I walked her to my front veranda after a prayer meeting one
Sunday night and we talked earnestly of the spiritual things - of God, goodness, salvation. Suddenly up flew the front window and my father poked his head out. "Jim, I hope you are not talking about wicked things." I was hurt. Marjorie was mortified. (She later married a rich Salvationist and died in an air crash.)
From the age of six I was sure my father was a great and good man but I was mortally afraid of him. After I was six, I believe he carried with him forever the idea that I was not capable of any sort of goodness. It still horrifies me. It happened in Perth when I was six. We lived in the city - a narrow street. The traffic was horse-drawn - men walked in front of steam rollers, waving red flags to prevent horses from bolting. Horses were then the main road danger - cars had not reached Perth in numbers. Dad was on the front veranda; I was on the other side of the street, holding my sister, Florence, by the hand. A horse and cart hurtled up the road towards us.
"Stay there, Jim!" he shouted.
I disobeyed. We ran across, almost under the horse's neck. My father stood, white faced, stiff with anger.
"Come inside!"
"No!" Jim wouldn't.
I was dragged in. He stripped the rubber tyre from the wheel of the baby's pram and belted me across the back until I could not stand. My mother came home. My back had huge bleeding welts across it. Mum's eyes blazed.
"Don't you ever touch that child again!" she said in her stern-as-Judgement Day tone.
I felt uncomfortable with my father ever after and he with me. And yet I knew he was a truly good and great man. By the age of eighteen I'd left whatever house they then lived in and never went back except for visits. In a good Salvation house the eldest must be born and stay a paragon of virtue in order to survive [as a good soldier]. Generally the eldest sons of Salvation Army officers leave. The musical training is excellent but the rest, in my days, was restrictive to the point of destruction. Goodness and love cannot be preserved by force or precepts.
I paved the way for my brother and sisters. They survived relatively unscathed by guilt. At least Florence and Wesley did. They remained near our parents until both mother and father died. [My younger sister, Mary, married an Anglican choirmaster and organist but died young, officially of lung cancer but it could have been from an excess of Salvationism. Marriage is no sure refuge from the bonnet, the timbrel and the blood and fire of Salvationism.] I believe in marriage - one man, one woman. It is an ideal to which I have frequently aspired. [Officially I have failed four times in marriage, unofficially many times more.] Every women I have ever loved has been a wonderful thing, deserving the most kindness, love and devotion. I have received from each of them just that. Every woman has been my mother - each one the equal or even better.
When we got to Broken Hill a big strike was on, 1919 or 1920. There was universal poverty and industrial trouble. There was little food and what we had our mother gave away to the needy. We lived in Wolfram St, opposite a huge mine. We lived on bread and dripping. Here our brother, Wesley, was born. He was born sick and skinny and stayed that way until we'd shaken off the red Broken Hill dust and moved to Perth. My sister, Florence, a toddler, was also sick and stayed that way for years. She cried incessantly and, instead of a vase of flowers on the table, we had Florence as the centre piece, yelling her head off. It was dry and hot and the dust rolled in, turning day into night. When that happened, the town stopped and the powdery red dust settled over all.
After the tribulations of Broken Hill, Adjutants Albert and Florence Penberthy were probably glad to get an appointment as Corps Officers, Perth Fortress, Western Australia. In my mother's family it is said that the chooks all lay on their backs waiting for their legs to be tied every time a removalist's van passed by. Each time we packed, and that was about every two years, my father would get out all the big wooden packing cases and within a week everything would disappear, nailed down and whisked off to railway or ship. We would see nothing of our treasures until we unpacked in the new place, months later. My father's possessions were six-hundred books, three flutes, four clarinets of all sizes, a saxophone and a Bullhorn organ, which we still have. There were also several of the world's biggest and best concertinas. Through the years he added violins, mandolins, ocarinas, a banjo, a harp, a zither, trumpets, cornets, a tuba and other odds and ends. Most are still about in one or other of our families.
The journey across the Nullarbor Plain was a wonderful experience. The trans-continental railway had just been built and we were among the first to use it. It was hot and dusty and, on this trip, the train carried hoards of Salvation Army officers and their children from East to West and it was fun - almost. The first adventure was the stop at Port Augusta - but here a diversion. My father travelled extensively, so he knew practically every official on every railway train and line in Australia. Before I was born he'd been Corps Officer in Lismore, N.S.W., 1901 and again in 1907; Stanthorpe and Innisfail in Queensland; Uralla and Glen Innes back in N.S.W.; as well as Launceston, Tasmania; and Bendigo, Victoria. My parents were married in Bendigo. The female timbrelists and Corps Cadets had lost him forever. I think his best and most valued friends were railway officials. He always got the best seats on the train and V.I.P. treatment. He knew where the best railway pies in the country were to be found.
We had arrived at Port Augusta and stayed with the stationmaster for a whole week while the railway fraternity held a short strike. My father gathered hundreds of periwinkles from the beach. After he'd cooked and eaten them for a whole week without dying, we were back on the train bound for Kalgoorlie. We were skinny after Broken Hill and famine; we were sunburnt, dark and dirty; Wesley was still sick and Florence still crying - and I was having the time of my life. The train stopped at all stations and one morning a crowd of Aborigines arrived. They were fed from the leavings of the passengers' breakfasts. The men crawled under the engine to get grease to rub in their hair. Aboriginal men are very fashion conscious.
When we arrived at Kalgoorlie, the railwaymen staged a train strike and we were stuck there for two weeks. Some of the time we stayed in a galvanised iron hut and lived on strawberries and ice cream. Aboriginal people roamed through the houses, begging tobacco, tea and sugar. They had fallen for the white man's curses but they were beautifully wild and frightening. There were goats roaming the streets; it was hot and dry. Half the time we spent in Kalgoorlie we were quartered in the local racecourse grandstand, along with a lot of other Salvationists from the train.
Eventually the train was off to Perth and I was off to school, where on the first day, I fell in love with the infants' mistress. The old James Street Infants' School was next door to the gaol and the boys used to poke fun at the Aborigines staring out at us from behind its bars. Perth was exciting. One could get home late after roaming through nearby city shops or playing on the horseshoe bridge or the railway station. This was after my belting with the pram tyre and we'd gone to live in another house behind the People's Palace, which was later pulled down to make way for the new Perth Fortress. This was an exciting place, right in the heart of the city and near the practice room for the famous Fortress Band - a band that has had a succession of Palmers as bandmasters for eighty years. I don't know what will happen when the supply runs out.
Everybody in the Perth Fortress Brass Band was a fine musician as well as a holy man. They were all brave celebrities who went off to wars. At the time there was probably no more efficient musical entity in Perth than the Fortress brass band. No symphony orchestra nearly matched the prowess of the Palmers and their friends. There was no jealousy or sin or dross in any one of them.
I was surprised to find, later in my life, that in other places Salvoes were ordinary people in fancy dress. On average they seemed to be on the godly, temperate and sober side of life. I was somewhat astounded therefore to find that a sergeant-major in one corps was shot when climbing through the bedroom window of someone else's wife. I stayed with the Army as long as I could, pretending not to be there when any of my friends passed by while we were marching or playing in the street. Finally I