Chapter V.

Dr. Grant Prosecutes His Suit With Caution And Success, And Brandon Finds His Love-Making All To Do Over Again

Harriett Phillips could not come out quite so strong in her contempt for colonial ways and colonial people, arriving when she did, as if she had landed ten or a dozen years before, but still there was a great deal that was open to criticism.  Mr. Phillips and Mr. Brandon thought the colony had made rapid strides towards civilization and comfort since the great influx of wealth consequent on the gold discoveries had attracted to Victoria much that was unattainable before.  Even during their absence in England there had been a great deal of building going on in Melbourne, and many other improvements had been introduced.  The houses were better, and better furnished; the shops seemed to contain everything that enterprise could import or money procure; the ladies were handsomely and expensively dressed, and there were public amusements such as were never heard of in the early colonial days.

But still there was much even in Melbourne that was un-English and strange to a new comer.

Melbourne did not at all come up to Harriett’s expectations, though what she had expected it would have been difficult to tell.  She had wished to go to Victoria because it would be a novelty to her—­it would be so different from England that it would be amusing—­but every difference that she observed, and she was very quick in observing such things, was always for the worse.  There was, of course, the difference of climate, which led to many alterations in dress and manner of living, and which would reasonably lead to more if the English colonist was not so much wedded to old customs and costumes.  The heat and dust Harriett found to be insupportable, and the dress which was most suited to it was so unbecoming, particularly the gentlemen’s dress, with the endless variety of hats for head-covering.  Dr. Grant, who stood a good deal on the dignity of his profession, when in Melbourne wore dark clothes and a black hat even in the heat of summer, and that weighed in his favour with Harriett.  The noise and bustle of Melbourne was so different from what she had been accustomed to in Derbyshire—­indeed it was more like Liverpool than any part of London she had seen—­a poor edition of Liverpool; and that was the city of which the Victorians were so proud.  She could not enter into the natural liking of a people for a town that they have seen with their own eyes grow from a mere hamlet of rude huts to a handsome, paved, lighted, commercial city like Melbourne—­who identify themselves with its progress, having watched the growth of every improvement.  They wonder that it does not strike strangers as being as astonishing as it appears to be to themselves.