SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 255 



personage, not always royal or even legitimate, who (says 

 an old French historian) " brought to the court politeness 

 and courtesy and gave keen points of generosity to 

 well-born souls." In all of the Australasian colonies, as 

 in the British colonies of North America, the initiation 

 of society, in its more restricted sense, followed on the 

 arrival of a Governor of striking social gifts, accompanied 

 by a chatelaine of sympathetic disposition and winning 

 ways. Just such an admirable pair arrived in the 

 metropolis of Queensland in 1859 in order to inaugurate 

 representative government in the Colony. Was it they 

 • — Sir George Bowen, the accomplished scholar, and his 

 diamond princess — whom Mrs. Campbell Praed paints ? 

 Ho, of the Viking type, was " quite splendid," while his 

 lady was a fitting helpmeet for such a man. A Greek, 

 from Corfu, and named Diamantina, she was " a stately, 

 sweet, and sympathetic figure," with dark Southern eyes 

 and Greek head, her hair growing low down on the brow 

 and gathered in a " Clytie knot." At a (Queen's) birth- 

 night dance she, divinely tall, seemed a picture in amber 

 satin ; in a crimson and gold-amber cloak, she appeared 

 quite regal.* 



Of the " court " these two distinguished persons gradu- 

 ally formed the pastoralists and their leading famiHes 

 were prominent figures. As many of the political offices, 

 from the Premiership downwards, were held by the 

 squatters — the Palmers, Bells, Murray-Priors, Hodgsons, 

 Mackenzies, Archers, and who not ? — these were among 

 the foremost social figures. As in London and Washing- 

 ton, the Parliamentary session was the social season. 

 Did the pastoralist party hold office ? Then the families 

 of the squatter-ministers were resident in to'wn, and their 

 social life was a perpetual whirl. The ministeriahst 

 position might be threatened, and then the ministerial 

 families remained in a flutter of expectancy. For three 

 days and nights and a fourth day the testing debate in 

 the Legislative Assembly might last, and it might end 

 with the defeat of the mini sterialists. A cloud would then 

 * My Australian Qlrlhood, p. 216. 



