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Henry Lawson Among Maoris
2 The Reluctant Bushman
page 192
2 The Reluctant Bushman
| 1 | 1. See Russel Ward, The Australian Legend. |
| 2 | 2. Denton Prout, Henry Lawson, the Grey Dreamer, p. 104; A, J. Coombes, Some Australian Poets, p. 65. |
| 3 | 3. Jim Grahame, 'Henry Lawson on the Track', Bulletin, 19 February 1925, Red Page; Letter from William G. Wood, Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 21 September 1926 (also in Mitchell Library, Newspaper Cuttings, vol. 235, p. 21, Q A820A); Letter from William Wood, 2 August 1931, in Mitchell Library MS. Al 29/-2 (11). |
| 4 | 4. Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, p. 171. |
| 5 | 5. H. M. Green, A History of Australian Literature, i, 363, 377. |
| 6 | 6. A. J. Coombes, Some Australian Poets, p. 65. |
| 7 | 7. Arthur W. Jose, The Romantic Nineties, p. 16. |
| 8 | 8. Henry Lawson to Emma Brooks, from Hungerford, 16 January 1893, Mitchell Library MS. A1 29/-2 (11). |
| 9 | 9. Ibid., from Bourke, 6 February 1893, Mitchell Library MS. A1 29/-2 (12). |
| 10 | 10. 'That Pretty Girl in the Army', CB, 37-8; SHL, ii, 384-5. |
| 11 | 11. Jim Grahame, 'Henry Lawson on the Track', Bulletin, 19 February 1925, Red Page. |
| 12 | 12. Boozing Bill in 'The Bush Fire', WIK, 108-12; PW, 121-3; 'Corny Bill', DWW, 132-4; PW, 204-5; Boko Bill in 'Mateship', TL, 237-9; SHL, iii, 433; Jimmy Nowlett in 'The Song of Old Joe Swallow', Bulletin, 24 May 1890, p. 13; PW, 212-14; Jimmy Noland in 'The Shanty on the Rise', Bulletin, 19 December 1891, p. 21; PW, 245-6, and 'The Strangers' Friend', TL, 224-35; SHL, iii, 75-81; Jim Duggan in 'The Boss-over-the-Board', Bulletin, 11 December 1897, p. 29; PW, 188-9; Jim Barnes in 'Mateship', TL, 243-8; SHL, iii, 436-9; 'Tambaroora Jim', Bulletin, 19 March 1892, p. 18; PW, 191-2. |
| 13 | 13. 'The Bush Fire', WIK, 108-12; PW, 121-3; 'Years After the War in Australia', Bulletin, 23 May 1896, p. 3; 'After the War', PW, 237-40. |
| 14 | 14. 'Bill and Jim Fall Out', Bulletin, 12 December 1896, p. 10; PW, 196-7. |
| 15 | 15. 'The Boss-over-the-Board', Bulletin, 11 December 1897, p. 29; PW, 188-9. |
| 16 | 16. 'Mateship', TL, 242; SHL, iii, 435-6. |
| 17 | 17. 'Bill and Jim Fall Out', Bulletin, 12 December 1896, p. 10; PW, 196-7; 'The Bush Fire', WIK, 108-12; PW, 121-3. |
| 18 | 18. 'Years After the War in Australia', Bulletin, 23 May 1896, p. 3; 'After the War', PW, 237-40. |
| 19 | 19. 'The Bill of the Ages', WIK, 113-16; 'Bill', PW, 45-7. |
| 20 | 20. Bulletin, 19 March 1898, p. 13. Lawson's son was in fact christened Joseph Henry, apparently after a friend who persuaded Lawson and Bertha to go to New Zealand (Gertrude O'Connor, Family History of the Lawsons, p. 79); but Lawson always referred to him as Jim. |
| 21 | 21. Henry Lawson, private letter to Hugh MacCallum, 15 November 1897, Mitchell Library Uncat. MSS. Set 184, Item 7. |
| 22 | 22. 'Some Popular Australian Mistakes', Bulletin, 18 November 1893, p. 20; reprinted Southerly, 1964, 4, p. 205. |
| 23 | 23. 'A Few Remarks on Bill and Jim', ibid., 8 October 1914, p. 44. |
| 24 | 24. Loc. cit. |
| 25 | 25. 'The Stranger's Friend', TL, 225; SHL, iii, 75. |
| 26 | 26. 'Armidale', Bulletin, 14 June 1917, pp. 47-8. The Bulletin used the name. An item by Daniel Healy, 'The Biljim Craze', appeared 28 August 1897, and on 9 May 1918 the Bulletin reported that it had received 35p entries in a competition for an epitaph for Biljim. |
| 27 | 27. 'The Last Review', Bulletin, 29 September 1904, p. 35; PW, 182. |
| 28 | 28. See Note 26. |
| 29 | 29. 'Bourke', WIK, 101-5; PW, 134-6; 'Peter Anderson and Co.', Bulletin, 17 August 1895, p. 8; DWW, 186. |
| 30 | 30. 'The Bill of the Ages', WIK, 114; 'Bill', PW, 46. |
| 31 | 31. 'In the Storm that is to Come', WIK, 194; 'The Storm that is to Come', PW, 129. |
| 32 | 32. 'An Article on Man' (from the Worker (Sydney), Henry Lawson Scrapbook, ii, 423. |
| 33 | 33. 'Our Countrymen', Worker (Sydney), 1 July 1893. |
| 34 | 34. 'The Hopeless Futility of the Sydney Street Crowd', Mitchell Library typescript, Uncat. MSS. Set 184, Item 7. |
| 35 | 35. 1913Autobiography, leaves 14-15. Alexander Turnbull Library MS.; printed Southerly, 1964, 4, p. 196. |
| 36 | 36. Cecil Mann, 'Henry Lawson in his Writing, I', SHL, i, 58; Dorothy Green, 'Tent and Tree', Nation (Sydney), 4 September 1965, pp. 21-2. |
| 37 | 37. Lawson wrote several parts of an autobiography, (1) a short manuscript contained in Gertrude O'Connor's Family History of the Lawsons in the Mitchell Library, a typescript copy of which is in the Henry Lawson Scrapbook, i, 41-2, which sketches his life from birth to 1893; (2) 'Pursuing Literature in Australia', Bulletin, 21 January 1899, Red Page; (3) 'Fragment of an Autobiography', which ends shortly after Peter Lawson's death in 1888, held in manuscript in the Mitchell Library, and published (with some textual differences) in SHL, i, 3-53; (4) a continuation of the 'Fragment', written in 1913, held in manuscript by the Alexander Turnbull Library, MS. K2, and in typescript copy by the Mitchell Library, titled 'From Mudgee Hills to London Town', in Uncat. MSS. Set 184, Item 3 and in Misc. MSS.-Prose, ii, 121-42. This last was published in Southerly, 4, (1964). See my fuller note in Biblionews, July 1967-October, 1967. |
| 38 | 38. Lawson's Birth. The accounts are (1) a note signed by Gertrude O'Connor dated 24 June 1920 and inserted in the Lawson family bible, Mitchell Library C334; (2) another note signed by Gertrude O'Connor, dated 24 June 1920 in the Mutch papers, Item 22; (3) Gertrude O'Connor, Family History of the Lawsons, p. 22; (4) Gertrude O'Connor, Louisa Lawson, p. 38; (5) Gertrude O'Connor, 'Louisa Lawson and her Son', Bulletin, 2 September 1920, Red Page and p. 28; (6) Gertrude O'Connor, 'The Birth of Henry Lawson', Aussie, 15 October 1921, pp. 12-13. Mrs O'Connor's account is that Henry Lawson was born during a flood and the nurse had to be carried 2 miles across flood-waters to reach him. On the second day the nurse was unable to cross the flood, and mother and baby became dangerously ill. The menfolk went for an alcoholic doctor and forced him at rifle-point to attend the mother and baby. In her Aussie version, which is written in the form of fiction, Mrs O'Connor says that Louisa Lawson developed milk-fever and in her delirium almost threw the baby at an imagined black snake, and that the doctor, finding a litter of new-born puppies, used two of them as breast-pumps. The baby's scalp and eyes page 194were septic from 'three days' neglect'. The doctor washed, dressed, and fed the baby till the flood subsided. The Lawson family bible itself has only the bare entry of the date of Henry Lawson's birth (made, according to Colin Roderick, ten years later), and Mrs O'Connor's account is probably traceable to Louisa Lawson herself, who if she was delirious would hardly have remembered accurately. The account, with the menfolk standing around helpless as mother and baby worsened, shows signs of Louisa's feminism and her resentment of having children at all. She told A. G. Stephens she was 'brooding over poetry' when Henry was born. (A. G. Stephens, Autobiographies of Australian and New Zealand Authors and Artists, Mitchell Library Q A920A.) That Lawson himself uses the story of the alcoholic doctor in 'Middleton's Peter' does not necessarily mean that he accepted it as the story of his own birth: in his poem, 'The Wander-Light' he accepts the storm but in his 1913 Autobiography he descris himself as 'drought born'. There is a fuller discussion of Lawson's birth by Colin Roderick, 'Was Lawson Born in a Tent?', North (Townsville) 5, 1966, pp. 14-31. |
| 39 | 39. Emma Brooks to J. F. Thomas, 17 January 1924, Mitchell Library MS. A1 29/-2. Presumably Mrs Brooks was referring to Mrs O'Connor's published articles 'Louisa Lawson and her Son', Bulletin, 2 September 1920, and 'The Birth of Henry Lawson', Aussie, 15 October 1921. |
| 40 | 40. Emma Brooks to J. F. Thomas, 28 February 1924, Mitchell Library MS. A1 29/-2. |
| 41 | 41. Jack O'Brien to T. D. Mutch, 21 September 1926, Mutch papers, Item 24. |
| 42 | 42. Emma Brooks to J. F. Thomas, 28 February 1924, Mitchell Library MS. Al 29/-2. |
| 43 | 43. Denton Prout, Henry Lawson, the Grey Dreamer, pp. 43-4. |
| 44 | 44. 'Fragment of an Autobiography', vol. ii, fo. 157, Mitchell Library MS.; SHL, i, 33. |
| 45 | 45. Loc. cit. |
| 46 | 46. Ibid., vol. ii, fo. 139-40; part of this passage is omitted in SHL, i, 30. |
| 47 | 47. Gertrude O'Connor, The Personal Life of Henry Lawson, n.p. Mitchell Library MS. |
| 48 | 48. 'A Child in the Dark-a Bush Sketch', Bulletin, 13 December 1902, p. 14; SHL, iii, 29-34; Gertrude O'Connor, annotations in Henry Lawson Scrap-book, i, 20. |
| 49 | 49. Gertrude O'Connor, The Personal Life of Henry Lawson, n.p. Mitchell Library MS. |
| 50 | 50. P. J. Lawson to T. D. Mutch, 10 March 1933, Mutch papers, Item 25; P. J. Lawson, undated typescript in Mutch papers, Item 23. |
| 51 | 51. Gertrude O'Connor, annotations in Henry Lawson Scrapbook, i, 13; P. J. Lawson to T. D. Mutch, n.d., Mutch papers, Item 25. |
| 52 | 52. Emma Brooks to J. F. Thomas, 28 February 1924, Mitchell Library MS. Al 29/-2. |
| 53 | 53. 'Fragment of an Autobiography', vol. ii, fo. 158, Mitchell Library MS.; SHL, i, 38. |
| 54 | 54. Emma Brooks to J. F. Thomas, 1 January 1924, Mitchell Library MS. A1 29/-2. |
| 55 | 55. 'Fragment of an Autobiography', vol. ii, fo. 205, Mitchell Library MS.; SHL, i, 41. |
| 56 | 56. 1913 Autobiography, fo. 5, Alexander Turnbull Library MS.; edited version in Southerly, 1964, 4, p. 193. |
| 57 | 57. 'A Letter from Leeton', National Library of Australia MS. 75/2; edited version in Ethel Turner and Bertram Stevens (eds.), The Australian Soldiers' Gift Book, Voluntary Workers' Association, Sydney [1917], pp. 21-2; SHL, iii, 317-20. |
| 58 | 58. Frank Sargeson, 'Henry Lawson, Some Notes after Re-reading', Land-fall, June 1966, p. 156; James Vance Marshall, 'The Day Henry Lawson Talked to me about his Father', Australian Letters, March 1962, pp. 28-34; P. J. Lawson to T. D. Mutch, 10 March 1933, Mutch papers, Item 25, Mitchell Library; Henry Lawson, 'About Dreams', n.d., National Library of Australia MS 75/2. |
| 59 | 59. Bertha Lawson, 'Memories' in Henry Lawson by his Mates, p. 84. |
| 60 | 60. 'For Auld Lang Syne', WBB, 329; SHL, i, 248. |
| 61 | 61. 'The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen', JWM, v-vi, WIK, 10-11; 'Fare-well to the Bushmen', PW, 158. |
| 62 | 62. John Le Gay Brereton, Knocking Round, p. 33. |
| 63 | 63. 'The Cant and Dirt of Labor Literature', Worker (Sydney), 6 October 1894, p. 1; reprinted Southerly, 1964, 4, pp. 206-7. |
| 64 | 64. 'Fragment of an Autobiography', vol. i, fo. 79, Mitchell Library MS.; SHL, i, 67. |
| 65 | 65. Henry Lawson to George Robertson, 15 February 1917, Correspondence re Selected Poems, Mitchell Library. |
| 66 | 66. 'Our Countrymen', Worker (Sydney), 1 July 1893, also in Henry Lawson Scrapbook, i, 221. |
| 67 | 67. 'Some Popular Australian Mistakes', Bulletin, 18 November 1893, p. 20, also in Henry Lawson Scrapbook, i, 231; reprinted Southerly, 1964, 4, pp. 204-5. |
| 68 | 68. 'Fragment of an Autobiography', vol. ii, fo. 216, Mitchell Library MS.; SHL, i, 43. |
| 69 | 69. 'Fragment of an Autobiography', vol. i, fo. 79; SHL, i, 19. |
| 70 | 70. Ibid., vol. i, fo. 42; SHL, i, 12. |
| 71 | 71. 'Send Round the Hat', CB, 21; SHL, iii, 376. |
| 72 | 72. 'To the Advanced Idealist', Miscellaneous MSS.-Verse, ii, 257, (Mitchell A1870); Henry Lawson Scrapbook, iii, 755; Dissed Prose and Verse, p. 90 (Mitchell A 1884); Verses: Emendations by McKee Wright and Others, vol. 6 (Mitchell A 1883); published Elector (Sydney), 2 November 1895. |
| 73 | 73. 'Pigeon Toes', WIK, 244-8, shortened and revised version, PW, 150-1; 'The Little World Left Behind', JWM, 323-9; SHL, ii, 168-71. |
| 74 | 74. 'The Local Spirit', Bulletin, 30 April 1914, p. 3. |
| 75 | 75. 'The Dying Anarchist', Worker (Sydney), 15 September 1894, p. 1. |
| 76 | 76. 'The Good Samaritan', Bulletin, 3 November 1904, p. 40; WIK, 235. |
| 77 | 77. 'The Crucifixion', Miscellaneous MSS-Verse, ii, 187-91, (Mitchell A1870), Henry Lawson Scrapbook, iii, 427; 'Cromwell', Mitchell Library Uncat. MSS. Set 184, Item 4. |
| 78 | 78. 'The Universal Brothers', Mitchell Library Uncat. MSS. Set 184, Item 3. |
| 79 | 79. 'The Man Ahead' (1899), Dixson Collection MS. Q 39. |
| 80 | 80. 'The Drunken Leader', Miscellaneous MSS-Verse, ii, 166-7 (Mitchell A1870); Uncat. MSS. Set 184, Item 3. |
| 81 | 81. 'You know, he said, people acclaim me as a poet although I never look upon poetry as my forte. I'm better at prose. I've never studied Galliambics, Iambics, Ionics etc. said Henry. That science belongs more to a fellow like David McKee Wright.' (J. McCausland, 'A Poet in Leeton', 28 June 1917, reporting conversation with Lawson at Leeton in 1916, Mutch papers, Item 23.) |