'Does all Melbourne smell like this?

': The Colonial Metropolis in Marvellous Melbourne

Australian Literary Studies, Volume 21, Number 1, 2003, pp.81-91

'Does all Melbourne smell like this?': The Colonial

Metropolis in Marvellous Melbourne
Delyse Ryan

MELBOURNE became marvellous in 1885, when George Augustus Sala appealed to the vanity of the colonial city
with a series of articles that included one entitled 'Marvellous Melbourne' - indeed Graeme Davison asserts that the
colonial inferiority complex of the time ensured that 'if London's Mr Sala said Melbourne was "marvellous", then
marvellous it surely was' (30). The combination of Melbourne's desire to eclipse the other colonial cities in terms of
prestige, the knowledge that it was prospering in the current land boom, and the preparedness of the local population to
believe an assertion that their city was internationally renowned all helped to cement the phrase 'marvellous
Melbourne' into popular usage. Nineteenth-century theatre was often quick to capitalise on the public's appetite for
celebrating itself, so it is little wonder that a play entitled Marvellous Melbourne should be written and performed
some four years after Sala's essay was published. It appeared on the stage of Melbourne's Alexandra Theatre in January
1889 for an unusually long season: from 19 January to 1 March.1

Although Sala's use of the term 'Marvellous Melbourne' was designed to praise what was often seen, at the time, as the
premier city of the Australian colonies, the play uses the term sarcastically to describe the seedier side of Melbourne's
urban life. When the New Chum, Charles, says to the villain, Robert, '"I say, old chappie, what sort of a place is
Melbourne?'" he is told, '"Sala called it Marvellous, (laughing) But don't meander into the Yarra Bend, don't take up
your residence in No 2 Boiler, Queen's Wharf, and don't trust your food to the Eight o'clock rush or you'll be
disappointed'" (Marvellous Melbourne I,i). When the same characters are in an opium den, Melbourne seems much
less than marvellous:

CHARLES:The howid smell seems to get thicker and thicker dontcherknow.

ROBERT: Nonsense you'll soon get used to it.
CHARLES: Does all Melbourne smell like this?
ROBERT: Sometimes.
CHARLES: Perhaps that's why Sala called it Marvellous sMelbourne.
(Marvellous Melbourne 11,1).

This 'Marvellous Smelboume' joke was popularised in the late nineteenth century by the Sydney Bulletin, largely
because open drainage was still a feature of Melbourne life. But more generally, nineteenth-century audiences in
Australia, and indeed many parts of the industrialised world, were fascinated by images of urban low-life, including
crime, poverty, and the underworld. Marvellous Melbourne taps into this strong literary, journalistic, and dramatic
tradition of representing images of social depravity. In addition, as an 'urban sensation' melodrama, Marvellous
Melbourne was part of a strong theatrical tradition: presenting images of life in the world's industrialised centres. This
essay will discuss the play's literary, journalistic and theatrical precedents, and consider them in relation to the
emphasis placed by enthusiastic audiences on the local.

Marvellous Melbourne was not the first urban melodrama to show Melbourne itself on stage. Its predecessors include
The Streets of Melbourne (produced in 1863), which acknowledged that it was a localisation of Dion Boucicault's
famous play The Poor of New York. Notwithstanding the success of such adaptations, the attempt to establish a
national theatre tradition had proved lucrative for Alfred Dampier, with plays such as For the Term of His Natural Life
(1886), Robbery Under Arms (1890), and To the West (1898). By this time in his entrepreneurial career,

Dampier ... had a success[ftil] formula: local colour, broadly drawn local types, plenty of rollicking comedy,
panoramic scenes of bush beauty spots and city landmarks with a generous amount of spectacle, and an appeal to new-
found nationalism in the prestige staging of dramatized 'classics'. (Williams 156-57)

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'Does all Melbourne smell like this?': The Colonial Metropolis in Marvellous Melbourne

These plays propagated the type of agenda that was advocated by the Bulletin; they offered a romantic view of the
bush. Marvellous Melbourne, however, stands in opposition to the Bulletin'?, construction of Australia's national
identity as one focussed on rural people and places: it featured sites and events that its largely urban audience would
have the chance to see in everyday life.

There were several features that made the play 'local', rather than merely being just another localisation of a foreign
play, and these included a strategic acknowledgment of authorship, and careful promotion. The 1889 and 1890
versions of Marvellous Melbourne were publicly attributed to Alfred Dampier, and his business associate J.H.
Wrangham. By attributing Marvellous Melbourne to significant local theatrical identities like Dampier, Wrangham,
with later versions adding Thomas Somers and Garnet Walch, the play acquired local authenticity; it was one of the
central vehicles for Dampier's season at Melbourne's Alexandra Theatre, tagged 'The Australian Theatre'. Of the four
'authors' involved with the play, Dampier is the only one who consistently has his name on the text. The most obvious
explanation for this is that he was the driving force behind the company producing the play: being an actor-manager in
the nineteenth-century theatre industry meant that he had full artistic and managerial control over the plays produced.

Alfred Dampier (1847-1908) was born in England and trained as an actor in the English provincial theatres before
being lured to Australia to be stage manager and leading actor at Melbourne's Theatre Royal. He later formed his own
theatrical company which he transported to Sydney in 1877. Dampier's interest in supporting the creation of Australian
drama is reflected through the plays which he worked on collaboratively with other playwrights. Prominent examples
include dramatic versions of famous literary works like Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life (1886), and a
version of Robbery Under Arms which he wrote with Garnet Walch (1890). Other attempts to provide an iconography
of Australian life on the stage include This Great City (1891) and To the West (1898) in collaboration with Kenneth
McKay. By 1889 Dampier was a well-known identity in both Sydney and Melbourne, and the linking of his name to a
play would have been a financially lucrative move. Furthermore, this play was an excellent medium through which
Dampier could give a virtuoso performance, requiring the presentation of five different characters.

It is possible that Wrangham's name is included as 'author' because of his position as stage manager for the company:
sensation melodramas like Marvellous Melbourne subordinate dialogue, action and characterisation to scenic effect,
and therefore the role of the stage manager, responsible for creating the spectacle on which the plot hinges, is of
paramount importance. A third name was linked to Marvellous Melbourne when it was revised for performance in
Sydney in 1893: Garnet Walch. In accordance with the trend in colonial theatre of this era to emphasise the local
aspect of a production, the play was entirely rewritten and re-named The Slaves of Sydney. But it appears that
Dampier's company in Sydney deliberately created the impression that it was trying to suppress the names of the
authors, as the Referee noted that the 'secret' was 'a more or less open one' (17 May 1893).

The names, of course, were widely circulated: Garnet Walch was well-known in Sydney, and attaching his name to the
text would again have been a strategic marketing choice. Tasmanian-bom Walch (1843-1913) spent his life in a
diverse assortment of careers including journalist, publisher, poet, short story writer, and dramatist. His first work for
the stage was a pantomime called Love's Silver Dream; or, The King, the Goddess, and the Fays of Fairyland (1869).
Success came when he began an authorial partnership with Alfred Dampier in 1890 with an adaptation of The Count of
Monte Cristo (1890), followed by Robbery Under Arms (1890). Between 1890 and 1892 Walch and Dampier
collaborated on six further plays. Garnet Walch's last play was Silver Chimes; or; The Message of the Bells (1892) and
according to Irvin, 'he did not write for the theatre again after that' (315). He is, however, credited with the writing of
Slaves of Sydney, although it is difficult to assess how much of the work was actually his.

It is probable that the fourth person to be associated with this play, Thomas Somers, only became affiliated with it after
the Melbourne and Sydney productions. His name is handwritten at the beginning of the manuscript stored in the
Mitchell Library and the newspaper reviews do not identify him as one of the authors of any of the productions. It
seems likely, then, that his name was subsequently added to the script in recognition of the debt which the play owes
to Voices of the Night, which Somers wrote in collaboration with Dampier in 1886. Margaret Williams suggests that
this earlier play 'might almost be seen as a first draft of Marvellous Melbourne' (Williams 150). Thomas Somers was a
pseudonym for Thomas Walker (1858-1932) who was an English-born lecturer, politician and journalist. He arrived in
Sydney in 1877 and spent several years 'trance lecturing' in both Sydney and Melbourne. In 1885 he published a

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'Does all Melbourne smell like this?': The Colonial Metropolis in Marvellous Melbourne

volume of poetry, Bush Pilgrims and Other Poems, wrote and performed in Marmon-delle the Moor, and created a
dramatisation of His Natural Life2

Jill Roe suggests that the people of Melbourne 'seem to have taken a very city-centred view of the world, accepting
with pride their urban situation' (14). Marvellous Melbourne can be seen as a commemoration of city life; it is both an
acknowledgment of vice, and an acclamation of virtue. Illustrative of this endeavour is an advertisement for
Marvellous Melbourne which indicates the supposed purpose of presenting the play:

The locale of this drama has been specially selected because colonial enterprise has tliis year, in our great Exhibition,
rendered Marvellous Melbourne doubly important in the world's eyes. The loves and hates of Melbourne, the turf, the
town, the tricks are all character presentments which are vivid, vital, vehement. The habitations of the rich, the hovels
of the poor are both revealed, and the mystery of that great mystery-existence is fully disclosed in scenes so widely
dissimilar as a Toorak villa, a Chinese opium den, the Falls-bridge by night, and the great Stable Episode. (Marvellous
Melbourne, Advertisement)

Publicity through newspaper articles before the production opened indicates that Marvellous Melbourne was designed
to be predominantly of local interest; it will 'be big licks in local wheezes 3 and scenery' ('The Gallery Boy', Lorgnette
19 Jan. 1889: 5). More disdainfully, the Bulletin forewarned that 'next Saturday will be sacred to the first performance
of "Marvellous Melbourne," a new tragedy in several tableaux which is vaguely understood to be built up on the land-
boom, open drainage, and other matters of local interest' ('Sundry Shows', Bulletin 19 Jan. 1889: 7). Notwithstanding
this prediction, a review of the play that appeared subsequently in the same publication noted that 'at the Alexandra
they continue to show Marvellous Smellbourne its own image in a drama which touches upon every matter of local
interest, except the drainage' ('Sundry Shows', Bulletin 23 Feb. 1889: 7).

The play relied for its success on realistic representations of identifiable local sites, and on spectacular stage effects;
relationships between characters are subordinated to action and spectacle. This may seem contradictory, but
'spectacular' did not necessarily mean fantastical. Andrew McCann has argued that visually spectacular reproductions
of urban life were not possible until the advent of film (229), but responses to the staging of the play strongly indicate
that theatre audiences were indeed familiar with, and demanding of, spectacular reproductions of what they believed
life in Melbourne to be like. Australian theatre during the nineteenth century was particularly well-positioned to
present images to an expectant public: scenic artists worked towards verisimilitude, and technological advances in
stage machinery meant that sensational effects could be manifested on stage. Most newspapers agreed that the local
scenery in Marvellous Melbourne was spectacular: 'The representation of the Falls-bridge by night, Spencer-street
railway station and a view of Melbourne taken from south of the Yarra are especially effective, and were greatly to the
satisfaction of the audience' (Rev. of Marvellous Melbourne, Age 21 Jan, 1889: 5), The realistic representation of
familiar locales and personalties were greeted by incredibly enthusiastic audiences, so that the Bulletin - again
grudging - could note that 'three pictures created such prolonged bowlings that certain wild looking artists were
required to come forward and smile at their admirers' (Rev. of Marvellous Melbourne, Bulletin 25 Jan. 1889: 7).

Theatre could present images that were at once recognisable and visually appealing to contemporary audiences. Thus
Marvellous Melbourne was marketed to its 1889 audiences as a faithful reproduction of the major Australian
metropolis, and the play was praised as a local triumph because it celebrated Australian culture and daily life. 'Above
all,' states a reviewer from the Argus, Marvellous Melbourne 'aims at presenting some familiar scenes and phases of
Melbourne life' ('The Alexandra Theatre' 21 Jan. 1889: 6). In a similar vein Table Talk congratulated the authors for
setting their play in Melbourne: 'It is about time now that we had a little less of foreign countries and more of our own'
('Alexandra Theatre' 25 Jan. 1889: 2), although such patriotism did not mean that the reviewer was incapable of irony.
The 'Australian' characteristics of the play that Table Talk notes are

The song and breakdown of the unemployed on the wharf, the custom of Chinamen cooks to go in and out of the front
door of the Fairholme Mansion in pursuance of their culinary duties, and the knowledge that the arrival and departure
of trains at the Spencer-street railway station is accompanied by a fan-faronade of cornets, violins, drums and other
instruments, as if it were a continual Queen's Birthday. ('Alexandra Theatre' 25 Jan. 1889: 2)

The familiar Melbourne settings used as a backdrop for Marvellous Melbourne proved sufficient to indicate that the

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'Does all Melbourne smell like this?': The Colonial Metropolis in Marvellous Melbourne

play was indubitably 'local', and were crucial to the play's popularity. Colloquial language, colonial characters and
personalities, familiar locations, and popular pastimes (especially horse racing) construct the Melbourne cityscape, and
the play closes with the heroine excitedly reading a telegram announcing that her horse 'Flashlight has won the
Melbourne Cup' (Marvellous Melbourne V,iii). These depictions of local life assured the audience that Melbourne was
an important metropolis, with significant cultural and sporting traditions of its own. The process of telling a local story
which Marvellous Melbourne attempts to achieve is important culturally because audiences seemed prepared to believe
it is 'themselves' and 'their town' on the stage: paradoxically, it is the act of 'staging' Melbourne that confirms the value
and authenticity of the everyday experiences of its audience.

Marvellous Melbourne was thought to capture the essence of life in Melbourne by employing picturesque detail: 'Them
there local scenes - blow me if I hadn't a hand for them' (Lorgnette 26 Jan. 1889: 5). Scenes of prominent Melbourne
locales such as Spencer Street Railway Station, a Toorak mansion, and an Opium Den on Little Bourke Street were
immediately recognisable. Like-wise local colour was offered by allusions to contemporary Melbourne personalities
such as George Coppin, Dr L.L. Smith, and David Gaunson.4 Mel-burnians could see themselves presented on the
stage for all the world to admire; Melbourne became performable, and its identity became marvellous. As the notion of
'Marvellous Melbourne' gained momentum, so too did the public boast of supremacy: 'You will scarcely know
Melbourne, Frank,' says Mrs Deane, by way of preparing the hero for the technological advances to be found in the
city: 'there have been great changes. We have had land booms, silver booms, cable trams and all sorts of innovations
since you were here' (Marvellous Melbourne I,i). The panorama of the Melburnians' great city is presented as equal,
even superior to, other great metropolises such as London, New York and Paris.

The presentation of local identities and the play's topical allusions were enough to suggest to an eager audience that
everything in it was authentically and distinctively 'Australian'. While Dampier and contemporary Melbourne
reviewers were trying to persuade the public that the play's scenes offered 'factual' and 'faithful' images of the city, they
can be read more correctly as images of a mythic nineteenth-century city that each large metropolis was in part trying
to be: while Marvellous Melbourne was a celebration of Melbourne as an urban place, the representation of what was
known to be 'local' was influenced by the global trends in the representation of urban life. In fact there is little to
distinguish Marvellous Melbourne as uniquely 'Australian' in its narrative paradigms, thematic topoi or
characterisations. In terms of the latter, a diverse range of English characters is presented in the play. The detective,
Tom Heather - who cleverly disguises himself as Hyram Field, Charles Harold Cholmondeley Vane Somers Golightly,
Lemuel Levy, and Mickey, the Murrumbidgee Whaler - and his daughter, Maggie, are English. Indeed the heroine's
family, the hero, and the villain are all from England, as are the comic characters such as Dick and Polly. Despite this,
the play was praised for its depiction of local character types.

The nineteenth-century popularity of representing urban life in many forms of literature helped to create a genre of
city-life writings of which Marvellous Melbourne is a part. The crime and poverty that were seen to characterise
England's lower classes during the second half of the nineteenth century are chronicled by Charles Booth and Henry
Mayhew in their sociological reports, 5 and commentaries on the activities of the 'dangerous class' captured the
imagination of middle-class readers. Journalistic accounts flourished and were widely read, as were literary
representations such as those by Dickens. Journalism purports to present the 'truth', yet these reports typically follow a
strict formula: the narrator is an outsider who courageously encroaches on the domain of the underworld in a journey
into the urban jungle that inflicts hardships on the commentator, who endures them and escapes danger in order to
bring evidence of the iniquity and squalor of the place they have visited to a waiting middle-class audience. This
pattern is replicated in the works of Australian writers such as Marcus Clarke and John Stanley James (alias the
'Vagabond').

Andrew McCann argues that as journalism had become a commodity in the nineteenth century, Clarke inevitably
needed to embrace pre-existing cultural myths of the metropolis in order to represent Melbourne as a modern city like
London. He suggests that 'Clarke would have to place himself in a genealogy that could be traced to the cultural
authority of metropolitan literary production, while also reproducing metropolitan literary conventions in a manner
adequate to a new society with a developing, if still nascent sense of its own originality and independence' (McCann
223). One of the primary motivating forces behind the codified representation of city-life of which Clarke was a part
was the work of the French writer Eugene Sue, whose Mysteries of Paris (Les mysteres de Paris, 1842-43) became an
important influence. Some of the horrors described in Sue's novel include abductions of innocent girls, organised

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robberies, violent murders, unjust evictions, prison life, wife-bashing, suicide, and torture. The hero of the story is
Prince Rodolphe of Gerolstein, known to most characters merely as the humble M. Rodolphe. With the aid of many
disguises he is able to help the destitute and punish the wicked. Clarke was one of the most prolific chroniclers of low-
life Melbourne, and his journalism was based on the formula used successfully by Sue.6 In 1869 Clarke took his
readers 'Dante-like, [on] an excursion through a real Inferno, where rags, and poverty, and drunkenness, and crime,
and misery, all huddle together ... where there are plenty of Fleurs de Marie, but no romantic and rescuing Rodolphe'
(Australasian 12 June 1869: 762), thereby demonstrating that not only was he familiar with Sue's novel, but that he
took it that his readers would be as well. 7 Since Melbourne considered itself to be technologically, socially, and
artistically as advanced as other cities, it needed to demonstrate that it had all the attributes of other metropolises,
including poverty, crime, and squalor.

Contemporary Australian reviewers were acutely aware that Marvellous Melbourne was dependent on other writings of
its day, the Australasian noting that 'the scene of the action, it is true, is understood to be Melbourne, but it might have
been London, or Liverpool, or Manchester, or, for the matter of that, Lyons' (26 Jan. 1889: 186). Some of the myths of
urbanity that Marvellous Melbourne embraces include the depiction of the city as a pleasure resort, the prevalence of
horse racing, and the allegedly corrupting influence of the city on country innocents. In Marvellous Melbourne, Tom
Heather is, like M. Rodolphe, a master of disguise, who manages to foil the villain's plans - plans that may well have
leapt from the pages of Sue's novel.

A typical topos of city-life melodramas is criminals and derelicts congregating around rivers and waterways. In Les
Nuits de la Seine by Marc Fournier, for example, 'the trail of metropolitan crime leads down to the waterfront', the
Seine being a place where criminals gather together to plan their heinous acts (Rahill 88). Similarly, in Belot's Les
Estrangleurs de Paris (1880), the down-and-outs can be seen living under the Pont Neuf. A similar community of
disreputable beings appear in the English plays, but here they live on the banks of the Thames and rescue a woman
who has leapt from Blackfriars Bridge (Dion Boucicault's After Dark, 1868) or Waterloo Bridge (Charles Selby's
London by Night, 1844). But the bourgeois spectators do not have to go to the banks of the river to see the derelicts for
themselves - they are presented with the 'real' images on the stage so that they can watch the activities of the poor with
no threat of contamination.

Larrikins are scattered throughout Marvellous Melbourne, and their tendency to pose a threat to bourgeois society is
shown when they loiter in gangs, as in the wharf scene where Bob Kite and Dick Ledger are found sleeping with their
friends from 'the Little Bourke Street Push' (Marvellous Melbourne II,ii). Clarke describes the Melbourne wharves as
'the sink where the dirty water runs away - the last place where Bohemia amuses itself (Australasian 19 June 1869).
Marvellous Melbourne's villain lures the hero to the wharves in an attempt to frame him for murder. The characters
Dick and Bob are evidence of the fact that larrikinism is linked to crime: because of laziness, larrikins will not work;
as a consequence, they turn to crime: 'Ain't I always earnin' my living werry hard? When I spots a nice Willa, where
there's a slavey or two about I rushes up to the front door and tells 'em there's a fire in a back room. She runs to see
what's the matter, and then I snavels what's lyin' about' (Marvellous Melbourne I,i). The comic Irish policeman,
Lannigan, spends a good deal of time chasing the larrikins who happen upon his beat. He functions in the play as the
proletarian character who is responsible for ventriloquising the fears of the middle class: 'Ye're agin everything but
laziness. A foine specimin of the workin' man ye are for sure, an' it's such larrikins as you that ruins the workin' man'
(Marvellous Melbourne II,ii).

McCann sees Clarke's journalism as an 'exposition of a world that was apparently beyond the cognitive scope of the
ordinary citizen' (McCann 227); there were precincts in Melbourne that Marcus Clarke considered 'a Jacressade, a foul
gutter, through which flows all the hideous criminality of the city' (Colonial Monthly Feb. 1869: 473). Like the theatre,
Clarke's writing gave bourgeois members of society an opportunity to become familiar with the areas designated as the
site for seedy, criminal and low-life activities, without having to actually go there. The best-known of Melbourne's
inner-city criminal haunts was the area around Little Bourke Street. Clarke notes that 'the miserable lanes [off Little
Bourke Street], and filthy courts and houses, are the last stronghold of ruffianism, and it resists all attempts to dislodge
it' (Colonial Monthly Feb. 1869: 473). Marvellous Melbourne's audiences at the Alexandra Theatre on Exhibition
Street would have been acutely aware of the proximity of Little Bourke Street. 8 This underworld maze is useful to the
play's villain, Robert, who wants to kill his wife: 'I'll kill you, and who's to avenge your death? You are in a Chinese

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opium den, you have followed me here. The deed will never reach the light' (Marvellous Melbourne II,i).

Clarke reveals that Little Bourke Street and other known underworld haunts are 'but a stone's throw from the most
fashionable part of the city' (Colonial Monthly Feb. 1869: 474). This provides a basis for both fear and attraction for
middle-class Melbourne, and in part accounts for its fascination and preoccupation with the 'fact' that poverty and
destitution are close at hand; the dangerous classes are right in the centre of the city, close to respectable society and
acting as a frightening reminder that those in the higher classes may find poverty waiting for them 'just around the
corner'. Melodrama served as a reminder of this proximity to its audiences and warned against complacency. 9
Marvellous Melbourne's Charles Golightly is warned that 'there are some very rough customers about' (II,i) in Little
Bourke Street, which is almost exactly the same warning which Kilsip gives Calton, the lawyer accompanying him,
saying 'we may meet some nasty customers about here' (Hume 100). 10 The imprisonment of the hero in a disreputable
house, in a 'dangerous' part of town, is a common feature of city-life melodramas, evidence of the threat represented by
these places, where a respectable middle-class person could simply disappear. Thus in Marvellous Melbourne the hero,
Frank Seymour, is silenced by chloroform and taken to Mother Crosbie's, where he is locked in a back room.

As the reference to the 'opium den' indicates, Little Bourke Street also developed a nineteenth-century reputation for
being the haunt of Chinese people. Clarke's representation of the Chinese in Melbourne closely approximates their
characterisation in the play. He writes that 'presently we come upon a group of Celestials, pigtailed, blue-coated, and
mandarin-capped, chattering in their teeth-breaking lingo. These turn down Little Bourke-street into an opium-house,
and will probably spend the remainder of the night in gambling away their hard earned gains' (Argus 28 Feb. 1868),
The Chinese characters in Marvellous Melbourne appear in an opium den, where they are heard to mutter 'typical'
Chinese exclamations like 'Chang mit chiny put la', 'I-lo I-lo I-lo', and 'O wang pie O wang pie' (II,i). The low comic
Chinaman, Hang Hi, is given some of the stock jokes to deliver when he says 'Me allee same wellee good cook. Allee
labbit gone me cookee cat allee cat gone me cookee lat, allee lat gone me cookee flog, allee same me cookee labbit
pie. You no sabee? Puppie pie, cat pie, flogee pie, lattee pie allee same labbit pie' (Marvellous Melbourne III,iii). Dick
Ledger is the voice of white 'Australians' in the play, expressing their fears and prejudices: 'These ere Chinamen is a
curse to the workin' man ... it's a burnin' shame to let John Chinaman waller in luxury in Australia while the wukkin'
man 'as dry bread' (Marvellous Melbourne I,i).

'Colonial journalism,' according to Hergenhan 'even if restricted by what was available from overseas, offered some
scope for a writer to gain a local reputation by treating the local scene' (Hergenhan xxiv). The same is true for the
nineteenth-century stage. Critical reports acknowledge that the material was not new, yet Dampier's company was
praised for its efforts to present a local rendition of the subject matter. As a celebration of life in Melbourne in 1889,
Marvellous Melbourne was hugely successful because it identified 'local' elements of city life and signified that the city
was a major metropolis which could equal the crime, misery, and debauchery, as well as the glamour and
sophistication, of other major urban centres around the world. The creators of both the written play text and the
spectacular stage realisation of that text managed to use established literary and dramatic conventions in such a way
that audiences could comfortably enjoy images of a familiar local environment.

Notes

1. The manuscript of Marvellous Melbourne is preserved in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, ms. B753.

2. Walker was a Member of the Legislative Assembly for Northumberland (NSW) from 1887 until 1894. In 1899
he went to Western Australia where he continued his lecturing on the topic of temperance, studied law, and
edited a newspaper before winning the parliamentary seat of Kanowna in 1905. He was later admitted as both a
barrister and a solicitor and he subsequently became the Attorney-General in 1911.

3. A 'wheeze' is a theatrical gag.

4. George Selth Coppin (1819-1906) was an actor and politician. At the time of the play he was still a member of
the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Louis Lawrence Smith (1830-1910) was a medical practitioner, politician,

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and racehorse owner. He was commonly thought to be a 'quack'. David Gaunson (1846-1909) was a solicitor
and politician who was best known for his role defending Ned Kelly and acting as legal advisor to the infamous
brothel owner, Madame Brussels.

5. Charles Booth's 1889 Descriptive Map of London Poverty is available online at

<http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/>. Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor was published in
1861-62.

6. Laurie Hergenhan explains that Clarke, in particular, was in a position to follow foreign literary trends since he
had access to English and American journals (Hergenhan xxiii).

7. Another chronicler of Australian low-life was John Stanley James, who wrote under the pseudonym 'Vagabond'.
Like Clarke, 'Vagabond' braved the depths of society to retrieve information for an eagerly waiting middle-class
audience: 'Mes amis, these imperfect sketches of the unfortunates who are all around you, whose life is one of
misery, sin, crime, but little shame, are written by one who has studied their life in the depths of which he
writes' (Vagabond Papers 40). Although James actually tried to live as a vagabond, a middle-class apprehension
is articulated in his warning that 'it is the new generation of wickedness which we have to fear, and drunkenness
and larrikinism are the two great feeders of crime in Melbourne' (James 38).

8. nbsp; The lanes are also the retreat for thieves, burglars, ex-convicts, prison escapees and prostitutes in Hume's
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1887).

9. nbsp; In Dion Boucicault's The Poor of New York (1857), for example, the final speech is a direct appeal to the
audience to beware; the extremities of wretchedness reached by the middle-class characters in the play could be
their destiny.

10. nbsp; Fergus Hume capitalised on the fear evoked at the thought of the proximity of the dangerous class. Kilsip,
one of his detectives in The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, is forced to go down to Little Bourke Street where the
narrow, dimly lit lanes provide a stark contrast to the setting just outside its borders.

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