The Bridal Banquet

T H E R E was excitement and bustle outside Camperdown Lodge in the King Street of suburban. Newtown almost a century ago. Then, it was a garden suburb - not a crowded residential district. Imposing homes set in spacious grounds, were owned by well-to-do families. Carriages, drawn by well-groomed horses, were waiting in the street. Coachmen and grooms stood by the wheels, or sat stiffly on their boxes.

Even the Norfolk Island pine trees isolating the house from the street seemed, on this day, not so grim. The gay chatter of girls and their bright, gauzy crinolines, lent additional color to the garden. In the kitchen of Camperdown Lodge cooks worked steadily and sweatily. Maids and men-servants scurried back and forth between kitchen and dining-room, pantry, cellar and garden bearing trays of food ready for the wedding breakfast. Sydney's best shops had been thoroughly combed of their most expensive imported foods for this day.

The rich furniture of the dining room gleamed. Flowers and silver plate reflected their brightness on tables and sideboard. The older guests joined Judge Donnithorne in his study, accepting a drink from the Judge's excellent cellar, and probably being bared with his reminiscences of East India - as usual. Small boys and girls peeked through the gates of Camperdown Lodge, or pressed their noses against the windows of their own homes, anxious for a view of the festivities. Their mothers and elder sisters, unable to restrain their curiosity, looked eagerly from the curtained front windows, eager to see the bride leave for the church, and take in the style of her frock, her veil and flowers.

Upstairs, in the bedroom which she would soon leave, Eliza Emily, the Judge's only daughter, was the centre of a chattering group of women ostensibly helping her to dress, they laced the bride-to-be into the heavy corsets of the fashionable wasp-waisted era, tightening 'the laces until she fitted into the narrow top of the hooped skirt. And, at last, she was ready. The ruffles and frills of the hoop skirt billowed out around her. Her hair, curled and padded, was ready for the veil and wreath waiting on the bed. The carriage waited... The guests waited .. The passers-by waited.. The servants waited ..The Judge, still with his guests, interrupted his stories more and more frequently to look at his massive time-keeper. Throughout the house, the feeling of tension grew as the old grandfather clock in the hall ticked and ticked and ticked ..And still they waited .. Miss Donnithorne sat in her bedroom, watching the pattern of the sunlight move across the floor and dwindle to a splinter of light and disappear. Dusk faded quickly into night and still she sat, waiting for the husband-that-was-to-be. He did not come. He never came. Miss Donnithorne never saw him again. Not a whisper of his whereabouts ever reached her ears. Nobody ever heard, nor saw, anything of him. He disappeared as surely as if the earth had engulfed him.

When, at last, the Judge was forced to make excuses to his guests, to usher them politely from his home - he went upstairs. His daughter was still sitting there still waiting... He spoke to her gently, and called the servants to clear away the untouched bridal banquet, wilting in the darkness of the dining-room. But Emily Eliza cried out in pro-test. She would not have it touched - not a thing was to be moved. Her father bore with her fancy patiently. To his practical mind, the strain of the day had temporarily unbalanced the girl. The table remained untouched...For thirty years it remained untouched. Mould gathered on the food, which rotted and decayed away into little heaps of dust on dusty plates. Silver and cutlery tarnished and blackened with dirt and neglect. Spiders built webs in the room. Mice scampered over the fine linen cloth on the table. The Judge died. But Miss Donnithorne would not have a thing touched .. She vowed that the table, untouched save by the hand of time, would stay as it was until she no longer lived.

She forsook the world as surely as if she had taken the veil. Rumors and whispers hissed across the tables of her friends. Kindly souls who came to call were not received. They could only say, charitably, that the shock had permanently impaired her reason. It made a tasty morsel of gossip to be rolled over the tongue at dinners, dances and parties. Only the two elderly women servants knew to what extent their young mistress suffered. And they were silent. Yet Miss Donnithorne, by her own will shut off from the world, was not so soured nor absorbed by her grief that she was insensible to the sorrows of others, the poor of Newtown knew her as a kindly and generous giver. If they did not see her on an errand of mercy, as was the custom amongst wealthy women of the day, they could pass through the ever open gate of Camperdown Lodge and ask for help.

They could knock on the door, and see it open a fraction and see the chain on the inside which prevented the door from being opened wide. That chain was never removed. Miss Donnithorne stood behind the door, waiting to hear the request made for help. Few ever heard her voice, for she spoke only when it was absolutely necessary. But her purse, like 'the front gate, was open to all. She was a wealthy woman. The professional beggars and cadgers journeyed from Sydney to ask for help. She never refused them. Sometimes on a dark, moonless night, the casual passer by caught a glimpse of the legendary Miss Donnithorne walking under the pine trees, black-gowned and shawled. Her face was not bared to the night air. She was just another shadow moving through the garden with the shadows of the trees and bushes - elusive, mysterious and ghostly in a generation when women did not bother their pretty heads with reading.

No picture of her exists to show whether she was beautiful or otherwise. The old house guarded her safely. She read widely. Her books were her only consolations. When she died, she left a large and extensive library, The mind that had avoided human contact for so long sought release in the printed page. She asked nothing more of life than seclusion - to be left alone. Her reason for this action was never disclosed nor explained, Whether she feared the sympathy of her friends, or dreaded the fate of a jilted woman was never known, Miss Donnithorne kept her secret unto death.

The old stone house with its pine fringed garden has long since disappeared in the rush of traffic. After Miss Donnithorne's death on May 20, 1886, and her subsequent burial in St. Stephens, Camperdown, the dining-room table was cleared for 'the first time in 30 years - for the first time since it had been laid on that day when she waited - and waited in vain.

This story may sound familiar. Instead of Miss Donnithorne, read Miss Havisham, the eccentric recluse of Great Expectations. Miss Havisham, the wealthy woman, nursing a broken heart and resentment as she sat, dressed in the yellowing satin of her bridal gown. Miss Havisham, still waiting for her lover. Her dining room, the mouldering and dusty feast still trailing over the table. The silver epergne, "so heavily over hung with cobwebs that its form was quite indistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it..." Charles Dickens put those words into the mouth of Pip, his hero of Great Expectations. Pip, bidden to Miss Havisham's home to play, heard the mice rattling behind the panels. Pip, told by Miss Havisham that she would be laid on that table when she died, saw the scene that bad its original setting in Australia. But, Miss Havisham, unlike Miss Donnithorne, was made by Dickens to be soured, bitter and vengeful. There is not any record of Charles Dickens having visited Australia. The Colony - as it was in his lifetime - appears frequently in his books. Mr. Micawber emigrated to the Colonies. Abel Magwitch, the benefactor of Pip, returned to England from Botany Bay - various uncles and aunts and cousins of his characters visited Australia, some to stay. But, it is thought by some that Miss Havisham was modeled on Eliza Emily Donnithorne - the disappointed bride-elect of then fashionable Newtown, who preferred seclusion to the sympathies of her friends.