence and power. Deakin, became Australia’s second, fifth and seventh Prime Minister and Fink went on to become Chairman of Directors of the Herald newspaper, for more than a quarter of a century.
These two teenagers were born leaders and very stimulating to talk to. It was a pleasure to engage them in social intercourse. They had already gained a reputation throughout the city as keen debaters. They had brilliant delivery. Deakin was a fluent speaker who excelled in polemics, the art of controversial argument, and Fink had the knack of manipulating sarcasm to a level of genuine humour. They were also members of the well-known Eclectic Debating Society where they had already competed against such notables as Henry Gyles Turner, the manager of the Commercial Bank of Australia, and Marcus Clarke, the writer. The Eclectic met only once a month, and this young pair, desirable of more frequent practice at public speaking, formed the Nonthetic to overcome this deficiency.
Deakin financed his evening Law classes by working at a number of jobs during the day and one of these was teaching. He joined me on the staff of the All Saint’s Church of England Grammar School where we further cemented our friendship. After graduating from Law School he accepted a job writing for David Syme of the “Age” who was influential in converting him from a free trader to a protectionist and then supported him in his quest for a seat in the Victorian Parliament.
Young Fink had a great love of poetry. In his matriculation year he had won the school’s poetry prize for a verse entitled “The War around Paris” which he had based on the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. When he found out that I had served in that war he engaged me in some lively discussions concerning his poem and the conflict in general. Theodore became an active member of Melbourne’s bohemian artistic and literary circles. For many years he contributed poems and prose, both light and serious, to various newspapers and journals.
I lived at Turret House for a year. When I was appointed Head Teacher of the Fitzroy Secondary Academy at the corner of Nicholson and Gertrude Streets, I took a room, close by, in Princes Street, Fitzroy. I shared these new lodgings for nearly six years with the indomitable Richard Birnie, who I see as having had some role in directing me away from teaching and into a career of writing and journalism.
I like to think of Richard Birnie, J.F. Archibald and myself as a triumvirate. We all believed in the axiom ” the pen is mightier than the sword”. I lived with Birnie at 16 Brascher’s Terrace, Princes Street, Fitzroy for more than half of the eighteen seventies and Archibald, although he arrived there after me and left before me, was together with us a considerable while. We were in some ways like a family. Birnie was born in 1808, I was born in 1850, and Archibald in 1856. Birnie played the role of a father figure to both of us; perhaps a wise old grandfather figure is even more appropriate; and I found myself in an inadvertent supporting role as JF’s adopted older brother. I say this because JF, a Catholic of Scottish and Irish descent, who was baptised John Feltham, after meeting me, Frenchy Brodzky, the former Jewish medical student from the Sorbonne, decided to recreate himself. He became a Frenchman named Jules Francois, his mother Charlotte Jane Madden he fantasised into a French Jewess, and he expressed a desire to study medicine in Edinburgh. He even went so far as to eventually marry a Jewess. Forgive me for thinking he found me quite exotic.
Richard Birnie had been born in London. His father, Sir Richard Birnie, the Chief Magistrate of the Bow Street Police Court, was well known in connection with the arrest and prosecution of the Cato Street conspirators. This was a plot to murder Foreign Secretary Castlereagh and the rest of the cabinet, at a dinner party given by Lord Harrowby on February 23rd 1820. An informer told the police about it and all ten ringleaders were arrested. Five were hanged and the other five were transported for life.
Birnie junior was particularly well educated. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge with Tennyson and Thackeray and graduated