SEEKING HENRY

By Carolynne Skinner

Young Henry had red hair; he was clever and adventurous. But mystery shrouds his life and so it is a granddaughter's imagination which gives presence to Henry from his birth in 1865 in Sussex.

 

The 1890s found Henry in 'marvellous Melbourne' where notorious American balloonist Leila Adair (in fact Lillian Hawker from Mudgee) cl

• Language: English
• Publisher: parhelion press
• Release date: Aug 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645546316

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Seeking_Henry_small.jpg

First published in Australia in 2022

by Parhelion Press

www.parhelionpress.com.au

© Carolynne Skinner 2022

The right of Carolynne Skinner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

ISBN 978-0-6455463-0-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-6455463-1-6 (ebook)

Cover design by Nada Backovic

Cover images: Shutterstock, iStockphotos and Author’s own

Typeset by Nada Backovic

For Kiku

PART ONE

Henry

PROLOGUE

It was the Easter holiday 1965 when I escaped London for the first time since arriving in England the previous September.

My boss, Mr Leegood, at BBC Publications in Marylebone High Street, had given me an early pass so I could catch the 3 pm train from Waterloo to Axminster. A change for Seaton Junction and another, this time on a single carriage train, down to tiny Seaton on Lyme Bay and the harbour.

It was still light at 7 pm and I was headed with my rucksack and good walking shoes for the coastal path to Beer.

So many months cooped up in London through the winter and now in the clean coolness of spring with all of nature bursting into life, I drank it in. I was floating, feeling an exquisite lightness.

Primroses, violets, giant dandelions, daffodils, green, green fields and hedgerows, tiny stone and thatched cottages and now, at last, the sea.

It was barely moving, just gently breathing up and down the dappled shoreline, a slow shoosh shoosh over glistening grey shingle.

Free! I ran along the coastal path. Then, slowing to a walk, I ascended, up the steep cobbled streets of the tiny fishing village to the old stone house that was now a hostel. I would meet my girlfriends here in Beer for a much-anticipated Easter break, walking along the coast of Devon and Cornwall, then hitch-hiking back to London.

The girls had arrived not long before and we cooked eggs and beans on toast in the hostel kitchen, drank cups of tea and chatted excitedly. Later two English boys asked us to join them to go down to the beach. So down the narrow streets once more and on to the pebbled shore, now mysterious at night. The soft rhythmic sound of the dark glistening sea as it moved across the shingle whispered stories from distant lands. We would run back but were still five minutes late. The hostel door had been locked and one of the girls in the upstairs bedroom crept down to let us in.

Restless sleep, dreaming of giant dandelions and enormous squawking seagulls – had I shrunk or are they really twice the size of those at home?

I didn’t know then that this year of 1965 was the centenary of my grandfather’s birth – that in 1865 Henry was born here. But if I did not know consciously, surely I did subconsciously, for here I was, following these same timeless paths.

A small, eager boy of enthusiasms and passions, Henry’s journey had begun here, in an antique land of greens and blues and yellows, with its chalk-white coast and soft grey-blue rippling water slowly polishing a trillion smooth round pebbles.

At the time Henry’s life reached its span it would for the briefest of moments touch mine, and now, my own life’s span almost reached, I am here to tell our stories.

Chapter 1

He was Henry, Henri, Henrie – and on a few occasions Harry – born Henry Hampton Rayward in January 1865 in the ancient village of Clayton. It lies astride an old Roman road at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex.

Gentle green hills sloping to hedgerows, clusters of hamlets many centuries old. Then Clayton’s population was recorded as 863 souls. The London to Brighton railway line goes through Clayton with a tunnel a mile and a quarter long running under farmland. The farmer whose land it underlies had insisted that the tunnel entrance be made to look impressive, castellated with sandstone. Here people know their worth and are steadfast in their demands.

Henry was christened at the little Saxon church of St John the Baptist – the church’s rustic wall paintings date from the early twelfth century. His father was the village grocer and draper.

Some children are recognised and nurtured by their adults for the promise they seem to show and Henry was blessed as such a child, his interests and talents always given support, whether by close kin or more distant relatives. His younger brother Arthur’s abilities and personal characteristics were different, one outgoing and the other somewhat reserved. But these two boys and their half-brother Freddie dreamed many of the same dreams and longed for adventure and indeed this would come to be.

The boys’ mother Elizabeth Emily (Lizzie) Cully had Freddie first, when she was young, just nineteen. Either Freddie’s father was William Broad, much older than she (twenty-five years older) or perhaps he was someone younger or even, perhaps, Lizzie wouldn’t tell. Anyway, old Mr Broad and his wife Jane took baby Freddie to raise. Mr Broad was named his father in the records and so Freddie was called Freddie Broad. Mrs Broad probably would not have been so inclined to raise Freddie as a son had she thought her good husband was really his father.

Naturally, then, it was deemed wise for Lizzie to be married and so she was to Thomas Nathan Rayward, a grocer and draper. He was also older, twelve years older than Lizzie, and would be Henry’s father.

Henry was born in 1865 and Arthur was born a year later. The boys’ father died when Henry was only eleven and so again, Freddie’s mother Jane Broad took Henry and Arthur to raise also.

By fifteen years Henry was living in Cardiff and working for Mr John Jones, Solicitor, as well as for a relative, Mr George Kyte, at his Mill Lane Ironworks in Cardiff. This employment would be the precursor to earning a place, call it an apprenticeship, at the world-renowned Soho Foundry of James Watt & Co. in Smethwick, Birmingham. To be one of the select input of young men into the drawing offices at the Soho Foundry was the dreamed-of first rung of Henry’s engineering career. Part of this training included study at the Birmingham School of Metallurgy and Henry excelled.

Engineering and metallurgy were, however, only half of this young man. The passions which truly inflamed Henry’s heart were for the theatre: singing, operetta, writing plays and performing – in addition to a love of art and painting it must be said, but that would come later.

The boys’ aunt, Mrs Broad, sang and played pianoforte and at age fourteen Henry was instrumental in devising a varied and amusing program which was then performed at the famous Assembly Room in Cardiff. This splendid room, although then still quite new, had already hosted royalty, international statesmen and diplomats and its use was described for miscellaneous ceremonies and events throughout the year. Its large and elegant space accommodates as many as five hundred, and is hung with three magnificent bronze chandeliers. Its finishes include decorations of mouldings picked out in gold leaf, in a theme of mermaids and sea creatures befitting the waterfront city of Cardiff.

Mrs Broad and her friends called themselves The Dolphin Amateur Dramatic and Concert Society. This particular program of vocal and instrumental music included Henry’s own Comic Character Extravaganza called Crustibuffer (in which he played the king, of course!). On an alternate evening they performed Mephisto (with, according to the program, the well-known H Rayward as Mephisto). Next on the program was a Nigger Sketch in which Jumbo appeared with Messrs Rayward (yes, Henry again), Preston and Treseder, and, to top off the evening, a Ventriloquial Performance by Mr A Voisey.

A ventriloquist indeed, for throughout Europe ventriloquism had become something of a rage and a very popular form of public entertainment. Performances at Sadler’s Wells in London were huge attractions and even royalty and members of the aristocracy were learning how to throw their voices. Henry was spellbound by the skill and immediately set out to learn. It occurred to him that if all else failed when he travelled to the far-off Antipodes, he would be assured of a standby occupation as a ventriloquist. Initially just flirting with this thought, Henry nevertheless had his own ventriloquial dummy constructed. In fact, had it not been for Henrie or Harry the ventriloquist, this young man would never have encountered some of the many strange twists of fate which his life would take, including with a lady balloonist.

Young Henry had charm, confidence, intelligence, and he also had red hair. Henry Hampton Rayward was going places.

What an extraordinary time to be alive! Henry would lie in bed thinking, planning and dreaming of the wonders of the life that lay ahead. Thinking of his shopkeeper father’s life, then his own, of learning the skills of the draughtsman, the mechanic and the engineer, the science – one could say the magic – of iron turned into steel in the vast furnaces of the foundry. For Henry all the promise, all the wonders of the world were there, in abundance, just waiting to be experienced.

The Great Adventure of sailing on a fast, modern steamship to the far side of the world had long been the dream of all three brothers – Henry, Arthur and Freddie. Now many friends and acquaintances were travelling, to India, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Australia or New Zealand, leaving or returning on one of the frequent sailings from England’s southern ports.

From a hollowed-out shelter of tall grasses high on the chalk cliffs one could lie and observe their billowing sails and funnels belching smoke as ships entered the Channel and raced for home, dwarfing the small fishing smacks and working tramps. There were the new fast mail steamships and sometimes one would even catch the awesome sight of a majestic ocean liner on the transatlantic run, heading to or out from Tilbury or one of the major European ports, Rotterdam and Bremen.

Numerous English ships were by this time running the new Suez route to the East, although those in a greater hurry to reach Australia still took the very dangerous and unpredictable, although shorter, route around the Cape, where ships were not infrequently lost. The young men settled on a preference to survive the journey. New steamships with steel hulls and more luxurious accommodation were being designed both for the comfort of passengers and for carrying the mail. Not surprisingly, given the huge movement of people around the world, mail had become their most important cargo.

Henry’s brother Arthur would marry Freddie’s cousin Jane Tarleton from Kings Norton, Worcestershire, before they sailed, with the plan that she would join him as soon as he had settled in Australia. For all, the dream was coming closer and closer to realisation.

It was a splendid send-off, the three smartly attired, travelling together cabin class on the SS Ormuz from Plymouth, calling at Naples and Port Said, then sailing through the Suez Canal to Colombo and Albany and on to Largs Bay in South Australia. Henry would hear Italian – the language of Verdi – spoken by natives and there would be Mediterranean food, unlike anything at home, then the engineering wonder of the man-made canal with deserts drifting away to the far horizon, the lush tropical colony of Colombo and its dark-skinned inhabitants, the life throbbing around each of these busy ports.

With others they met on board who had travelled this route before and who were familiar with procedures and the ports, the friends confidently ventured onshore at every opportunity, trying different foods, making purchases and larking about – young men in holiday mood. On board, as well, there was plenty to distract the travellers, whether musical entertainments or playing cards or just getting to know one’s fellow travellers, essential distractions particularly when passing through rough seas and inclement weather.

The SS Ormuz, having safely sailed halfway around the world, reached first Albany then finally Largs Bay in South Australia. A fine sight marked their arrival: brilliant cerulean skies and sharp, clear light dancing on the gently moving ocean as it rippled in to shore. The Ormuz anchored in deep water and in an excited but orderly discharge her passengers were transferred to the jetty by launch together with their luggage and other freight and mail.

The recently constructed train line ran right to the end of the long jetty and in this way they were transported directly into the city of Adelaide, a new city of considerable charm, well laid-out with tree-lined avenues, to the main railway station. There, without delay – in fact with little opportunity even to appreciate the variety and demeanour of the city’s populace – they were transferred to the train bound for Melbourne. And such was the much-vaunted efficiency of the postal service that mail arriving that day on the Ormuz was delivered – as were the three young men – the following day in Melbourne.

Chapter 2

Their destination achieved and Melbourne lived up to all expectations. In 1890 this was a bustling city of noisy streets, of clanging and whistling, of mechanical horns, and accompanied by all the sounds of a boisterous humanity. There were trams, motors and horse-drawn conveyances, dogs barking, a colourful populace, and pavements jostling with a riff-raff of vagabonds and swagmen, of sharp dressers and suited gents, elegant ladies and all of life between.

Marvellous Melbourne they called it, this prosperous bustling port city, which had grown exponentially in size and wealth during the gold rush. The name was coined by English journalist George Augustus Henry Sala for this brash New World version of the big English cities, its handsome new buildings several floors high, as substantial and modern as any you might see in London. Indeed, Melbourne was reputedly the richest city in the world and the second largest in the British Empire.

The young men arrived equipped with addresses and introductions for accommodation and employment, as well as connections to distant cousins of various friends who had earlier made the trip from home. And they had also made friends on the journey.

They soon found lodgings. Trams rattled and clanged along the street, conveniently passing this bluestone terrace, built, like so much of Melbourne, from basalt quarried from the nearby river. This same stone was also being shipped back to London in quantity, as ballast, and would end up in some of London’s new buildings.

Other residents sharing the terrace were observed to be colourfully and even theatrically dressed. Children ran in and out of the lodgings, playing games in the street. The liveliness of this New World bohemia was an unexpected discovery, delighting the friends, and in the natural way of young people attracted to their species, they quickly made acquaintance with the other tenants.

And so it was that a resident, Miss Lillian Hawker, young, pretty and good-natured, was found to be lively company. Of pleasing curves, soft fair curls and a sonorous and ready laugh, she willingly apprised them of the ways and means of getting about their new city. Lillian would become friend, possibly lover, and indeed tormentor of both Henry and Arthur.

The friendship was immediate and, initially at least, uncomplicated. Lillian was a country girl and regaled the young men with entertaining stories of her home town, Mudgee, in the goldmining west of New South Wales, one of the first towns to be established with the crossing of the Blue Mountains. She had two sisters who, in the hope of finding their fortune – or at least their husbands – had adventurously travelled to San Francisco, like so many looking for El Dorado. And, when Lillian said she was an actress, an entertainer, Henry saw immediately a serendipitous crossing of paths.

Many newcomers arrived having had instilled wild stories from back in England of the rough-mannered women who roamed the goldfields and the bawdy trollops to be found on the streets of Melbourne. Encountering the sophistication of Melbourne, its fashion and entertainments, was therefore a pleasant surprise for Henry. And now it seemed, it was his good fortune to meet Miss Lillian Hawker. Young, perhaps twenty, she was forthright, even impudent, and adventurous. Such frank and wide-eyed enthusiasm for whatever life might hold in store indicated a kindred spirit to Henry. But Lillian’s attention had fallen immediately upon Arthur. Taller than his older brother, with gentle grey eyes and the healthy good looks of an outdoors man, Arthur’s quiet demeanour, so it seemed to Lillian, concealed a heart yearning for love.

All three young men found work immediately. By day Henry worked as a draughtsman, initially just outside Melbourne, in Geelong. Later he would move on to work for Mr Edward Waters at the International Patent and Trade Marks Office in Melbourne. And, armed with useful introductions provided by Lillian, he very quickly began to make a name for himself outside office hours as an amateur ventriloquist.

At the same time, Lillian’s flirtation with Arthur, which he had never had the wish or the will to rebuff, had progressed to an affair. And Arthur had been her eager accomplice, wittingly bowled over by the young woman’s charms. However, Arthur was married and clearly what had developed was a very serious situation.

While the young men may have landed feet first in a colourful community offering both adventure and opportunity, the pitfalls for young women, the aptly named fairer sex, for it was their sex which would so often bring about their downfall, gave out an unfair hand. This would be very clearly demonstrated in their first year in the city. In 1891, with Arthur still living there but Henry a frequent visitor at the bluestone terrace, Lillian gave birth to a son.

A bastard son to an unwed mother! Even in the melting pot that was Melbourne, this was a disgrace and a blemish to be carried through one’s life, for mother and son. Or was it? Perhaps Lillian’s theatrical milieu was different and less condemning than the conservative Victorian society of Melbourne’s middle class.

Now would be an appropriate time to reveal that Henry had decided to enhance his future employment chances, both professional and as a performer, by recording on his curriculum vitae that his grandfather was one Sir Thomas Nathan Rayward. This was actually his father’s name (not his grandfather’s) now elevated by Henry’s generous award of a knighthood. Who would know, so far from home? Very amusing! had been Arthur’s response when Henry confessed this to him, but it was not something he intended to emulate. It was, however, very much Lillian’s style, as will be seen.

In keeping with the theatricality favoured by these young people, let us imagine the situation in which Lillian had found herself: perhaps a nail-biting scene from Charles Dickens played out on the stage to an audience scandalised by the harrowing plight of a young woman with a married lover. Enter Henry who, as a single man, agrees to save the situation: Without a name for her baby boy I agreed to offer mine. No different than when I wrote down Sir Thomas as my grandfather. At least I exist! Indeed.

For their half-brother Freddie Broad, whose birth had been recorded in similar circumstances, the situation of Lillian’s son may well not have seemed so earth-shattering. Did Freddie even know if old Mr Broad was his father, although he had taken his name? But for Arthur, newly married, his young wife Jane due to join him imminently, it would have been disastrous were it to be known he had fathered Lillian’s child.

And so it was that the father of Lillian’s son was registered as Henry Hampton Rayward and the baby named as Theodore Hampton Oswald Rayward. While the scenario described is of course pure theatre, it does speculate a very practical response. Consider also some other possibilities: that Henry was in fact the baby’s father, or that Henry’s name was recorded without his knowledge by Arthur representing himself as his brother and that Henry was never aware of this charade.

For Henry, two eventful and fun-packed years passed. He had established his theatrical sideline and was making quite a name for himself as a story in The Coburg Leader on Saturday 14 October 1893 revealed, under the heading A Fair Hebe:

A fair Hebe in one of the Swanston Street hotels received a fright the other evening from rather an amusing cause.

It appears that Mr H H Rayward, the well-known amateur ventriloquist, called to see a man about a dog at the hotel in question and left a somewhat mysterious box upon the counter for a few minutes.

Hebe with her Eve-like curiosity opened the box sufficiently to see that it contained two heads. Visions of Jack the Ripper and Deeming floated through her mind, and shrieking loudly she soon attracted a large crowd, who were at a loss to discover the cause of the commotion, owing to Miss Hebe’s hysterical condition. However, becoming somewhat calmer the frightened lady pointed to the box. A counsel of war was held and a policeman called in, who said it was a clear case of double murder. He was just about to convey the gruesome objects to the city morgue when the ventriloquist returned and quietly explained the situation much to everyone’s amusement and Hebe’s discomfiture. A propos to the above, the inhabitants of Coburg and Moreland will be glad to learn that the popular Primitive Methodist Choirmaster, Mr R S Long, has secured Mr Rayward for his grand concert to take place at the Public Hall, Coburg, on the 16th inst., under the patronage of His Excellency the Governor, when the identical heads will be made to do and say some funny things. Full particulars will appear in our next issue.

The article detailed the musical items and their performers from the program, including such favourites as Lo Hear the Gentle Lark (Miss E Holm), What are the Wild Waves Saying (Mrs CW Sergeant and Mr SJ Burton) and The Arab’s Farewell to his Favorite Steed (Mr D Bartels) – a repertoire closely resembling the music and tastes of those back home. Meanwhile Henry, as part of his characterisation as a theatrical performer, had changed the spelling of his name to Henrie and his act now consisted of two dummies. He would later bring in even more.

The events described in the newspaper were, of course, a stunt – a teaser to promote the show. Henry was completely immersed in this new life in Melbourne and was hugely enjoying himself.

However, dark clouds were looming. Australia’s banking crisis of 1893 had been predicted and Melbourne would be particularly badly hit. The unprecedented boom of the 1880s had fired up the unregulated banking system with extravagant lending, particularly for property development. With the collapse of the land boom in 1888, it was feared that the banks would also fail – indeed, some did. There was a run on the banks and the Victorian Government would even call a five-day bank holiday to calm everything down.

Both Arthur and Freddie had moved out of Melbourne, with lares et penates (their household gods, all that they owned), anticipating the economic downturn in the city. Arthur had leased one of what were locally known as the Koort Koortnong farms out at Camperdown, in good farming country, and had commenced dairying. His wife Jane had joined him and their young daughter Dorothy was born in 1892. Meanwhile Freddie had taken a position nearby on Mr K Manifold’s Danedite Estate.

Marvellous as Marvellous Melbourne had until then been for Henry, after almost three years and its deteriorating economic fortunes, he was reassessing his options and New Zealand was looking very much more promising. Many of the national and international performers and troupes were also including tours of Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud – the Maori name for New Zealand describing the cloud formations which helped early Polynesian navigators find those islands.

As well, Henry had seen from his work for Mr Edward Waters at the International Patent and Trade Marks Office at 131 William Street, which also had business with New Zealand, that a great deal was happening there in the way of engineering projects and patent opportunities.

And so for Henry the enticements to New Zealand were twofold: the pleasure of presenting his ventriloquial show with his friends in The Humour, Art and Harmony Company on their planned tour there, but, more importantly, the business possibilities which would