Louisa and Henry Lawson chronology
1895-1899
Louisa and Henry Lawson chronology
1895-1899
Copyright © Pip Wilson, 2007
Blue denotes Henry's addresses on mail (from Roderick, 1970) or
from other sources.
Red denotes uncertainty, eg date or fact. Pink
denotes items placed for chronological context, etc.
Reviews, mentions and link-backs very much appreciated: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/lawsons/lawson_chronology.html
Lawsons chronology up to 1889 and Henry Lawson news
Sydney [C/- Mrs E Brooks, North Sydney]
Probably early in year: Rose Scott, a friend of William Lane's, quizzed Annie Lane in Sydney about the goings-on at NACSA headquarters in Elizabeth St.
The day after his divorce from his wife Marion Walsh, Edwin Brady married labor activist Creo Stanley, though this relationship did not last long.
Dr John Kellogg designed breakfast flakes.
Australia's first short film was of the Melbourne Cup won by Auraria.
James Angus had begun to introduce modern wine making techniques at Minchinbury and released its famous sparkling wines in 1903.
Opening of the Bankstown railway line.
Two women sat at the washing tub
For many hours had stood
Till one unto the other said
I'd like some beer I would
No beer for me the other cried
And you'll agree with me
The beer is nowhere once you taste
The Hammodova tea.
1890s Sydney temperance advertisement Source
If you drink sprints you'll never feel queer
Drink all the morning, drink all the night
As there's nothing to suffer
You can always get tight.
Beer o Beer I do love thee
In thee I place my trust
I'd rather go to bed in hunger
Than go to bed in thirst.
Author unknown (Sydney beer song) Source
I was an artful dodger once, but now you'll understand,
I'm a most exalted member of the Hallelujah Band,
Our doings are notorious, and here I must remark,
We've lately held a picnic in the grounds of Royal Park;
It was a glorious morning and we made a jolly start,
Like angels going to Dixie in a covered carrier's cart,
So brotherly and sisterly, of friends about a score,
And such a lot of loving lambs you never saw before.
Then you may go to Bungaree, Bendigo, or Ballarat,
Castlemaine, Warnambool, or search through the land,
But if you want a spree, that a saint can only see,
You must join a jolly party in the Nunawading Band.
Author unknown ('The Hallelujah Band')
"The reduction of the 'bus fare from threepence to
twopence on most of the routes running into Sydney has evidently proved a
success. The twopenny fare puts the buses on an even footing with the trams, all
of which charge twopence in the city sections. Ladies prefer the 'buses to the
trams because they are cleaner, while many business men elect to travel by them
because they run through the chief business streets of the city, and are,
therefore, more convenient." Australasian Coachbuilder and Saddler, May 10, 1895
"During the 1890's, most horse bus systems had passed from small,
owner-operators to the control of the Sydney Tramway and Omnibus Company.
Despite increased efficiency and direct competition over fares and routes,
patronage flowed to the government-owned steam trams. In this environment only
inner suburban bus services survived. Buses operated to places like Glenmore
Road, Paddington, Victoria Street North and Potts Point from Circular Quay via
Pitt Street." Source
"Impact of economic depression and drought prompts membership fall from estimated 17,000 to 7,000; continues falling throughout 1890s; AWU closes branches; AWU head office shifts to Sydney." Source
Henry Lawson's friend Billy Wood and family spend a couple of nights crashed at Lawson's before departing for Cosme.
The ASB opened a successful cooperative coal mine near Wentworth Falls.
Cutty Sark completed her last voyage to Australia. Owner Captain John Willis sold her to the Portuguese firm of Ferreira, where she was renamed after the firm. Her best run from Sydney to England had been 69 days. See October 17, 1885 for the big race between the two.
"As with tea, speed was a critical factor in the wool trade because the wool clip in Australia and the auctions in England were held only at specific times of year. On her second voyage, she again made the return in 79 days, the same time as Thermopylae. Moore left the ship and was succeeded by Richard Woodget, who became Cutty Sark's most celebrated master. Except for one more stab at the tea record—aborted because there was no tea to be had—Cutty Sark remained in the wool trade through 1893. Her best run from Sydney to England was 69 days, in 1888, and five years later she overhauled the P & O Line steamer Britannia on her approach to Sydney." Source
January 5: AG Stephens's review of Short Stories in Prose and Verse, which ran with a photo of Henry Lawson taken by Charles Wilson at Bourke in 1892. Stephens said Henry Lawson was "the voice of the bush". AGS said every Australian should invest a shilling in it because it was characteristically Australian. He also said Henry Lawson had "a real streak of genius". He was critical too.
January: Towards end of month, Archy introduced Henry Lawson to the actor/director Bland Holt, who was playing opposite Hilda Spong at the Theatre Royal. Henry Lawson was smitten with Holt. Henry Lawson went to Bathurst (probably), returned penniless by April. Wrote 'Our Pipes' and not much else in this unknown period.
January 29: Premiers' meeting in Hobart resolved that an intercolonial convention be held to draft a constitution.
February: Active Service Brigade: John Dwyer "wrote to the new Premier of New South Wales, George Reid, announcing the ASB's intention of establishing two additional barracks to assist 'bona fide unemployed workers', and workers on low wages. Dwyer apparently saw the election of the Reid Government opening a new avenue of support for the ASB - perhaps he was encouraged by Reid's dependence on Labor support for a majority in the NSW Legislative Assembly. Aiming to make the barracks 'self-supporting', Dwyer sought Government seeding funds, although Reid does not appear to have responded. Dwyer also lobbied private enterprise: in February he appealed, as ASB 'Business Manager', to Lasseter & Co., the large Sydney retail and wholesale merchants, for a donation 'to relieve somewhat a portion of the unemployed of this city.' Dwyer said that he hoped to use the new funds to meet the cost of moving to new premises - 491 Elizabeth Street was too small, and each night the Brigade was turning men away. Dwyer claimed that the Brigade had served 15,000 meals in the preceding year, and provided beds for 'hundreds' ... March 1895 Dwyer leased a second premises at 157 Elizabeth Street (despite Dwyer's earlier complaints, he did not close 491 Elizabeth Street at that time) ... At 157 Elizabeth Street for six pence a night; lodgers could also have a bath or use the reading room. Harrington Street, in one of Sydney's poorest and most densely populated districts, offered rudimentary accommodation at three pence a night. Between 7-8 pm lodgers were offered a free cup of tea and bread ... A reasonable number of customers did not or could not pay; as Annie complained to John in 1894, he seemed to tolerate at least some non-payers - particularly if they helped keep the barracks in good order. No accounts survive for the period before 1897, yet it seems that in late1896 Dwyer struggled to keep the barracks open, at a time when Annie was nursing a new-born baby, Timm Stephen, born on 8 September ... Both Elizabeth Street barracks seemed to have closed by 1897,when the ASB's headquarters moved to 626 George Street. From January1898 the family leased 704 George Street for £1 a week ... The Dwyer family stayed at 704 GeorgeStreet until April 1901, when they moved to a Sussex Street address. The Dwyer's circulated around the city's poorest districts, searching for affordable family accommodation and properties for the barracks, at a time when housing and health conditions within those areas continued to deteriorate ... The ASB & co-operative coal mining: A flier advertising the opening of Harrington Street in 1895 was authorised by John Dwyer, 'Master Worker of the Order'. The ASB had expanded its barracks operations and incorporated a new organisation, the 'Australian Order of Industry', whose objects were given as: 'Land, Mining and Industrial Co-Operation.'18Tempted by the riches of the coal industry, Dwyer again scratched an entrepreneurial itch. The Workman's curiosity about the Brigade had been stirred in May 1895 by the news that the ASB had been granted a licence by the Reid Government to establish a coal mine. Unemployed Sydney men would work a co-operative venture at Wentworth Falls, in the Blue Mountains to the west of the city. The mine was a typically ambitious Dwyer project. The leased area was extensive: an eighty acre site covering ten separate subdivisions of land owned by John Lebbeus Hordern, a scion of the Sydney retailing dynasty, and several adjacent reserves under Government control - including the famous falls, and extending down the escarpment to the floor of the Jamieson Valley. On 21 May 1895 Dwyer and Hordern signed a lease agreement to allow work to proceed on his land. The lease term was for fifteen years from 1 June 1895, with the annual rent set at £52 p.a. -although in an apparently philanthropic gesture, Hordern waived the first year's rent. Horden expected a profitable partnership: the lease stipulated that a galeage rent, or royalty, of three pence per ton on all coal of inhabitants per dwelling, during the period 1871-1891. By 1900 these problems were 'acute' ... 'By this time the members of the Brigade were to be counted by thousands.' Andrews declared the venture a success: 'every man who was enlisted was thoroughly instructed in the co-operative and socialist economic principle'. Although at the time 'their comprehension was often superficial' many now understood 'the true nature of capitalism.' The Brigade, not having 'thousands' at its disposal, could barely rally seven men to consistently work the site. Dwyer had no enthusiasm for leaving Sydney to lead or discipline them. Few of those men would have abandoned that wind-swept cliff-top with a favourable impression of co-operative principles, although the Wentworth Falls mine did not fail because of the impracticality of socialism or co-operation. The project certainly suffered from poor planning, lack of capital and skilled labour. The venture also suffered from Dwyer's determination to play the remote but absolute Master Worker, to dominate the structures he conceived of, masking that control with elaborate rules, subordinate officers and membership codes - although no-one could defy an order from him." Source PDF, or View as HTML
February 14: First showing of Oscar Wilde's last play The Importance of Being Earnest (St James' Theatre in London).
February 21: JA Andrews "was arrested in December and jailed on 21 February 1895 for 5 months after spending 2 months in jail waiting for trial ... Coming out of jail around July 1895 he spent some time in Sydney before returning to Melbourne ..." Source
March 15: Annie Lane and a Mrs Bilby sailed back to Paraguay, arriving in mid-May. "Tom Hall and Alec Forrester followed on 23rd March; and at about the same time a party of seventeen left Sydney for Montevideo." (Souter, p 129)
March 19: Paddy Crick, Richard Meagher, Justice Sir William Windeyer and the Lemon Syrup Case. More
"George Dean was the 27-year-old captain of the Possum, a night ferry running between Circular Quay and the North Shore. In March 1894 he married Mary Seymour. Just over a year later — on 19 March 1895 — he appeared at the Court of Petty Sessions, North Sydney, charged with administering poison to his wife, with intent to kill her. Dean was committed for trial and appeared before Justice Windeyer in the Supreme Court in April 1895. Richard Denis Meagher, of Crick and Meagher, appeared for the defence.
"Mary Dean gave evidence that the relationship had begun to deteriorate soon after their marriage. She told the court that that she had experienced the symptoms of poisoning prior to the birth of the couple's child in December 1894. Mary said her husband had accused her of having a child before their marriage and compared her to the woman he should have married and ‘would when he was free’. Dean denied these accusations but admitted his dislike for his mother-in-law, who he blamed for causing trouble in the marriage.
George Dean found guilty
"George Dean was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to death but his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life because of his youth and his ‘humane and gallant efforts in saving human life by rescuing drowning people at some risk to his own’ (Mr Justice Windeyer’s report). The verdict caused a public outcry. Protest meetings were held all over the state, petitions poured in, and a ‘Dean Defence Committee’ was formed to fight his cause.
Royal Commission of Inquiry into the case of George Dean, 1895
"Royal Commissioners Francis Edward Rogers, Phillip Sydney Jones and Frederick Norton Manning were appointed to enquire whether Dean should serve his sentence or be released from gaol. The Commission focused strongly on the characters of Mrs Seymour and Mrs Dean. Commissioners Jones and Manning agreed that Mrs Dean had administered the poison to herself, with no intention of taking a fatal dose. Commissioner Rogers dissented. Following the Royal Commission, Dean was granted a free pardon and released from gaol in June 1895.
George Dean confesses
"That was not the end of the story. In July 1895 Dean's lawyer, Meagher, admitted to Sir Julian Salomons, a former Chief Justice and Prosecution Lawyer at the Commission, that Dean was guilty. In October a chemist from the North Shore who sold the poison came forward. Dean was arrested and later confessed. He was convicted of False Declaration on 24 October and was sentenced to five years. On the following day he was convicted of Perjury with Intent to Procure an Acquittal on a Capital Charge and was sentenced to fourteen years, the sentences to be served concurrently.
Meagher and others charged with Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice
"Meagher, Dean, Crick and others were charged with Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. Crick was found not guilty and the convictions of Dean and Meagher were quashed on 15 May 1896. Meagher was struck from the roll of solicitors in June 1896 but he went on to have a career in politics. He was finally re-admitted as by a special Act of Parliament in 1920.
"The saga of George Dean and Richard Meagher has continued to capture the public interest. On 26 February 1983 the ABC television broadcast a dramatisation of the events in Verdict: The Dean Case." Source
April: Henry Lawson returned from Bathurst to a letter from John Le Gay Brereton saying he should ask Angus & Robertson to publish a book, so he went to see George Robertson at 89 Castlereagh St, near the stables that became Piccadilly Arcade.
April
6: ‘Banjo’ Paterson 's song
Waltzing Matilda was first sung in
public, at a Winton,
Queensland, hotel.
April 6: Following the acquittal of John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry on libel charges brought against him by Oscar Wilde, the hapless playwright was arrested and held in custody. During the trial Wilde had denied he had written The Priest and the Acolyte. “Was that story immoral?” asked the barrister. “It was much worse than immoral,” Wilde replied. “It was badly written.”
April 8: Around now, the Sydney Morning Herald placed short news updates about the Oscar Wilde case in a column headed ‘special Cables from the Herald’s London Correspondents.’ On Monday, April 8 the paper gave in a series of breathless ‘unedited’ news-flashes its cumulative account of the weekend of Wilde’s arrest. Source
"A survey of the reviews of all four plays in the most widely read and influential daily and weekly publications in Sydney (Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph, Bulletin), Melbourne (Age, Argus, Table Talk, Punch), and Brisbane (Brisbane Courier), confirms that critics received both Oscar Wilde and his plays more enthusiastically during and immediately after the ‘scandal’ than they did before." Source
April 13: (Saturday) Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband opened at the Sydney Lyceum.
May 4: Young Griffo was the star of Young Griffo vs. Battling Charles Barnett (filmed on the roof of Madison Square Garden), the first motion picture in the world to be screened before a paying audience, at 153 Broadway in New York City. It premiered on May 20, 1895, more than seven months before the Lumiere brothers showed their film at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, on December 28 – the event usually said to be the first movie-by-ticket screening in the world.
May 20: Within a few days of Annie Lane's arrival at Cosme, the Lanes' son Charles (7) was killed when hit in chest by a cricket ball, bowled by Walter Head's son Wally. At the same time, Wm Lane was extricating himself and Cosme from the New Australia financial entanglement, with a circular to creditors.
May 25: Oscar Wilde convicted.
July 26: Henry Lawson signed a contract for the publication of two books (one verse, one prose), with Angus and Robertson, drawn up by Banjo Paterson with the same terms as his Man from Snowy River. A&R would take the financial risk and share the profits equally. They gave him 14 pounds out of 54 in advance. Henry Lawson was now able to move from dosshouse near the cathedral (which one I don't know) to John McGrath's Edinburgh Hotel on corner of Pitt and Bathurst Sts. His worldly goods were in one sack, all in confusion. Henry Lawson and friends (Roderic Quinn, Jack Moses, JLG, Harry Teece et al) met at the Edinburgh, encouraged by McGrath; Henry Lawson went broke soon. Good lodging at this time was about one pound ten shillings a week. A three-piece suit was 2 pounds five; breakfast was 9d; lunch 1s. Hennessy's Three Star Brandy 6s. Usher's Whisky 4s 6d.
August: William Lane wrote to Mary Cameron (Mary Gilmore) requesting that she come to Cosme, which now had 84 (45 men, 17 women, 22 children) to teach at the newly opened school, to release his brother John Lane from the task.
August: Maybanke Anderson's son Arthur drowned "and the emotional suffering took a heavy toll. She asked her friend Margaret Windeyer to take over Women’s Voice. Windeyer declined and the publication ceased." Source
August 8: At 2:25 am the SS Catterthun (Captain Neil Shannon) struck a reef off Seal Rocks, New South Wales, and sank with the loss of 55 lives. The ship was on her way from Hong Kong to Sydney. Quong Tart lost 1,300 pounds (gold sovereigns) in the disaster, but he quickly organised a fundraiser among Sydney businessmen for the Chinese sailors who had survived.
"At 2.25am the SS Catterthun hit the reef at full speed (about 11 knots) and carried on until it hit again eight seconds later. It still continued and was now past the reef but her days were numbered. These reefs were probably Little Seal Rocks and/or some reef nearby.
"Most of the sleeping crew and passengers were awoken by the two impacts and were soon up but many went back to bed after finding nothing awray. Meanwhile, the crew examined below deck and found the forepeak and number four hold almost full of water. The Captain ordered that the lifeboats be prepared for launching but the passengers had not yet been informed of the impending problem. Very soon the ship was listing to starboard and the boat was becoming difficult to handle. The Captain decided to try to beach the ship in Seal Rocks Bay and the course was altered to almost due west. By now there was a foot of water in the cabins on the Saloon Deck and only ten minutes had passed from the first impact.
"The Captain and two others were washed off the bridge by a wave and one of them, Joshua Fawkes (a Torres Strait Pilot), watched as the ship powered on without anyone in control. Some lifeboats were launched and just 20 minutes after hitting the reef (at 2.45am), the Catterthun went down. One boat had 26 people in it and after considerable rowing, they came across a small sailing boat, the Olga, anchored south of Charlotte Head. The small vessel then towed the lifeboat to Foster and arrived there at 11am.
"After taking the two vessels over the bar, the tug Marion Mayfield headed towards the wreck site but had to turn back because of the seas. The next morning she attempted again as did the tug Gamecock which left Newcastle. The Gamecock did not find anything but the Marion Mayfield found one lifeboat with a dead Chinese in it and two more crew. A total of 55 people died in the accident. A Coroner's Inquest into the three bodies was held at Foster on 12 August 1895." Source
August 5: Death of Friedrich Engels (b. 1820)
August 8: Seal Rocks, NSW, Australia: At 2:25 am the SS Catterthun (Captain Neil Shannon) struck a reef off Seal Rocks and sank with the loss of 55 lives. The ship was on her way from Hong Kong to Sydney. Sydney tea merchant and philanthropist Quong Tart lost 1,300 pounds (gold sovereigns) in the disaster, but he quickly organised a fundraiser among Sydney businessmen for the Chinese sailors who had survived.
September 15: Mark Twain arrived in Australia on a three-month lecture tour on the SS Warrimoo. An interview with him appeared in Sydney press on September 17. Rolf Boldrewood called on him in Melbourne. He dined with JF Archibald (staying with him at Coogee), Henry Lawson and Sir Henry Parkes. Mark Twain in Australia Mark Twain on the Platform in Australia Mark Twain's Australian Visit More
October: Henry Lawson went to George Robertson asking him to pay him out for the copyright, against advice of his friends and Robertson, but he insisted. Within two months he had spent 40 pounds. Sometime (1896 presumably) Henry Lawson asked for the copyright back, and Robertson agreed. Around now at the Edinburgh Hotel, drunk, Henry Lawson and John Le Gay Brereton composed 'The Grand Mistake' in answer to Henry Parkes's Federation song, 'The Australian Flag'. Robertson called for a redraft, which Henry Lawson and John Le Gay Brereton did in the back room of A&R over a couple of days, both pissed on whiskey. Galley and page proofs all over a long table, neither of them taking it very seriously. they cut it into two poems: 'The Star of Australasia' and 'Years After the War in Australia', which pleased Robertson. Henry Lawson then wrote 'To an old Mate' and the book was ready to publish. Henry Lawson told Robertson the story behind 'Hero of Redclay', and Robertson agreed it sounded good as a novel. (It was eventually published as a short story in Over the Sliprails.)
October 17: William Lane took very ill at Cosme with stomach illness that severely and painfully constipated him; after treatment he had severe diarrhoea. A week later they thought he would die.
October 19: The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses was published; Banjo Paterson was already well known throughout the colonies. Within a month there were three editions.
October 31: Mary Cameron resigned her position teaching at Stanmore Public School, to go to Paraguay. She gathered books and things to take there, and made a wooden and cardboard keyboard to teach piano.
October 31: Thirteen people died and 30 were injured in a train crash at Redfern station near Sydney. Amongst the dead were Edward Lloyd Jones, son of the founder of the large David Jones department store, and the Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral, Timothy McCarthy.
November: John Dwyer opened yet another barracks at 10-12 Harrington Street, 'near the Argyle cut' in the Rocks.
November 15 or 17: Mary Cameron left for Paraguay on the Anglian (arr. Cosme January 2, 1896) to connect with the Ruapehu. Mrs Lane had already gone back and Mary had been boarding with Mrs Carnegie at another address in Newtown Rd. She wrote that as the day came for her to set sail, Henry Lawson grew depressed and begged her not to go. "The night before I sailed he broke right down. He begged me not to go. 'If you go I am ruined,' he said, 'my life will never be worth anything again.' And a singular saying was: 'If you go they will get hold of me; while you are here they cannot.'" Mary interpreted this to mean Bertha Bredt et al. He had noticed Bertha around now, possibly at McNamara's Book Depot, and she worshipped him. With Jack Jones and JLG, Henry Lawson saw Mary off. There was probably a bit of jealousy of her from the women as they were only half in number of the men.
November 30: AG Stephens in The Bulletin announced that in future Angus & Robertson would publish a novel by Lawson, 'Hero of Redclay'.
December: The title of Henry Lawson's first book of verse was fixed: In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses. Too late for Christmas sales, which Banjo Paterson had been able to capitalise on.
Henry Lawson poems in 1895
The Vagabond
To an Old Mate
Peter Anderson and Co.
Dan, the Wreck
To the "Advanced Idealist"
The Fate of the Fat Man's Son
The Star of Australasia
Years After the War in Australia
Since Then
But What's The Use
January 1-February 18: Sydney
February 19: C/- SS Tasmania, to Dunedin, NZ
March 10: C/- SS Talune, to Sydney
March 17: Sydney
April 10: Sydney
April 15: Weldon's Matrimonial Agency, 57 Phillip St, Sydney (marriage)
April-May: Forbes St, Darlinghurst
June 30: C/- SS Marloo, to Fremantle
July 15: Perth
August-September: Government Camp, East Perth
October 2: C/- SS Wollowra, to Melbourne
October 10: C/- SS Burrumbeet, to Sydney
October 13-19: Church Hill, Sydney
Bathurst Convention: "Although Norton and a few resilient nationalists tried to maintain the rage after the high point of republican sentiment in the late 1880s, by the time of the Bathurst Convention, Norton was one of the last vocal republicans in the Labor Party. He may well have been the only remaining member of the Sydney Republican Union." Source
Maybanke Anderson, foundation president of the Kindergarten Union, opened what was possibly the first free kindergarten in the British Empire, at Woolloomooloo.
Hannah Thornburn (19) probably comes into Henry's life about now, possibly introduced to him by his sculptor mate, Nelson Illingworth.
She was daughter of a bookseller and commercial traveller of 62 Church St Balmain. Henry Lawson wrote for her 'To Hannah' and 'Hannah Thomburn' (sic; a printer's error). For more about Hannah and Henry, see June 1 - July 12, 1902 in this chronology.
Hannah's profile from Roderick, 1991, p 171:
"Her full name was Hannah Forrester Thornburn ... John Thornburn came to Sydney from Melbourne with his wife Betsy Forrester and daughter Hannah in 1887 and set up as a book importer. With the Thornburns boarded a young clerk, William Holford, who in the same year established himself at 427 George Street as a manufacturer's agent and hardware importer. Two years later Holford sent for his wife and three daughters, the eldest of whom was named Winifred, and the family took a house at Drummoyne. The Thornburns moved in 1889 to Melbourne and it was not until 1896, when they returned to Balmain, that Winifred again met Hannah. Hannah was then nineteen, Winifred eighteen. Hannah was a member of the YWCA and she prevailed upon Winifred to join. At Balmain the Holfords belonged to the Church of England, Hannah to the Congregational Church. The Holfords were living in Cambridge Road, Drummoyne, the Thornburns still at 62 Church Street, Balmain. Hannah one day mentioned to Winifred that the Sunday school conducted by the Balmain Congregational Church needed teachers, and she persuaded Winifred to join her there as a teacher. According to Winifred, Hannah was a tender-minded girl with a ready sense of humour and an affectionate nature. Her father, Bertram Stevens wrote, "was a weak-natured man who drank and was often out of employment"." A bond of affection existed between him and his daughter. Thornburn's habits exasperated his wife. Very often he failed to appear for the evening meal, and sometimes for the night. His embittered wife fell into a behaviour pattern characterised by hardness and severity. This in turn made it difficult for their daughter to feel for her mother. She found compensation in religious activity. With little money coming in from her father, she became the breadwinner of the family as a bookkeeper and clerk with W. Ford's Memorial Engraving Company, printers, of 142 King Street. 'Hannah,' wrote Winifred Holford, who spent fifty years of her life as a nurse and matron, 'was about five feet four inches, fair of complexion, grey-eyed, with reddish-gold hair resembling her mother's. She had lips that appeared to pout but did not. Constitutionally she was not robust. She was slender and inclined to be of the clinging-vine type, gentle and attractive, not handsome or animated or striking." Bertram Stevens thought her 'a rather delicate, plain girl. . . . She was romantic: a poet of any kind would appeal to her, and Lawson the Australian poet was regarded with something like worshipful admiration.' Lawson's physical description of her in 'Hannah Thornburn' tallied with Winifred Holford's and with the only photograph of her that has survived. No one was sure when Lawson first met Hannah. In the same poem he wrote that she had come 'in the soul-striving days ... come only to comfort and praise'. He portrayed her as 'the love of [his] life'. Winifred Holford, who last saw Hannah late in 1901, some months before beginning to train as a nurse at Sydney Hospital, sometimes discussed Lawson with her. Winifred did not like his poetry, which she thought compared unfavourably with Tennyson's, but Hannah defended it and urged her to try to understand what Lawson was driving at. At this time, as far as Winifred knew, there was no acknowledged tie between Lawson and Hannah. Winifred throughout her life had no notion that anything more than admiration for Lawson's writing entered
Hannah's mind. It has been supposed that Lawson met her while she was modelling for Nelson Illingworth, but the only basis for this belief was a stanza in 'Hannah Thornburn' which spoke of a 'sculptor friend' brushing the clay from her skirt: the only 'sculptor friend' Lawson had was Nelson Illingworth. If Hannah did engage in modelling, she never confided this part of her life to Winifred, any more than she did her friendship with Lawson. Lawson's poetic testimony on this point would be no more acceptable than a deduction from 'That Pretty Girl in the Army' that Hannah, complete with 'big grey eyes sad with sympathy for sufferers and sinners, and her poke bonnet full of bunchy, red-gold hair', was a star performer in the Salvation Army at Bourke in 1892. In the Sunday Times, Sydney, of 24 September 1916 Lawson did identify Hannah with Ruth in the poem of that name, and in his play 'Ruth', later entitled 'Pinter's Son Jim', the heroine resembled Hannah. In the prose version of the story, 'The Hero of Redclay', on which he was working between 1897 and 1899, she became 'a slight girl, not very tall, with reddish frizzled hair, grey eyes, and small, pretty features'.
"The only thing that can be safely deduced from this circumstantial evidence is that Lawson thought enough of Hannah to use her as a model for these characters, the first of them conceived in 1896-97, and to fall in love with the image of her that he built up in creating them. The first piece of external evidence in Lawson's handwriting to connect him with Hannah was dated 1899 and belonged to events that succeeded his return from New Zealand in March of 1898. But these events were such as to necessitate prior acquaintance, so that he must have known her before he went to New Zealand . In 'That Pretty Girl in the Army' Lawson made a reference to 'Sister Hannah's' religious leanings that could have come only from personal observation: 'The Pretty Girl was discussed from psychological points of view; not forgetting the sex problem.... Donald Macdonald said that whenever he saw a circle of plain or ugly, dried-up women or girls round a shepherd, evangelist or a Salvation Army drum, he'd say "sexually starved!" They were hungry for love. Religious mania was sexual passion damned out of its course. Therefore he held that morbidly religious girls were the most easily seduced.'"
" ... the ASB went 'on the warpath' to aid the Foster family, facing eviction from their home at 269 Sussex Street. The father was dying; the family furniture had been seized by 'loan sharks'. Two children of working age, both girls, were unemployed; one had recently lost her position as a domestic servant - for which she had received a mere three shillings a week, although she was twenty years old. The Brigade formed a vigilance committee and established a relief fund to help the family. The Brigade also considered direct action, in the form of the 'Irish boycott' - a suggestion that Socialist readers refuse to deal with the landlady persecuting the Foster family. In August the family received 'a visit' from their landlady, who 'was kindly received by one of the ASB vigilantes. The family are not yet evicted.'" Source PDF, or View as HTML
"Dan Barry's production of Reg Rede's The Kelly Gang opens in Geelong; subsequent highly successful 1898 Melbourne season. Plagiarised Sydney (1899) & elsewhere." Source
AG Stephens wrote a congratulatory letter to Louisa Lawson on her edition of Henry Lawson's work published in late-1894.
January: Around now, Henry Lawson broke, shared a tea-cake on a kerbstone in Dalley St with JLG and Jack Moses, wine salesman for Hocking & Co., Pitt St, who was a teetotaller and practical joker who Henry Lawson called the 'Clot of Gold'. One December 24, quite likely around now: " One Christmas Eve, when people often carried poulty home from the old George Street markets, Jack Moses bought a rooster, and as they entered the Strand Arcade nearby, Henry cut the string on its legs and gave the bird a push. the popular arcade – half of it is still there – was crowded, and the rooster flopped and flapped about in all directions, with people chasing it, until the police arrived and locked the entrance to the arcade. Moses was find 10s. for allowing the rooster to stray." (Ollif)] Moses also pawned Henry Lawson's overcoat and gave Henry Lawson the ticket. Sometime around now perhaps, at the School of Arts Hall in Pitt St: Jack Moses and Jack Brereton gave an Appreciative Lecture for HL, but Henry Lawson bolted when they praised his work. Around now, Henry Lawson and Bertha Bredt trip to Hawkesbury River chaperoned by Aunt Emma. Bertha apparently chased Henry Lawson till she got him. Maybe threatened suicide, and said McNamara would throw her out if she didn't get married (although her mother Bertha was opposed to Henry). At this time, her sister Hilda (17) was seeing Jack Lang.
January 2: Mary Cameron arrived at Cosme.
January 12: After a two-week heatwave in Burke, NSW, with temperatures averaging 47º Celsius, 50 people were dead.
February 5: Letters patent obtained by Louisa Lawson for a 'mail-bag fastener', giving her 'exclusive enjoyment and advantage of the said invention or improvement for and during the term of fourteen years'. Approved by PO, September 30. Later The Post and Telegraph Department used her invention. in about August, 1900, Edward Nicol Murray produced a similar device which was used by the P&TD; Louisa Lawson spent years in lawsuits in which she believed 'a syndicate of politicians' was ranged against her. Ollif pp 100 ff tells the story (see lawsons/louisa_mailbag.doc).
February 14: By this date, Bertha Bredt (about 19 years old) and Henry Lawson (nearly 29) were in love.
February 15: In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses, imitative of Kipling-style books, and it was bound in Macmillans style, like Rudyard Kipling's books. Same day, Henry Lawson drew up a will, settling some debts (John Farrell, Tom Mills from NZ, Jack Moses - and leaving half of his share of the profits to Bertha Bredt. The book cost 5s 6d, a lot for a poet's first book when a first-class dinner with wine was 1s 6d. Henry Lawson's readers didn't have a 'caser'. AB Paterson's Snowy River was now in its fifth thousand and about 1200 of Henry Lawson's book sold by prepublication sale through: Angus and Robertson, Sydney and Melbourne; The Bulletin took 200; William Dymock 75; Cole of Melbourne 125; 12 to H&J Baillie in Auckland; JJ Moore, 50; Bertha McNamara, 6. AG Stephens discussed Banjo and Lawson. Of Henry Lawson his opening remarks were scathing. "His mental scope is narrow; he is comparatively uncultured; he iterates the same notes, and rarely improves his thought by elaboration; he wants harmony and variety of metre; his work is burdened with many weak lines and careless tags ... But how graphic he is, how natural, how true, how strong!" 'The Star of Australasia' made an ex-soldier "want to vomit" and John Farrell said it was "bush jingoism, cooeying aloud for blood". Reviews: Roderick, 1991, pp 139ff. Medway Day in Worker said he wasn't looking into the future enough. HH Champion in Melbourne (February 22 and February 29) wrote favourably, comparing with Burns, Hood, Poe, Whitman, Harte, not knowing Henry Lawson's love for them, but also wrote "The proletarian predominates over the poet, and there is much froth yet to be blown off the top of this new-drawn pewter pot of Parnassus brew."
February 1: The opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini premiered (Turin).
Mid-late February: Henry Lawson went to New Zealand to try his fortune as agreed with Bertha, went steerage on the Hauroto. Arrived drunk. Came back in a day or two, February 28, because a young woman was seducing him to stay and Tom Mills, sensing trouble, sent him home.
March 4: Henry Lawson arrived back in Sydney from NZ on the Hauroto. Now Bertha said they should delay the wedding and she go to Victoria. But he had written 'After All', a love poem and sent it to her. She changed her mind and they decided to marry.
March 14: Jack Lang (19) married Hilda Amelia Bredt (17), stepdaughter of WHT McNamara, and sister of Bertha Bredt who married Henry Lawson. At the time, Lang was living with his parents in Macquarie St. They went to live with the McNamaras and had their first baby on June 2, 1897. Lang was an accounts clerk. They went to live at Petersham. Second child died. Third baby born in 1900. Fourth baby, 1902. Fifth in 1904.
March 21: AG Stephens wrote on the The Bulletin's 'Red Page': "Henry Lawson is back from his Maoriland trip and busy recollecting more emotions in tranquillity".
March 31: Annie Bright's competition on "state which you consider the better Poet – Paterson or Lawson" was won by Mr Robert Richardson of Armidale who gave it to Banjo and referred to Lawson's "poor and ineffective lines". Lawson now finding it hard to liveon his writing.
April
6: In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic
Games after 1,500 years since being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius
I.
"The first Australian Olympic gold was won by runner Edwin Flack at the first of the modern Games in Athens, 1896. After winning the 800 metres and 1,500 metres he was given an olive wreath to mark his victories as medals hadn't come into play as yet. He was also mistakenly given an Austrian flag." Source
April 10: To get married, Henry Lawson borrowed 10 pounds from a moneylender at 20%, Booker, whose office was in the Cosmos building at 82 Pitt St.
April 15: On a Wednesday (see also here for day of week; Roderick, 1991, says Saturday), Henry Lawson (28) married Bertha (19) at Weldon's Matrimonial Association, 57 Phillip St, next door to the tradesmen's entrance at the Hotel Metropole. They called in Rev. WT Adams of the American Methodist Episcopalian Church, and two witnesses who did not know bride or groom. She didn't know she was getting married that day, thought they were meeting Jack Moses. Henry Lawson's mate Louis Becke lent him a pound to pay the parson. Years later Henry Lawson said that was the only thing he held against Becke. That night, Alfred Dampier's show 'The West' was on in Sydney, "a Mammoth spectacular production". Whether the Lawsons saw it, they did decide soon to go to WA; Henry Lawson hoped to get some gold (Kalgoorlie in the 1890s was the richest square mile of gold-bearing earth the world has ever seen), so he and Bertha could get to London. Henry Lawson took Bertha to The Bulletin office, probably a few days after the wedding. Soon they took rooms at Forbes St, Darlinghurst. Brady and Moses would come there.
April 25: Women voted in the South Australian elections. It was another six years before women gained the vote nationally (Australia was the second country after New Zealand to grant women the vote nationally).
April 27: Death of Sir Henry Parkes. In his lifetime, his disclosed debts in three bankruptcy schedules totalled £146,000.
May 12: The second Foundation Day was celebrated at Cosme.
Mid-1896: Henry Lawson complained to Banjo (as his book was doing much better, although Henry Lawson had sold 3,000) that Henry Lawson's readers, Labour people, weren't buying In the Days When the World was Wide because he had shown "some good points in the squatter". Medway Day in Worker wrote a piece urging workers to buy it.
c. June: Harry Holland (co-founder, with Tom 'the Vag' Batho, of the Socialist) was charged with defaming Joseph Creer, director of the State Labour Bureau, and served three months (released November). They packed up and in 1897 published from Newcastle as Socialist Journal of the Northern People, under great hardship from lack of capital (they only had 6d). By May, 1897 it was the largest-selling miners' paper.
June: Last edition of Truth with AG Taylor's name beneath the masthead (since December 1894 in this incarnation of the paper), and John Norton resumed editorship. One of his first campaigns: to stop the raising of the age of consent from 14 to 18 (he had seduced two young girls in the previous four years). He wrote of "the prurient push of professional pietists, made up of male-women and female men ... a lot of lazy loafers in black coats and with still blacker hides and hearts ...". Around now he might have coined the term 'wowser'. For many years, Truth carried a stock headline for court reports: 'POLICE VERSUS THE PEOPLE'. Norton's standing head for minor divorce news was:
Doings in Divorce
The Garden of Life
Sigh-Press, Orange Blossom,
Prickly pairs, Buds, Blooms and Bloomers
John Norton was charged in 1896 for sedition for an article entitled 'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN', who he called "a podgy-faced, sulky-faced little German woman ... this flabby, fat, and flatulent looking scion" etc. Norton was too inebriated at first to appear in court. When he did appear, he intended to read sections from a great many books he had brought with him, but Mr Justice Stephen refused permission, so Norton quoted from Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Macaulay, and Cobbett. Pearl writes, "He also appealed to John Bright, Cobden, Thackeray, Dr Lang, and Landor". The case was dropped, and The Bulletin compared him with John Wilkes.
June 12: England: JT Hearne set a record for the earliest date of taking 100 wickets.
June 23: Henry Lawson sold his copyright of In the Days When the World was Wide to George Robertson for a second time (sold first time October 1895) and also the copyright of While the Billy Boils. Robertson forgave the advances and added 75 pounds. Henry Lawson booked saloon passages to Fremantle on the Marloo (2524 tons, Captain TM Allen) which was to depart Sydney on June 30. First, Henry Lawson and Bertha went to Bega, where he sold to the Gazette 'When You're Bad on Your Inside' for a guinea. Back in Sydney they called on their mothers. Bertha McNamara was hurt and angry for not being invited to the wedding, though she had given consent, but Bertha McNamara saw them off at the dock, as did Louisa Lawson who gave her new daughter a box of black stockings.
June 28 Truth magazine published, anonymously, Lawson's 'The Man from Waterloo', a parody of Paterson's successful 'Man from Ironbark' which had appeared in The Bulletin as far back as December 17, 1892. Lawson had to wait this long for publication, which he was able to achieve in the rush of popularity of Paterson's first volume of verse, The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, which made a sensation. Lawson did not claim authorship of his poem until four years later, including it in Verses Popular and Humorous. Roderick (Roderick, Colin, Henry Lawson: a life, Angus and Robertson. Sydney, 1991) says that a full twenty years passed and Lawson still showed (in 'In the Height of Fashion') hurt from his 'Up the country' duel with Paterson, which began on July 9, 1892.
June 30: Henry Lawson and wife Bertha Lawson sailed on the SS Marloo, to Fremantle.
July 2: Lawsons in Melbourne just as Melbourne Punch published an article pro the "new bards and bardesses" as a rejoinder to Henry Gyles Turner who had attacked them. Henry Lawson had a "week's business" to do in Melbourne and friends to see, one being poet John Steele Robertson ('Steele Grey'), an exuberant, vivacious man, sometime Bulletin contributor. In 1890 he had been sub-editor of two periodicals that failed, Bohemia and Tribune. The June 25 edition of Free Lance, which JS Robertson now worked on, had effusive accolades to Lawson in it. But Robertson was not in his office when Henry Lawson called on July 3 to thank him; he left a note "sailing this afternoon". Robertson came to the dock to meet his hero. Three days in Adelaide, Henry Lawson looked up some press friends or else went on the grog and told Bertha that's what he was doing. His travelling mates to Fremantle included Modest Maryanski, a wealthy Polish mineralogist gold man, and his American assistant, Mr Darrow, and Mr Letvinski and JSB Kruckow, also both Poles. Henry Lawson tried out his Polish politics on the Poles, but they smiled patronisingly. Also on board was a theatrical agent, newly married couples, an old maid, a parson, a digger who'd been over to Sydney to be with an ailing daughter who had died.
July 12: (Sunday) Maryanski left the ship at Albany because the ship was so bad, expressing amazement that the Aussies put up with it. Marloo delayed in Albany two days.
July 14: (Tuesday evening) The Marloo arrived in Fremantle. Two hours spent looking for lodgings.
July 15: Lawsons took train to Perth (pop'n 40,000). Lodgings hard to get, Perth growing fast. Nothing under 3 guineas a week until next boat sailed for Sydney taking some settlers away. Henry Lawson went all over building sites asking for "Jones of New South Wales" and found his old mate from Mt Victoria job. Within a week after staying at the Shamrock Hotel they had a hessian shack at a camp near the river (licence required), with packing case floor.
"Many native-born and long-term residents of Western Australia were suspicious of the recent arrivals. Western Australia's Premier, John Forrest, wanted to use the wealth generated by the gold rush for the long-term development of agricultural and pastoral industries to ensure continued prosperity. Many were skeptical about the long-term future of the goldfields and doubted that the t'othersiders would remain resident in Western Australia once the gold had run out.
"For their part t'othersiders felt discriminated against due to the lack of adequate Parliamentary representation and the absence of key services such as fresh water. Many miners felt Perth to be remote and indifferent to their concerns. Some had never even been to Perth, having arrived in Western Australia via Albany or Esperance or having crossed the continent overland.
The level of mistrust and suspicion felt by t'othersiders is evident in F.C.B. Vosper's editorial in the Coolgardie Miner on 24 September 1895 in which he observed that
"'We may fairly honestly claim to be a separate race from the Western Australians who for the most part are lacking in alertness, enterprise and view which characterizes the Easterners.'" T'othersiders
July (end): Henry Lawson received two advance copies of In the Days When the World was Wide. About 235 review copies had been sent. It was well received, but mixed. Macmillan in London rejected it. One reviewer noticed there was not one horse in the book. Cf Banjo. Hundreds of newspapers in Aust and NZ reviewed it. Stephens's rather negative review ("Art he has none") criticised the sequence of the sketches (Henry Lawson wrote to Robertson that it was he, not Stephens, who had suggested the sequence Stephens recommended). Champion disagreed about the order of sketches, but referred to Lawson's "pessimistic temperament". Henry Lawson's attempts with Hero of Redclay as a novel were unsuccessful and he gave up in despair, but helped him master larger short stories.
August: Larry Petrie arrived at Cosme.
August 6: Mary Cameron wrote to Henry Lawson from Cosme, asking him to join her, as she had been jilted by Dave Stevenson. She asked for a copy of the book and says "I believe you forgot me ... but I know you didn't". "ps: I didn't get married."
See 'Bluestocking in Patagonia' by Dr Anne Whitehead: PDF HTML for more on Mary Gilmore, Henry Lawson, Dave Stevenson and William Gilmore
August 27: The shortest war in the world - 9.02 – 9.40 between Britain and Zanzibar.
August (end of): WA: Campers moved to government camps; Lawsons went to East Perth. Licence 7s 6d a month. Mattress £1.15; five pound for house and utensils. Spare tent as a study cum dining room. Got a job painting. The Idler in England gave a good review of In the Days When the World was Wide – welcome although Henry Lawson annoyed at yet another reference to Kipling's influence. Henry Lawson sold three stories to the West Australian.
September: While the Billy Boils was outselling The Man from Snowy River by entering its third thousand. Jack Brereton wrote to Mary Cameron and mentioned that Henry Lawson was married.
September 6: William Lane's 35th birthday and a celebration at Cosme. Mary Cameron started going with William Gilmore (b. March 20, 1866 at Strathdownie, Victoria).
September 15: At Cosme, Mary Cameron's engagement to William Gilmore was announced. They at first intended to wait till Lane came back from England to marry them, but as this turned out to be longer than expected, they were married on May 29, 1897.
September 16: William Lane, aged 35, and Arthur Tozer left Cosme for England (passage paid by the Paraguay Government which supported the colony in many ways) to recruit new members. This led to a drifting away of commitment among the "Lane-ites" as Mary Gilmore later called them.
September 23: Queen Victoria had reigned longer than any British monarch. Soon, John Norton used the occasion for an anti-Victoria rant in Truth, which brought him a charge of sedition. He wrote it drunk, failed to appear on summons, and was drunk when arrested (and tried to destroy the manuscript while being arrested). See Pearl (1958), Ch. 7.
September 30: Louisa Lawson received approval of mailbag for use by PO. It cost 1s 3d to make, she got 1s 4d and later a few pence more per clasp.
October 3: Henry Lawson's story 'Black Joe' appeared in West Australian.
October 3: Death of William Morris (b. 1834).
October 4: Lawsons departed Fremantle, WA in steerage on the Wollowra (Adelaide Steamship Company; 1,677 tons; Capt. WG Vincent).
October 8: Lawsons arrived at Melbourne on Wollowra.
October 10: Lawsons boarded the Burrumbeet (Huddart Parker steamship; 1,560 tons; Capt. WM Hipgrave). HH Champion came on board to talk to Lawson, later writing: "Last Saturday, very unostentatiously, Henry Lawson passed through Melbourne on his way from Westralia to Sydney ...". Capt. Hipgrave allowed HL, although in steerage, to entertain his Melbourne cronies in saloon.
October 12: Lawsons arrived in Sydney penniless and took a room in Church St behind St Phillip's Church. By a strange coincidence, the landlord's name was Henry Lawson. Soon Henry Lawson called on his publishers, said things went well in WA but they didn't like climate. There was a letter waiting for him at The Bulletin office from Mary Cameron at Colonia Cosme. She did not know of his marriage, asked for a copy of his book and for him to come to Paraguay. From this he wrote '"The Voice from Over Yonder"', pub. July 17, 1897 in The Bulletin. Other addresses from now: 99 Regent St then 91 Redfern St, a locality haunted by EJ Brady and Bertram Stevens, articled clerk, who resolved to meet HL.
October 24: 'The Red Page' (edited by 'the Red Pagan' AG Stephens) in The Bulletin featured an interview with Louisa Lawson. She said "I feel sorry for some of the women that come to see me sometimes: they look so weak and helpless ... I try to speak softly to them, but sometimes I can't help letting out and then they go away and say 'Mrs Lawson was unkind to us' ... Women are what men make them. No, I don't run men down, but I run down their vanity ..." Her father, Harry Albury, was still alive, aged 75, but her mother had died just a few days before. She also says: "Of the children, I think Bert takes after him more; Henry is like me; Gertie is more like my mother. You have heard how clever Bert is at music? and everybody knows Henry. Gertie is with me now, working on The Dawn. Henry and Bert are in Westralia." (Henry Lawson arrived back in Sydney on October 12. Whether she didn't know this, or if the interview was done much earlier than October 24, is uncertain.) Full text (Word .doc; 29 kb)
November: People's Federal Convention, Bathurst, discussed Federation at length, using the 1891 draft constitution as the basis for discussion. "Intercolonial Conference resolves to extend the restrictions on Chinese immigration to all non-Europeans; Chinese Restriction Acts in various colonies are extended to all 'coloured races'. New South Wales passes Coloured Races Restriction and Regulation Act." Source
November: William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the US presidential election.
November: The Cosme residents heard about the death of William Morris (b. 1834), greatly admired by them, on October 3 and at their evening meeting they marked the occasion with readings from his works.
November: Harry Holland (co-founder, with Tom 'the Vag' Batho, of the Socialist) was released after serving three months for with defaming Joseph Creer, director of the State Labour Bureau.
November: Henry Lawson wrote to G Robertson that he couldn't "understand why While the Billy Boils didn't go better, a comment bound to annoy Robertson as the book had been in its third thousand on day of printing. Round now, Henry Lawson writing a lot of sketches and poems to pay rent. Most of it Archibald bought immediately. Some he sold to others. Yet he was still broke. A lot of carousing was done in these months. Bertram Stevens later said he was stashing sixpences around the house, and deceiving Bertha on a regular basis. He set up the "lending shilling" with various publicans and barmaids. Stevens promised Bertha he would "never ask Harry to have a drink". He was out many nights with him, and caught at home with Henry Lawson by Bertha with bottles of 'Hop Beer', so she barred him from her home. Other drinking mates were EJ Brady, Roderic Quinn and Richard Holt. Henry Lawson growing more guilt-ridden, morose and aware of his alcoholism.
Henry Lawson poems in 1896
The Way of the World
After All
Write by Return
When You're Bad in Your Inside
The Bursting of the Boom
The Outside Track
The Men Who Come Behind
Reedy River
The Man from Waterloo
Bill and Jim Fall Out
The New Chum Jackaroo
The Swagman and His Mate
January-March: 91 Redfern St, Redfern, Sydney
March 31: C/- SS Anglian, to Wellington, NZ
April 9: C/- Mr Thos Mills, Buckle St, Wellington
May 4: C/- SS Wakatu, to Kaikoura
May 6-October 31: Native School, Mangamaunu, South Island, NZ
November 3-6: Kaikoura, South Island, NZ
November 6: C/- SS Waverly, to Wellington, NZ
November 8-December 31: 14 College St, Wellington
"Queensland Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act allows the Chief Protector to remove Aboriginal people onto and between reserves and hold children in dormitories. From 1939 until 1971 this power is held by the Director of Native Welfare; the Director is the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children, whether or not their parents are living, until 1965. The legislation is subsequently imitated by South Australia and the Northern Territory. Under the legislation, Aboriginal people are effectively confined to reserves and banned from towns. Reserves are administered by government agencies or missionaries and every aspect of life is controlled, including the right to marry, guardianship of children, the right to work outside reserves, and management of assets." Source
Tocsin commenced publication (ceased 1906). Henry Lawson was associated with it. Bernard O'Dowd ran it.
Ben Tillet toured Australia in 1897 and 1898, where he was feted as the 'Napoleon of Labour'.
January: New Australia divided up property amongst members and henceforth was an individualist settlement.
February: AG Stephens (who Henry Lawson calls 'Olfret') received Henry Lawson's 'The Uncultured Rhymer to His Critics', attacking John Le Gay Brereton. He changed 'Keep out of the tracks I travel' to 'Keep out of the tracks we travel' and Henry Lawson was angry at that too; Stephens says the other bards were getting fed up with HL. It was not published until December, when the Lawsons were in New Zealand, by which time Henry had cooled off. Same month, Henry Lawson wrote a crank letter to Robertson – he had tried to get GR to publish a book of inferior sketches and GR had been non-committal.
February: The birth of William Lane and Annie Lane's fifth child. William now overseas, having left on September 16 for UK with Tozer.
February 8: George Robertson wrote to Henry Lawson "We do not intend to publish any new work of yours". He also said that A&R didn't want any of his copyrights – in other words, "get lost". By now the Worker had suspended publication, so another publishing avenue was closed off, and The Bulletin had more of his work than they had space to publish.
February 26: The first of William Lane and Arthur Tozer's British recruits to Cosme set sail for Paraguay, via the Canary Islands and Montevideo. Lane intended at first to return in March, but decided to stay till the end of the British Summer, and in fact stayed until February 1898.
March 4: William McKinley succeeded Grover Cleveland as President of the United States.
March 4: "An escapade involving Lawson and Bertram Stevens was one of the last Bertha endured before removing her husband from any such temptation. It occurred on 4 March 1897, the day of the election of Barton,
Lyric (or Sir William
Lyne? This
page refers to Sir William Lyric, but is it a misprint in the Dictionary
of Australian Biography repeated by Roderick?), and [Bernhard Ringrose] Wise
as representatives to the Australasian Federal Convention. Stevens left a record of the day's events:
'Henry called for me in the morning, and after I had voted ... we went to Manly. We bought some provisions and bottled ale and carried them up into the bush near Curl Curl. The rest of the day was spent there in talking or paddling on the beach like two kids. . . .
I mentioned to Lawson at Curl Curl that one of the reviewers of his book had girded at 'The Star of Australasia' as a hectic sort of shout for war for its own sake, and he went off into a passionate outburst as to the good war would do Australia. He was emphatic that military training would be the best thing for wiping out
larrikinism.'
"On that day they 'got back to Redfern very late, after many drinks and a row at a coffee-stall through Lawson misunderstanding a remark by a cabdriver. As we walked down Redfern Street . . . we made up a yarn that was to account for our lateness and as it was necessary for me to speak loudly to him, every word
I said in the quietness of 1 a.m. or thereabouts was heard by Mrs Lawson, who met us like an avenging
Fate.'" (Roderick, 1991, p. 173)
March (between March 4
and March 31: "One of the last of Lawson's sprees before leaving for New Zealand was in the company of Bertram Stevens and Herbert Low, a
journalist then on the staff of the Sydney Morning Herald, 'a tidy, well-dressed
man – whiskey or no; a good bohemian, a good pal, a generous
man', as Lawson later described him. 'Henry,' Stevens wrote, 'thoroughly enjoyed the evening. He and
I landed at his home somewhere after two, fairly sozzled. (I remember that a little Frenchman at the bodega sang the
"Marseillaise", which had an extraordinary effect upon Lawson.) That late home-coming was the dead finish with Mrs Lawson, so far as
I was concerned.'
It was the end of all the parties. Bertha found the money for steerage fares to Wellington."
(Roderick, 1991, p. 173)
Hannah: "In an attempt to sever Lawson's infatuation with a young bookkeeper, Hannah Thornburn, and to curb his drinking, Bertha went to the offices of the Bulletin and asked Archibald for two passages to New Zealand, and for letters to people who might help her husband gain work." Source (Mary Gilmore's biographer Wilde said Hannah Thornburn was in 1899, but this looks reasonable.)
March 22 - May 5: "National Australasian Federation Convention, Adelaide session. Queensland did not send delegates. At this and subsequent sessions, most of the final Constitution was drafted. Its most important feature was its establishment of a federal system of government." Source
March 31: Henry Lawson and Bertha sailed on the SS Anglian, to Wellington, New Zealand. "They sailed on 31 March 1897 in the steamer Anglian, 2159 tons, a cargo vessel that carried timber, brandy, foodstuffs and miscellaneous cargo in the hold, twenty-nine passengers in the saloon, and twenty-six in the steerage. Lawson's version of the decision to go was querulous: 'I was obliged to seek the means of earning bread and butter from the Government of a province (New Zealand) in whose people's interest I had never written a line.'" (Roderick, 1991, p. 173) More on SS Anglian
April 1: The Dawn reported on a March 23 petition by the Womanhood Suffrage League to "To the Hon. The President and the Hon. Members of the Federal Convention of 1897". Signatories: MS Wolstenholme, President; Rose Scott, Hon. Gen. Secretary; Ada F Griffiths, Vice-President; Nellie Alma Martel, Recording Secretary; Eliza H Manier, Hon. Treasurer.
April 1: Jandamarra or ‘Pigeon’, Australian Aboriginal insurrection leader, was killed by black tracker Micki at Tunnel Creek inland from Derby.
April 9: Lawsons arrived in Wellington. "If there was no promise of work ahead of the Lawsons, there was plenty of scandal to boggle at on their arrival at Wellington on 9 April. As soon as the Anglian touched the wharf, the police came aboard and arrested one of the passengers on a warrant for breaking and entering. The misfortunes of the Hon. Joseph G. Ward, 'late' colonial treasurer, and the penurious J. G. Ward Farmers' Association were on every tongue. Press reports from Dunedin informed Wellington that Ward was in debt for a trifling £55,000 or more – which debt a compatriot of Invercargill was prepared to buy for £8500." (Roderick, 1991, p. 173) Joseph G Ward Map of Wellington Another map
April 10 (approx): The Times gave a notice of Lawson's arrival ("the best known and most popular of the Australian poets and writers"). Gresley Lukin's Evening Post said he preferred to live in NZ. Round about now Henry Lawson called on Tom Mills, and Charles Wilson, editor of NZ Mail.
April 16: Heavy rain caused flooding in the Napier area, New Zealand. Much of the railway embankment between Awatoto and Farndon was washed away.
April: "In April 1897, floods covered three-fifths of the Heretaunga Plains; water was two feet (600 mm) deep in Carlyle Street [Napier]. Ten men who had set out in boats to rescue stranded settlers at Clive were caught in a river washout, swept out to sea and drowned." Source
April 27: Henry Lawson called on Edward Tregear, secretary for labour who he had known in 1893. He showed him a letter of introduction to New Zealand Premier Sir Richard Seddon from Archibald. He never got to see Seddon, but Tregear pulled strings for his application for "appointment to a Native School". William Henry Habens, secretary of Dep't Education, had doubts because of Henry Lawson's deafness, but Tregear talked him into it: Bertha would be able to help. Habens or Tregear recommended the school at Mangamaunu (pity Lawson didn't surf!). Map More on Seddon
"In 1885 Edward Tregear, amateur ethnographer and later a leading public servant, published The Aryan Maori, in which he used linguistic evidence in an attempt to show that Maori were descended from people who had spread east from the Caucasus in south-east Europe, just as others moved west into Europe. In his interpretation, the Aryan race was reunited in New Zealand as Maori and Europeans mingled." Source
April 29: John Norton married Miss Ada McGrath. They went on to have two children.
April 30: Tregear wrote to Henry appointing him teacher. Letter received May 1. There was some drama about getting the keys to the school.
May: The Limelight
Department: "In May 1897, the Limelight Departments first Cinematographe Show was premiered in Western Australia followed by Queensland in October. The Melbourne launch was held in May 1898 and included film footage of Salvation Army street marches,
'War Cry' sellers and Commandant Booth.
"In late 1899, the 'Passion Films' were produced; these are possibly the first dramatic films produced in Australia. Perhaps the best known production of the Limelight Department was an ingenious mix of moving film, glass slides, oratory and music. Entitled
'Soldiers of the Cross' it premiered to an audience of 4000 at the Melbourne Town Hall in September 1900."
Source
May: The Dawn reported on the Ragged School in Harrington St, Sydney, started before 1895 by Kate Gent. By 1904 there were five.
May: Herbert Hoover arrived at Albany, Western Australia, and travelled by train to his Bewick, Moreing Co. mining job at Coolgardie, his arrival coinciding with the last big gold rush of the 19th Century. He wrote to a friend in the USA, “Its a hell of a country, but the chances of getting on are exceptional, especially with the inside position I now hold.” “Red dust, black flies, and white heat” is another term he used. The London Financial Times called him: “One of the ablest mining engineers in Australia.” He moved on in 1898.
May 3: With an advance of 30 shillings from the Ed. Dep't and a bit from sale of some pieces to NZ journals, the Lawsons got a mattress, pots, pans.
May 4: Evening: Lawsons boarded 95-ton scow Wakatu (Capt. Wells) en route for Kaikoura.
May 5: Lawsons arrived Mangamaunu. See Roderick, 1991, 176 ff for background on Mangamaunu.
Bill Pearson on Lawson's story, 'A Daughter of Maoriland', which written about Mere Ratima ('Mary'), a Maori girl at his school: "To one who had lightly accepted the legend of Henry Lawson as an exponent of human brotherhood it was a shock to read. The story is of an altruistic new teacher at a Maori school who takes pity on a lonely and apparently ill-treated pupil and finds his kindness has been systematically exploited by the pupil and her relatives. He gives up his altruism and is at last respected ... The moral of the story is that it is useless to extend mateship to a people who don't recognise the code; the brotherhood of man is a closed shop, no Maoris need apply. The story is, to this extent, a demonstration of failure, not only in Lawson but also in the philosophy he propagated . . . It represents a movement, both in the teacher's and Lawson's mind, from 'romance' to 'realism.' "
Pearson, Bill, Henry Lawson Among Maoris, Australian National University Press, 1968"Mere Ratima was born at Mangamaunu in 1876. When she was seven, her father killed her mother by stabbing her in the neck. The previous week the local Maori council had met to consider a charge of adultery involving Mary's mother and her father's brother. On the day of the killing, the schoolmaster at the time, Thomas Danaher, had seen Mary's father slapping his wife and dragging her by the arm, and had intervened.
"A few hours later the woman was dead. It seemed everyone but Danaher had been expecting it, and when the Kaikoura constable arrived, Mary's father was sitting waiting to be arrested. He was found guilty of murder and jailed for life. The judge said he had spared him the death penalty because, in view of his wife's infidelity, the jury had recommended mercy.
"The killing affected Mangamaunu deeply. The school roll fell away. Relatives found it a struggle to look after the five Ratima children. Mary became moody and sometimes went bush. She was still at school when the Lawsons arrived, and was such a big, smart girl that they thought she might be 16. In fact aged 20, she was too big and smart for Lawson. She picked up his embarrassing mistakes in arithmetic with 'eyes like a hawk' and generally intimidated him.
"Bertha recalled years later that Mary was miserable and sat alone. 'I used to take her to the cottage in the afternoon and give her a cup of tea. Mary said she'd like to stay with me. I interviewed her aunt, who had no objection, and she stayed some time.' Then the groceries shipped from Wellington started disappearing. Mary said it must be swagmen. 'But I was sure that the aunt received the goods and that was why she allowed Mary to come. We had some trouble with her, and after she was gone I decided to do without domestic help. She figures in 'A Daughter of Maoriland'." Source: 'Lawson's Black Period'
May 29: Mary Cameron and Will Gilmore married at Cosme. They were happy, and Mary's writing at this time shows the influence of the colloquial and simple speech of her shearer husband. Having no wedding ring, Will cut the centre out of a shilling and gave his wife the rim.
June 2: Jack Lang and Hilda Lang had their first baby.
June 12: Major earthquake, Assam, India; 1,542 people were killed and hundreds injured.
June 20: Queen Victoria's Diamond (60th) Jubilee.
June 22: Achille Simonetti’s sculpture of Arthur Phillip, first Governor of New South Wales, was unveiled in the Royal Botanic Gardens.
July: From Mangamaunu Henry Lawson wrote to Angus and Robertson that Louisa Lawson was printing his first book against his wish, and wanted them to stop the sale or printing of it. It was untrue. George Robertson could find no evidence any shop was selling it.
July 29: Wreck of the SS Tasmania (Steamship, 2252 tons; built 1892, operated by Huddart, Parker & Co.), off Table Cape (Mahia Peninsula), New Zealand, with the loss of 13 lives. In 1901, his marriage in trouble. He wrote in the sketch 'The Ghost of Many Christmases' (pub. 1907 in The Romance of the Swag), "There was a letter from a sweetheart of mine amongst her mails when she went down; but that’s got nothing to do with it, though it made some difference in my life." He wouldn't have known of this letter until he got back to Sydney from NZ in 1898. The sweetheart must have been Hannah Thornburn, aged 20.
September 2 - 24: National Australasian Federation Convention, Sydney session.
September 11: Sir William Windeyer died.
September 28: New Zealand: Henry Lawson informed Habens that he wished to resign at end of October due to wife's health.
October 8: On a Friday, Aunt Emma Brookes, thinking that the Lawsons would be in Wellington in early October, left Sydney in the Monowai (2,020 tons; Capt. Chatfield), arriving Wellington following Tuesday,
