Louisa and Henry Lawson chronology 1900-1909

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

 

"She struggled to get women the vote. Her son was Australia's most famous writer. They drove each other crazy." Novel about Henry and Louisa Lawson.

Lawsons chronology up to 1889 and Henry Lawson news

Lawsons chronology 1890-1894  Lawson chronology 1895-1899

Lawsons chronology 1900-1909  Lawsons chronology 1910 and on

Search   Bibliography, links, resources   The cast of characters

 

Fairy Bower, Sydney, where Henry Lawson tried to commit suicide on December 6, 1902

 

 

1900

1900 in literature

January 1-March 31: Chaplin Cottage, Charles St, N Sydney
April 7-12: C/- T Metcalf, Woonona, Bulli, NSW
April 20: C/- SS Damascus, to England
July-September: 'Spring Villa', Cowper Rd, Harpenden, Hants, UK

Australian delegates in London witnessed the Royal Assent and proclamation of the Commonwealth. 

Western Australia joined the Commonwealth. 

Lord Hopetoun was officially appointed as first Governor-General.

Old-age Pensions instituted (NSW).   Source

"As Federation Day approached, we know that most people cooked their meals on fuel stoves, though gas was becoming popular. There was no refrigeration, though people used ice to cool things. Most people ate a lot of chops, steaks and sausages, boiled potato, boiled cabbage, and peas that were boiled into a mushy mess. Tomato sauce was becoming really popular in 1900, and meals were usually washed down with a cup of tea or beer."   Source

"Kalevan Kansa, Gulf of Carpentaria, 1900 
Matti Kurikka, a socialist journalist from Finland sought to establish a commune with 78 followers. 27 of the male Finnish utopians lived communally in a canvas camp near Chillagoe, as they cut railway sleepers and thence to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Collapsed by July 1900. One of the Finnish ex-utopians: 'Kurikka liked women, and women liked him – but their husbands had different ideas about it, and the confused love affairs caused much friction.
  "Kurikka: 'Persons who live together should be discouraged from having sexual relations with each other [and] the father of a child should be a man who has not resided with the mother'."   Source

Holy City, Kyneton, 1900
"Plymouth Brethren from England under the leadership of Dr Dalziel, a retired physician from Edinburgh. The 16 room mansion Ermstowe was the community centre at Holy City.
  "Dr Dalziel left Kyneton for Jerusalem in 1909 where he died awaiting the 2nd coming and the community dissipated."   Source

"From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality" by Bill Metcalf, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1995.
"Communes in Rural Australia" by Margaret Munro-Clark, Hale & Ironmonger, Sydney, 1986.
"A Peculiar People" by G. Souter, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1981.
"Paradise Mislaid, In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay", by Anne Whitehead, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1997.

Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim ran for fourteen instalments in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900, with Conrad completing the text of the serial version in July 1900. Heart of Darkness was also serialised in Blackwood's between 1899 and 1900.

Victor Daley was Australia's best-selling poet, according to one source.

William Butler Yeats became head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which he joined in 1890. Yeats's association with Golden Dawn led to clashes with 'The Beast', Aleister Crowley, whom he detested.

January - May: William Lane worked in Auckland briefly on the New Zealand Herald, and in January-March accepted an invitation from the AWU to become the Sydney Worker's first full-time editor. John Norton, front page in Truth, railed against him and warned him against coming to do that job, and if he did, not to "shake things up". "You may be liable to befool and bamboozle the blunder-headed donkeys who are responsible for running some of the unions, but, make no mistake, the prevailing New South Wales opinion about you is that you would be more fittingly placed in a horse-pound or a lunatic asylum than in an editor's chair." However, Lane resigned after three months, mainly because he had lost touch with the labour movement, which was now questioning illegal strikes, and growing more imperialistic. His employers supported the Boer War as well. By June he was back at the New Zealand Herald.

January 31: Louisa Lawson was thrown from a tram (having taken it from the Dawn office in George St, to Circular Quay where she was alighting, when it lurched) and suffered severe spinal injuries, from which she never fully recovered. Dr Hall found she had abrasions and dislocated knees. He called in Dr Iza Coghlan. Louisa complained of agonizing pain at the back of head and in neck. two days later she suffered a nervous collapse, bedridden for almost a year. Gertrude ran Dawn.

January: Boer War: "The First Contingent ... left for South Africa in November 1899 as the 1st Queensland Mounted Infantry - 14 Officers and 248 men. The 2nd Q. M. F. followed them in January 1900, with 10 Officers and 144 men and in March by the 3rd Q. M. F with 14 Officers and 302 men. These units had been raised from the ranks of the citizen military forces. The Queensland Defence Force, under the Defence Act of 1884, which has been described as the first homogeneous defence scheme formulated by any of the Colonies, then totalled 3000 including 19 officers. They had had a mixed role in South Africa and the jingoistic Australian Press although quite respectable, had puffed up their exploits. The First QMI arrived in Table Bay on 13 December 1899 in the period known as the ' black week' when the successive British defeats at Stormburg, Magersfontein and Colenso had left the British public stunned at the 2700 casualties. They went on to join Lord Methuan's force on the Orange River at what was the end of the first phase of the war. They took part in many of the engagements in 1900 - the advance to the Modder River, Poplar Grove and others. They came home to a rapturous welcome in December, 1900 and more arrived in January in time to lend the weight of the patriotic fervour of their welcome in the streets to the appeal of the recruiting efforts for the Fifth Contingent. Essentially the war was over in terms of headline making battles and sieges. What was left was the hard grind of chasing the Commandos led by Botha, De Wet, Smuts, Viljoen et al., across the veldt and up and down South Africa, where the final Australian Contingents did good, if largely unspectacular work."   Source

January 18: Death of Adolphus George Taylor.

January 24 - 27: A Premiers' Conference was held in Sydney to consider Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's invitation of December 22, 1899. "Delegation arranged. All six colonies sending delegates – the WA man as a sort of 'outrider'. WP Reeves (NZ) was in London and could watch New Zealand's interests."   Source

January 27: Boxer Rebellion: Foreign diplomats in Peking, China demanded that the Boxer rebels be disciplined. "In support of British forces in China, the NSW, Victorian and South Australian governments sent an Australian Naval Contingent of 560 volunteers who performed mainly garrison duties around the port of Tientsin."   Source

February 11: Bertha Lawson was born to Henry Lawson and Bertha. Soon after, Bertha recounts, she got a knock at the door and Henry's maternal grandfather Harry Albury was standing there. She had never met him before. He looked at the baby and while Bertha went to make a cup of tea, he disappeared.

March: "The Bubonic plague struck Sydney in March,1900, and the Sydney Harbour Trust was set up to clean up the rat-infested wharves in the Rocks. Circular Quay had been modernised in 1890-1897, and the new Pyrmont Bridge opened in 1902. There were 21 breweries in Sydney in 1901, but 16 of them were closed down after 1901, by tough brewing regulations."   Source   Clean-up by City authorities, eg Batson's lane off Sussex Street. Thousands of rats killed. The government resumed areas around The Rocks and Darling Harbour, with the intention of demolishing them and rebuilding them. Part of the area was demolished, but redevelopment plans were stalled by the outbreak of World War I. 

March: Around now, both Lord Beauchamp (Governor of NSW) gave money to Henry Lawson to travel to England, on his request. David Scott Mitchell the same (50 pounds). Henry's publishers and others also contributed.

April 5: Conference at Colonial Office under Joseph Chamberlain. All seven Colonies represented for part of the discussion. 

April 16:

To Miles Franklin
Bulletin Office, [Sydney]
16th April 1900.
Dear Miss Franklin
Only just back from country.
Shall I take it with me to England? If I take story "home" send me a formal permission to "place" the work as I think fit. Also some latitude in editing in case English publishers want some paragraphs "toned down". You can trust me for the rest. If I take it I must have your authority to get it published in best form I can - that is, a margin for compromising with publishers' prejudices. All the same, I'd fight to have every line published as written. Good-bye and good luck. Don't despond.
Yours faithfully,
Henry Lawson

April 17: On the Track published by Angus & Robertson according to the contract of August 27, 1898.

“‘On the Track’ and ‘Over the Sliprails’ were both published at Sydney in 1900, the prefaces being dated March and June respectively—and so, though printed separately, a combined edition was printed the same year (the two separate, complete works were simply put together in one binding); hence they are sometimes referred to as ‘On the Track and Over the Sliprails’. The opposite occurred with ‘Joe Wilson and His Mates’, which was later divided into ‘Joe Wilson’ and ‘Joe Wilson’s Mates’ (1901).”   Source

April 19 - 21: "Premiers' Conference, Melbourne, to consider messages from Chamberlain and from Australian delegates. The New Zealand requests for amendments (notably that door should be left open to come in later on 'original States terms if she got round to seeing virtue (or advantage) in joining)."   Source

April 19: Lawson had a busy day in Sydney making last-minute preparations for his departure for the UK. Miles Franklin at Bangalore, NSW, wrote the following letter in response to Henry's of the previous day asking for permission to act as her temporary literary agent in London.

19th April:
To Henry Lawson, Esq.,
Dear Sir,
Please take my MS story entitled 'My Brilliant(?) Career' to England with you. I trust you to do your best for me in the matter and desire you to use your own discretion in the choice of a publisher and in the style of publishing. Should the publisher object to some of the sentiments expressed in the above mentioned manuscript story, you have my authority for a little latitude in the editing thereof, provided it meets with your approval. I am
Sir
Faithfully yours,
S.M.S. Miles Franklin."

Miles Franklin - correspondence with Henry Lawson, 1899 - 1902

April 20: On a Friday, the Lawsons set sail from Dalgety's Wharf, Millers Point for England on the SS Damascus, Captain McKilliam. Decision not yet reached at Angus and Robertson about Miles Franklin's novel as George Robertson had not had time to read it and his secretary Shenstone was not too impressed.

April 22 - 24: Henry Lawson sat for his portrait by John Longstaff. "Jules François Archibald, then editor of the Bulletin, commissioned John Longstaff to paint a portrait of the poet Henry Lawson. Apparently Archibald was so pleased with the portrait that he decided to 'write his name across Sydney' by bequeathing money to the arts. When he died in 1919 he left one tenth of his estate of £89,061 in trust for a non-acquisitive annual art prize to be awarded by the Trustees of the (then) National Art Gallery of New South Wales (now the Art Gallery of New South Wales)."   Source

April-June: As the Damascus entered various ports in Cape Town, Italy, etc, Lawson (who had been on the wagon for some time) went on drinking sprees with other passengers. Nelson Illingworth's father met the Lawsons at the docks in London and took them to his terrace house in City Road, where they stayed two weeks. Here, Henry burned a great mass of manuscripts (complete and incomplete) and newspaper clippings that he had brought with him (his portfolio of work). The Metropolitan police, and a fire engine, attended the fire. He wrote later: "... the firemen got wild and laid a complaint. (It cost me something in drinks.)" He regretted the burning. Lawson went sight-seeing in London, trying to locate the paces in Dickens's works. 

During his first days in England, Henry, who had already promoted Miles Franklin's My Brilliant (?) Career to George Robertson in Australia, did the same with British publishers, even when he had trouble placing his own work, and tried to interest JB Pinker (his agent) in the book. (It was published in January, 1901 by the Scottish firm William Blackwood and Sons.)

A Miles Franklin chronology   PDF   View as HTML

April 24: London's Daily Express was launched, the first national daily to put news on the front page. 

May: An unusual swarm of rats at Mokau, New Zealand that disappeared almost as suddenly as it had arrived.

May 14: Joseph Chamberlain introduced the federation Bill to Britain's House of Commons.

May 18: "The 4th Queensland Imperial Bushmen, the first of the Bushmen Contingents, left Australia by the transport "Manchester Port" on 18 May 1900, only three months after the meeting with the Premier referred to earlier. This Contingent had 26 Officers and 368 men - the drafts were getting larger."   Source

May 31: Boer War: British captured Johannesburg. During his stay in England, Henry Lawson was on the side of the Boers, even acting as an usher at a pro-Boer rally at the Albert Hall. Yet there are a couple of jingoistic Lawson poems against the Boers.   Boer War chronology

June 1: Dawn had a notice about Louisa Lawson's ill health.

June 5: Death of American author Stephen Crane, aged 28. His work was championed by Edward Garnett (1868 - 1937), who also championed Henry Lawson's at about this time.

June 9: Over the Sliprails by Henry Lawson was published by Angus & Robertson according to the contract of August 27, 1898.

June 28: Louisa Lawson was awarded £450 compensation for her injuries. She resumed editorship in early 1901.

"The accident led her to sue the tramway authorities, but the £450 she received in damages was poor consolation for the knowledge that her health and her general usefulness had been impaired. Like her son, she went round for years nursing a grievance that arose as much from her own temperament as from the circumstances and misadventures of her life.
  "The thing that really pulled her down, however, was the long wrangle with officialdom over the famous brass buckle for sealing mail-bags, which she had invented in 1896. Though the Postmaster-General's Department had approved and accepted her invention, the orders placed with her had been small and un-remunerative. Then Edward Nicol Murray, the man who had manufactured the first consignment of buckles to her specifications, infringed her patent and obtained a contract to supply 5,000 of the gadgets at a price of sixpence more per buckle than had been paid to Louisa.
  "The success of the suit she launched against Murray availed her little; for some reason the department failed to place further orders with her. With the help of the Women's Political and Social Reform League, she circulated a petition demanding 'justice,' and, in 1905, induced the Government 'to buy the remaining fasteners from her at barely the cost of manufacture.'"
"'This absurd case,' writes Sylvia Lawson (Nation 25 October 1958) 'was the end of Louisa'."   (Prout, 1963, p. 284)

 

July-September: A woman friend (Edith Dean, the widow of a former Bulletin writer, Francis Adams) of Bertha Lawson's found the Lawsons a furnished cottage ('Spring Villa', Cowper Rd) in Harpenden, Hertfordshire (population 4,500). After at first finding the locals rather stand-offish, the Lawsons soon made some friends, mostly from the middle class. Henry was looked down upon for not dressing formally as a rising author ought to do. His writing style became more formal, less "bush". (From Prout, Denton, Henry Lawson: The grey dreamer, Rigby Ltd, Adelaide, 1963. I'm searching for more info on Lawsons' UK stay. Chris the Genealogist from Hertfordshire is kindly helping and has put up this page with some answers for me, but perhaps you have some info to share as well.)

Harpenden & District Local History Society
78 Station Road, Harpenden, Herts. AL5 4TZ
Tel: 01582 713539

Harpenden Library    Hertfordshire Library    Historical pictures, Harpenden    Cottage Life in a Hertfordshire Village

Kelly's Directory of Hertfordshire, 1902    UK 1901 Census (pay per view)    Harpenden advertisements c. 1900

 

Pubs in Harpenden
"The coming of the railway in the 1840s caused Harpenden, previously a small agricultural village, to expand enormously. Hundreds of houses were built between 1880 and 1910, and in later years it became a substantial commuter dormitory town.

"A number of the pubs and inns had been in existence for many years ... in the High Street: the George (probably the oldest-documented pub, although its facade is Georgian); the Old Cock – black and white timbered, looks very old; the Cross Keys; the Railway Inn; the Oddfellows Arms, on Leyton Green just off the High Street. Along the Luton Road: the Old Bell, the Fox. In "South Down" (the other side of the railway Skew Bridge, on the way to Wheathampstead): The Rose and Crown, the Plough and Harrow, the Engineer, the Carpenters Arms. On the road to Batford: the Gibraltar Castle, the Malta. Cowper Road was part of a group of streets, developed up the hill, off Station Road, known as the "Poets" – there was also Tennyson Road, Milton Rd, etc."   Pub information kindly provided by Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies

Denton Prout records that, according to the unreliable source Bertha Lawson, Blackwood's made Henry an offer for a new book, and he was getting orders for work from the USA and elsewhere. But according to Prout, he was discontent. It might have been craving for drink, or a letter from Hannah Thornburn.

July 9: "Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, complete with compromise on Judicial Committee appeals, and five-year concession to Western Australia on customs duty uniformity should that Colony join up."   Source

July 17: Death of Orpheus Myron McAdoo, American Negro singer who toured Australia with McAdoo's American Minstrels and McAdoo's Alabama Cakewalkers. Earlier one of the troupe of Frederick J Loudin and the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Buried in Waverley Cemetery.

"Following the first tour of the Georgia Minstrels,a number of other black troupes were to follow with an off-shoot of the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers arriving in Australia in 1886 & touring extensively throughout Australiasia [sic] with great success. From this first troupe of Fisk Jubilee Singers, Mr. O.M. McAdoo was to see the potential of future ventures & toured Australasia & Africa with his own jubilee & minstrel company over the proceeding years until his untimely death in Sydney on the 17th July,1900. His theatrical companies contained some of the best black minstrel acts as well as singers/musicians to ever appear in Australia, with such stars as William James Ferry (Ferry the frog), Billy McClain, Miss Flora Batson, C.W.Walker, Prof.Henderson Smith, etc. (Billy McClain originally came to Australia with M.B.Curtis's Afro- Americans). 

"F.J.Loudin's Fisk Jubilee Singers original tour spurned many derivative organisations besides the McAdoo troupe of jubilee singers with Huntley Spencer (former member of the Era Comedy Four with Hugo's American Minstrels) being associated with a troupe of Fisk jubilee singers as late as 1936 in New Zealand. Numerous Australian & New Zealand performers were to be in one of the many "Fisk Jubilee Singers" groups to have flourished following the visit of Loudin's Fisk Jubilee singers in 1886."  Source   More

July 31: Western Australia Referendum: a large majority (mainly from the goldfields) for the federation Act. 

August 13: William Blackwood wrote to Henry Lawson with an offer to republish While the Billy Boils. Lawson wrote to George Robertson asking him to take up Blackwood's offer.

c. September, October: Dawn moved from 402 George St back to 138 Phillip St because Louisa Lawson couldn't manage the stairs.

c. September: After about three months in Harpenden, Bertha Lawson was so emotionally ill she was admitted to a hospital in London and Henry moved there to be nearby. For the first few weeks he shared a flat in Gray's Inn Road with 'Arthur Maquarie' (formerly Arthur Macquarie Mullens), a writer who figured in Lawson's 'Letters to Jack Cornstalk' as a "Sydney University boy" boy whom he had known in Sydney and "came home about two years ago to make a living with his pen". In Argosy, 'Maquarie' had praised Lawson's work. The children went to a private home at Shepperton, some fifty kilometres up the Thames. The expense of maintaining the home at Harpenden on an uncertain income had been difficult enough. Now Lawson had to find Bertha's hospital fees and those for the children's board as well as his share of bed and board with Maquarie.

"[Lawson wrote to Blackwood]: 'Thank you for enquiries re Mrs Lawson. I am sorry to say that she is very ill—and the Doctors say she may take months to recover.'
  "Although at the outset Bertha had enjoyed the idyll of Harpenden, three months of village manners and concealment of short commons from prying eyes had worn her down. Lawson's overnight absences in London began to gnaw at her mind: fear of his lapsing into the old habits upset her. With the coming of autumn the leafless trees seemed to menace her. Rain and slush confined her to the house and multiplied Lawson's absences. She fancied that instead of attending to business affairs he was roystering with his new friends. 'Bohemia,' she wrote, 'with its trials and temptations, claimed him again.' She went on, 'To add to our troubles, I became very ill, suffering from insomnia, which ended in a complete breakdown. For months I was in hospital.'
  "So Lawson was obliged to write in a postscript to his letter: 'Kindly address c/- Pinker, as I am leaving Harpenden for London.'"
Roderick, Colin, Henry Lawson: a life, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1991

 

Important new information

Henry and family appear in the 1901 United Kingdom Census 

(Collected from Lawson's residence at Gray's Inn, presumably in 1900 at Arthur Maquarie's flat in Gray's Inn Road)

On February 12, 2006, we asked the question: "Who is Lizzie Humphrey?", because seven days earlier, my research colleague Ms Sylvia De Vanna of London had discovered for this Lawson Chronology, the following important information in the 1901 UK Census which seems not to be in Lawson biographies or previous research (please correct me if I'm wrong). Some questions arise:

Who is 25-year-old Lizzie Humphrey, servant from Harpenden? As far as I know she is not mentioned in Lawson biographies. If you have further information, I'd love to hear as it raises certain other questions: (1) might she be a paramour of Lawson's? Bertha Lawson soon after release from Bethlem Mental Hospital was claiming "unnameable brutality" that Henry was responsible for (though Mary Gilmore dismissed this as fantasy), and around now rumours (apparently started by Louise Mack but dismissed in The Bulletin by Lawson's flatmate Arthur Maquarie) were circulating in Sydney that Henry was unfaithful; (2) where was little Jim Lawson (born February 10, 1898)? Presumably with Mrs Brandt in Shepperton (see my entry below for May 14, 1901). So why did Henry have the baby Bertha (born February 11, 1900) with him (and a "servant") and not his toddler son; surely as a man of his generation he would rather take the boy than the baby; (3) Lawson was relatively poor at this stage and doubtless couldn't afford a servant as well as having his children boarded with Mrs Brandt at Shepperton, so was Lizzie Humphrey really a servant? Surely Henry's journalist mate Arthur Maquarie wasn't employing a servant, and it's interesting that Lizzie comes from Harpenden, where the Lawsons were living when Bertha first took ill; (4) where is Arthur Maquarie? Presumably moved out, another reason to doubt Lizzie is his servant; (5) This is pure conjecture, but perhaps if Henry was having an extramarital affair, he would take a baby with him but not a toddler who might "spill the beans" to Mother. This is conjecture, but it's curious, because as far as I know, Lizzie Humphrey has not been revealed in "Lawsonia" before this entry in this chronology. The existence of this cohabitation would perhaps have been hidden from all, but by law could not be hidden from the census takers. Moreover, the fact that the exact birth dates are not known in the census report suggests that the information was given to the census takers by some third party (a neighbour, perhaps – possibly no one was home when the census takers visited); Henry certainly would have known his own birthday and that of baby Bertha. It is possible that Henry did not even know this data was given to the government. He might have had a secret, and never even known that this info fell into the hands of history. What do you think? Does it partly answer this question posed by author Xavier Pons? –

"What sort of experience did he have in London that Mary Gilmore, who was a fairly close friend of his, felt she could not explicitly mention, and which may explain why that part of her records and memoirs is still gathering dust in the Mitchell Library, and access to it is denied to the public?"
Xavier Pons, Out of Eden: Henry Lawson’s Life and Works – A Psychoanalytic View, Sirius Books, an imprint of Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1984, p. 2


Name Estimated Birth Year Birthplace Relationship Civil Parish County/Island
Lizzie Humphrey abt 1875 Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England Servant St Andrew Holborn above the Bars and St George the Martyr London
Betha [sic] Lawson abt 1900 New South, Wales Daughter St Andrew Holborn above the Bars and St George the Martyr London
Henry Lawson abt 1867 New South, Wales Head St Andrew Holborn above the Bars and St George the Martyr London

Humphrey family, Wheathampstead (near Harpenden)

 

(From ancestry.co.uk, a pay site)

Name:

Henry Lawson

Age:

34

Estimated birth year:

abt 1867

Relation:

Head

Household:

View other family members

Gender:

Male

Where born:

New South, Wales

 

 

Civil parish:

St Andrew Holborn above the Bars and St George the Martyr

Ecclesiatical parish:

Holy Trinity Grays Inn Road

Town:

Grays Inn

County/Island:

London

Country:

England

 

 

Street address:

View Image

Condition as to marriage:

View Image

Education:

View Image

Employment status:

View Image

Occupation:

View Image

 

 

Source information:

RG13/247

Registration district:

Holborn

Sub-registration district:

Holborn

ED, institution, or vessel:

13

Folio:

12

Page:

14 (click to see others on page)

Household schedule number:

129

 

Further Lizzie Humphrey information

Meg Tasker, a researcher with her colleague, Lucy Sussex, wrote to me on February 14 and 15, 2007 and provided further information. By coincidence, just five months after my research colleague Sylvia de Vanna discovered Lizzie Humphrey in the 1901 Census, so did Meg's research colleague, unaware that I had published on it. Meg points out Lawson's Triangles of Life and Other Stories (1907), and in particular 'III. The Little Man with the Smile', in which Lawson writes at length about 'Lizzie Higgins'. Meg Tasker writes that it "looks Lawson is trying to work through, or perhaps even convey something ... but what?"

Meg has provided the following notes, which I publish with her permission:

"In mid-1900 Henry and Bertha Lawson went to stay in the village of Harpenden, urged to go there and looked after by Edith Dean, the Australian-born widow of radical poet Francis Adams. After Adams’s sensational suicide in 1893, Edith had stayed in England, and subsequently married an English landscape painter, Frank Dean; she had connections in radical and artistic circles in London, including anarchists and Fabians.

"Edith Dean’s role in the Lawson story has been understated in the existing records, partly because of the misattribution of a letter she wrote to J. F. Archibald in on 18 October 1900 (Mitchell Library, A.G. Stephens Papers). The hand-written transcription ends with the signature as Mrs G. H. Drake. Fortunately, the original letter has also survived (in the same Lawson scrapbook), so I have been able to check the hand-writing and signature. Having examined Edith Dean’s correspondence after the death of Francis Adams, I found it very easy to identify her as having written this letter, using its contents, style, hand-writing and, importantly, the postal address. Sent from her house in Harpenden, the letter begins:

"Dear Mr Archibald,
I know you will be dreadfully shocked to hear that poor Mrs Lawson has gone mad - driven so, I have no hesitation in saying, by her brutal husband. He has been drinking heavily and I quite expect that the shock of his taking to drink again has completely turned her brain.

"She goes on to describe his friendship with "a man who passes as Maquarie (an Australian, I don’t know his real name) – an abject ne’er-do-well' whom Lawson used to visit and go drinking with in London, 'leaving his poor little wife and her two babies to do as best they might'. According to Edith, after carousing with Maquarie in London, Henry would come home very late or in the small hours of the morning, 'kick up a row' and 'the poor little woman would come weeping to me'.

"Edith Dean’s account of what happened to cause Bertha’s breakdown is somewhat sensational. It is also at odds with the generally accepted version, which is that Lawson sent both of the children to be looked after by a woman in Shepperton, while he moved into lodgings in London with his new friend and colleague, Arthur Maquarie, later moving with Maquarie to a rural village called Charlton to be nearer the children.

"Edith’s letter to Archibald continues:

"Three weeks ago my husband and I left home for a holiday leaving a servant here. On our return we find Mrs Lawson in the County Lunatic Asylum [not quite correct – it was a private hospital – MT] and Lawson in lodgings with my servant and the children in London - and their home sold up.

"As well as accusing Henry of neglect and intemperance, Edith introduces a hint of scandal in the accusation that he had run off with Edith Dean’s own servant. However, I should add that Edith Dean was not the most reliable of witnesses. She herself had suffered some kind of periodic mental illness during her marriage to Francis Adams (1884 to 1890), and would spend the last years of her own life in asylums after separating from her second husband. Clearly, then, Edith’s allegations about the way Lawson treated his wife should be tested against other evidence, or at the very least we should consider alternative interpretations.

"Note: Edith Dean’s story is fascinating – she appears in my biography of Francis Adams (Meg Tasker, Struggle and Storm: The Life and Death of Francis Adams, MUP 2001), but has also been written about by George Bernard Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub, in 'A Jennifer from Australia', Shaw’s People (Penn State Univ Press, 1996)."

 

 

September 6:

To Miles Franklin

Spring Villa,
Cowper Road,
Harpenden,
Herts,
England.
6th September 1900.
Dear Miss Franklin,
Just time for a line. I submitted your story to Blackwood's manager. He wrote me to come and talk it over; but, on consideration, I thought best to put the business into the hands of my agent Mr Pinker, who has set me on my feet. He'll get more money than we can, and look after your interests. Am writing for Blackwood myself. I enclose Pinker's agreement for your signature: it is the same as I signed. Sign it and return, and ante-date it to this month, as Pinker is already looking after your story. Will write directly I hear from Blackwood. Wife and children well. Am full of work.
Yours faithfully,
Henry Lawson

September 13: The Australian film made by the Salvation Army's innovative Limelight Department, Soldiers of the Cross, premiered in Melbourne – arguably the first feature film ever made. The presentation slides still remain, but the film is sadly lost. The Limelight department was established following the 1891 tour of Salvation Army founder General William Booth, to publicise that tour.

September 17: Queen Victoria proclaimed the federation Act and declares it operative from January 1, 1901. 

c. September 22: St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney was consecrated. "... according to some sensitive Protestants, Archbishop Redwood made some slightly critical remarks about Protestants. The Sydney Morning Herald, on the morning of 23 September 1900 came out with the headline, 'The Attack on Protestantism', and reported that an enormous gathering assembled in the Sydney Town Hall 'to protest against the attacks on Protestantism and vice-regal presence at the dedication of St. Mary's Cathedral.' By 7.30 pm, there were 6000 people at the protest."   Source

October:  "October 1900 proved to be the climactic month of Lawson's life. He was well aware of his maternal grandfather's eccentricity, of his Uncle Abel's aberrations and of his brother Charles's instability. He knew that his mother suffered fits of abstraction and melancholy. He had known nothing of Bertha's family history when he married her; now he had come face to face with the possibility that Bertha herself was unstable." (Roderick, 1991, pp 223 - 226)  Lawson wrote 'Babies in the Bush' this month "at white heat" (Roderick, 1991), and his agent James Pinker sold the story (in which a fictional woman becomes hysterical) to The Bulletin and Blackwood's Maga. Around now, William Blackwood, concerned about Lawson's distress vis a vis his and Bertha's health and financial problems, kindly offered to henceforth pay Lawson on acceptance rather than on publication, and sent a cheque for £22/10/- for 'A Double Buggy' (Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek, A - Parts - I - II - III - IV) which was to appear in Maga in February, 1901. Meanwhile, Henry, helped by Maquarie, was busy revising Miles Franklin's My Brilliant (?) Career (as it was then still titled) for Blackwood's – "toning it down" for publication. Henry was also around now working hard and "mad with worry" on ''The House That Was Never Built' and 'Telling Mrs Baker' (involved hallucinatory themes) and '"Water Them Geraniums". Part I - Part II'.

October 13: Louisa Lawson's mail-bag legal case: Edward Nicol Murray picked up a sealed sample of the mail bag at Sydney GPO, with view to making a buckle. Believing she was secure with the 1896 patent, she took court action.

October 17:

To Henry Lawson, London
Bangalore
Oct 17th, 1900.
Dear Sir
Words of thanks are tame & flat in return for the trouble you take with me, but I wish you could understand how I feel your goodness. That you could bother about me so soon in the midst of all your own business & worry has wiped out a lot of my bitterness in one act.
England has not our genial climate so take care of yourself during the rigor of her winter. Remember Australia has but one Henry Lawson.
From the art world of London Australia must seem very crude & oh! so far away. The wattles are just done & the haze of summer is beginning to once more veil the hills as sunset. I enclose a few gum leaves & a sprig of wattle.
Dear Sir
Gratefully yours
Stella M S M Franklin

December: Cricketer Arthur Coningham divorce case commenced, and almost overshadowed Federation, it was such big news in Australia. It involved his wife Alice, and Rev. Dr Denis Francis O'Haran (corespondent). Paddy Crick was involved in the sordid case, improperly using his position as Postmaster-General (PMG) to intercept letters on behalf of his legal client. (Arthur Coningham returned to Australia and died in Callan Park Lunatic Asylum for the Mentally and Criminally Insane in 1939.)

December 7: Angus & Robertson published Lawson's Verses Popular and Humorous; he sent copies to the UK to his Australian Book Company. In Australia it had mixed reviews. Alfred Stephens wrote "Lawson's wine here seems to be running perilously close to the lees" and "for the last three years his fame has been at a standstill".

Henry Lawson poems in 1900

Ballad of the Cornstalk
The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen
The Ballad of the Black-Sheep
The Rush to London
From the Bush

1901

1901 in literature

C/- JB Pinker, Effington House, Arundel Street, Strand, London, EC
[Paradise Row, Piccadilly]

Henry Lawson published two books, The Country I Come From and Joe Wilson and His Mates.

Harry Holland stood as a candidate for the Australian Senate and the state seat of Lang. He was standing for the Socialist Labor Party, having rejected the Labor Party as too moderate. He did not make any significant impression.

Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim was published, last (and thought by many to be the most important) of his Indian writings.   Source: Kipling chronology

Nobel prizes awarded for the first time. First Nobel Prize for Literature awarded.

"The Constitution denies citizenship, franchise and the right to military duty to Aboriginal People, Asians and Africans. Indigenous people are not included in any census nor regarded as citizens, thus excluding them from civil liberties like Commonwealth voting rights, unless, as in South Australia, they already have the vote in State elections. In Queensland and Western Australia Indigenous people are specifically excluded."   Source

Sydney and suburbs at federation
"The Rocks, Woolloomooloo, Balmain, Ashfield, Glebe, Leichhardt, Newtown, Paddington, and Redfern were all overcrowded, unhealthy and filled with poor and unemployed. Alexandria, Annandale, Arncliff, Darlington, Eveleigh, Pyrmont, St. Peters were also working-class suburbs.
  "Burwood and Bondi were 'Gentlemen's residences', Ashfield was 'residential', Darling Point and Double Bay were 'fashionable', Canterbury was still a scattered area featuring large houses in extensive grounds, Elizabeth Bay, Pott's Point, Rushcutter's Bay, Gladesville, Point Piper, Rose Bay and Strathfield had 'large houses surrounded with beautifully laid out grounds'. Flemington and Homebush were very scattered and Rookwood and Auburn were still officially 'in the country'. The North Shore was still mostly virgin bushland, with North Sydney, Manly and Mosman settled."   Source

"26.63% of Sydney children under the age of five would die, 20.9% of these before their first birthday. In the suburbs, it was worse: 35.2% of those under 5, 25.94% in their first year. Many Sydney graveyards show this - graves with a lamb, a broken column or a cherub on them. If you survived babyhood, tuberculosis, typhoid, diphtheria and whooping cough were the big killers. If you had to go to hospital, there were 13 hospitals in Sydney, and a leper colony at Little Bay. By 1900, men could expect to live till 52, and women till 56 ... The four major religions were Church of England (46.58%), Roman Catholic (25.96%), Methodist (10.24%), and Presbyterian (9.91%). Most people in Sydney attended church every Sunday. The Church of England had about 620,000 members, and 106,000 attended every Sunday. Catholics had 347,000 and 109,000 attended every Sunday. Methodists had 137,600 members with 85,700 attending every Sunday, and Congregationalists had 24,831 members with 13,525 every Sunday ... Gangs of 'young larrikins' hung around causing trouble in the gas-lit streets of Sydney after dark. They belonged to the 'Glebe Push', the 'Rocks Push' or the 'Argyle Cut Push'. They are described as having 'slouch hats on the back of their heads, greasy curls, no collar or waistcoat, a bright handkerchief around their necks, an overhanging shirt, and tight trousers.' They were mostly young unemployed males. Their girlfriends wore very colourful clothes: favouring colours such as purple, puce, violet, scarlet and emerald green, frequently mixed together. They wore ostrich feathers draped over their straw hats. They wore high lace-up boots coming almost to the knee. often embroidered with designs and mottoes. They apparently wore shorter skirts than was fashionable with 'respectable' people. In 1890, only 3.1% of tobacco smoked was cigarettes. In 1904 this had jumped to 11.1%., but only the most 'modern' of women smoked."   Source

What was the price of food like in 1901?

"Soon, statistician T.A. Coghlan ... churned out figures - like those in The Seven Colonies (1901) - to show how remarkably cheap living was in our paradise. For instance, of an average annual expenditure per inhabitant of £36 19s 5d, he found that only £15 15s 7d went on food and drink - that is , only 37.5 per cent. In Great Britain, the figure was 42.2% and in Germany 49.1%. As for the annual consumption of meat, while the average in Great Britain was 109 lbs and in America 150 lbs, in Australia it was 264 lbs. This was four times as much as in Germany and ten times as much as in Italy.
  "An inquiry by the Commonwealth statistician in 1910-11 found that the average spent on food had fallen to 29.3%, while percentages in other leading industrial nations were between 54% and 60%. 'It is not unlikely,' the government investigator considered, 'that expenditure on food alone furnishes a true indication of the standard of material well-being.' And so, Australia, with the world's cheapest food, came to be thought of as enjoying the world's highest 'standard of living'."
Michael Symons, One Continuous Picnic, A History of Eating in Australia, 1982 p. 60   Source

Industrial Arbitration Act was passed to regulate work hours and wages, but women still only received 50% of the male wage.   Source

Population of Sydney 481,830.

The Thornburns moved to 19 Railway Avenue, Malvern.

British trade union activist Tom Mann, a colleague of Henry Hyde Champion, emigrated to Australia to see if that country's broader electoral franchise would allow more "drastic modification of capitalism". Settling in Melbourne he was active in Australian trade unions and became an organiser for the Australian Labor Party. However, he grew disillusioned with the party, believing it was being corrupted by the nature of government and concerned only with winning elections. He felt that the federal Labour MPs were unable and unwilling to change society, and their prominence within the movement was stifling and over-shadowing organised labour. He resigned from the ALP and founded the Victoria Socialist Party.

January: Thanks to Henry Lawson's championing of her novel, Miles Franklin's My Brilliant (?) Career was accepted for publication by the Scottish firm William Blackwood and Sons.

January 1: The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federated as the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton became first Prime Minister. The first Governor-General (Lord Hopetoun), in the presence of first Commonwealth Cabinet, inaugurated the Commonwealth at Centennial Park, Sydney.   More

"[WG] Spence served in the Commonwealth Parliament as a Labor member from 1901. He was Post-Master General in 1914-1915. According to some in the AWU, the Prime Minister Billy Hughes tricked Spence into supporting conscription in 1916/1917. For his support of Hughes Spence was expelled from the Party, serving as a Nationalist member until his defeat in the 1919 election. Unlike others, the AWU did not expel Spence. Rather, it asked him to resign from the union in 1917."   Source

January 1: Death of Ignatius Donnelly.

January 10: Blackwood received from Lawson his revised version of Franklin's My Brilliant (?) Career, plus Lawson's own 'The Story of the Oracle'.

January 19: Paddy Crick had concluded negotiations with Murray over Louisa Lawson's mail-bag clasp. He wrote a memo that EN Murray should be requested to make 5,000 of his clasps. Louisa Lawson found out a day or two later. Wyndham Davies, who had been fighting within the PM-G for months on behalf of Louisa's mailbag clasp, visited her to inform her what was going on.

January 22: Death of Queen Victoria. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales became King, reigning as King Edward VII. His son, Prince George, Duke of York became Duke of Cornwall (later King George V).

January 24: Louisa Lawson wrote a letter to Stephen Harbord Lambton of the PM-G demanding her rights, also threatening that if pushed, she would make known to members of the press (who in the past had asked) about certain "things highly discreditable to the Department".

January 27: King Edward VII of the United Kingdom appointed his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859 - 1941) a field marshal in the British army, on Wilhelm's 42nd birthday.

January 29: Blackwood bought Franklin's My Brilliant Career. Even after Lawson's "toning down", Blackwood reserved the right to tone it down more, in consultation with Lawson.

January - February: Louisa Lawson sometime around now attacked her daughter, Gertrude, breaking her arm. Gertrude, aged about 24, left home. It was probably around January or February because in February Louisa wrote an editorial in Dawn, pointedly about filial duty. 

February: Blackwood's magazine published Henry's 'A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek', which was described by his mentor, the eminent critic/editor/author Edward Garnett (1868 - 1937), as taking readers "absolutely inside people's lives" in a way unachievable even by De Maupassant. Henry was published in Blackwood's, Cassell's and Chambers's magazines. By February, says Roderick (1991), Henry Lawson realised that his wife's mental/emotional problems were severe.

February - April: "In a desperate attempt to pay the bills, Lawson dug out some sketches that he had brought to England and converted old ballads into sketches, such as 'The Little World Left Behind', 'The Golden Graveyard', 'The Bush Fire, 'Jimmy Grimshaw's Wooing' and 'The Ghostly Door', which Pinker sold to second-rank periodicals, such as the Argosy, Black and White, the Outlook and the Onlooker.
  "Lawson was now working along three lines: first, he was trying to complete the stories needed for the series intended for Blackwood; secondly, he was getting a number of separate stories on paper for Pinker to sell to other magazines; thirdly, he was revising his own stories for imminent volume and toning down My Brilliant Career. Undoubtedly he' would have mastered all of these but for the fear that Bertha's condition might prove to be chronic. His anxiety played havoc with his own constitution, the severity of the London winter depressed him and he was living for the day when he could take Bertha and the children home to Australia." (Roderick, 1991)

February 1: Lambton replied to Louisa Lawson: "referring to your communication of the 24th ultimo, relative to the mail-bag fasteners in this Department, I am directed by the Postmaster-General to inform you that, in view of the threats made by you therein, he will not have any further transactions with you."

February 6: Miles Franklin appointed Henry's Lawson's agent James B Pinker as her own.

About February 19: Pinker sent Blackwood, and Blackwood accepted for Maga, 'The House That Was Never Built', "in June or July".

About February 12: Blackwood had more good news for Henry Lawson: he would publish in Maga 'The Babies in the Bush' in April and 'Past Carin'' in May. He rejected '"Water Them Geraniums". Part I - Part II' but said he might want it in the forthcoming book. Lawson received at once £39, "more than half of which went on Bertha's hospital fees and the children's board" (Roderick, 1991, p. 227).

March: At Villarrica (near Cosme), Paraguay, Larry Petrie jumped onto the line to push a child out of the path of an on-coming train and was killed himself. His body was claimed by Rose Summerfield.   Source

March: "Nicholas Eugene Coxon, with the same objective [as Gilbert Probyn-Smith, mid-year, 1899], produced 20 issues of an illustrated weekly newspaper. It is doubtful if the history of English pamphleteering, even in the golden age of verbal assassination and vituperation, the 18th century, offers anything to compare with the bound file of The Jury which may be inspected by the curious in the Mitchell Library. It had a complex genesis.
  "Coxon was a compositor on Truth in the days of A. G. Taylor, and graduated by way of proof-reading to journalism. He remained on Truth through its many mutations, and in 1900, when Norton [John Norton] was completely in control, started the associated sporting paper, The Sportsman.
  "In March 1901, an election was held for the Federal Senate, and Norton, who had set his heart on entering Commonwealth politics, was defeated by a small majority. His reaction was the usual one; he plunged into a drinking bout which lasted some months. His wife, who had left him two or three times because of his brutality, had just been persuaded to return to him. Norton began quarrelling with her again, and accused her of committing adultery with Coxon. He repeated the charge, which was quite without justification, to many people, and Coxon issued a writ against him claiming £1,000 for slander. To meet this, Norton, by promise and threats—he picked up her baby and threatened to dash its brains out—induced her to sign a confession of misconduct with Coxon.
  "That night, as a public demonstration of their reconciliation, he took her, after a heavy dinner, to hear Madame Sapia in Rjgoletto, and encountering Coxon in the dress circle, hit him violently from behind. There was a 'terrible scene'. The ushers pulled three or four men off Coxon, and Norton and his wife left the theatre hurriedly.
  "Three days later, Mrs. Norton signed a statutory declaration that her confession was extorted from her by force, and that there had never been any impropriety between herself and Coxon. Probably unaware of this, Norton filed a divorce petition against her, naming Coxon as co-respondent, but was persuaded by his solicitor to drop it. Coxon then dropped his action for slander, Norton paying his costs in both cases. But Coxon had decided to bring out a paper 'to explain the whole thing' ... The first sale of the paper was over 30,000 copies ...
  "In between drinks and domestic brawls ... Norton paid a visit to Melbourne. He was planning a Melbourne edition of Truth and arranged a public meeting to promote it. It was held in the Temperance Hall. Norton's name was familiar to Melburnians, but few had seen or heard him. The citizens who filled the hall were dazzled by his pyrotechnics as he assailed Kings, Governors and politicians."   (Pearl, 1958, pp 165-6)

On his return to Sydney, Norton attacked his wife through the pages of Truth, with headlines such as: 'John Norton's 'Appy 'Ome', 'A Wife's Written Confessions of Misconduct', 'She Still Colleagues With Coxon', 'Ada Norton Charges Her Husband With Having Committed a Bestial Crime'. He even printed her replies to his charges.

March 15: Blackwood's returned to James Pinker Lawson's MS of The Heart of Australia. They had been unable to sell Joe Wilson and His Mates and were not interested. Bertha was getting depressed again, just as Lawson was getting broke. Methuen took the book (which they called Children of the Bush) on the advice of Edward Garnett, and Henry dedicated it to his wife. However, her hallucinations reappeared. Methuen had HG Wells, A Conan Doyle and Henry James in their stable; Henry could not capitalise due to home difficulties and perhaps insufficient talent. His predicament was that Bertha obviously needed to get home for her mental health, but he needed to be in UK for any chance at success.

March 17: A showing of 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, created a sensation.

March 22: "With Maquarie away [Lawson] was going mechanically about his business, neglecting his diet, absorbed in the world of his creation. In a cable dispatch to Truth dated London March 22, in her 'Lights of London' column, Maude Wheeler wrote: 'And ever the singers, scribblers and painters come to inartistic London, and are lost in the vast maelstrom of her great dinginess ... Pessimistic Lawson is here, buried in a dull London flat, all alone. His wife craved and longed always for the sunshine of her native Australia, and is now in a mad-house, while her husband wanders about London and lives nobody knows how.'"   (Roderick, 1991, p. 229)

March 23: John Norton was operated on for a mastoid abscess at St Clair's Private Hospital, Brisbane and remained in that city for some weeks. At this time, he had bodyguards (henchmen) named Fred Parkes, Edward 'Duffy' Morris and Digby Grand (who in about 1902 was imprisoned for the murder of Constable Long at Auburn). (Pearl, 1958)

March 28: Sir John See (Progressive Party) succeeded William Lyne, Protectionist, as Premier of NSW.

April: Reviews in UK of Verses Popular and Humorous were generally very poor.

April 8: Henry "wrote from Pinker's office to Blackwood apologising for delay in returning the proofs of My Brilliant Career; he wanted Maquarie to go through the story. His postscript said: 'Am at work on a longish story 'Peter McLaughlan, Bush Missionary' which I fancy will be strongest of series submitted to you. After this I hope to get well on a novel I have on hand and which I would like published serially.'
  "The coming of spring brought some cheerfulness, ushered in with a letter from Blackwood thanking him and Maquarie for the 'careful revision' of My Brilliant Career. Blackwood was sorry to hear that he had been in continued ill health. "I had hoped you had improved," he wrote, "I can understand only too well how much you must have felt our winter, and I trust a return to the more genial clime of Australia will prove beneficial'".   (Roderick, 1991, p. 228)

May 9: Federation ceremony – the Duke of York (later King George V) opened the First Commonwealth Parliament in the temporary capital (Melbourne). The Salvation Army's innovative Limelight Department filmed the main ceremony in Melbourne, producing what is arguably the world's first documentary film. 

"In May 1901, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, (later King George V and Queen Mary) came to Melbourne to open the first Federal Parliament. The royal visit confirmed Australia's links with Britain, and transformed a potentially dull political event into a grand ceremonial and festive occasion."   Source   Pictures   Chronology of the Australian Federation Movement, 1883 - 1901   More    More

May 13: In a letter (apparently misdated May 15, says Roderick, 1991) Lawson wrote to Angus & Robertson glowing over his prospects in England, but says "Have been an invalid for the last six months", but "Mrs Lawson's health improving". It is not known whether he had really been very ill or if it was an excuse for his neglect.

May 14: Bertha Lawson admitted to Bethlem Royal Hospital in Lambeth Road after she tried to kill herself by plunging into the Thames, having scaled the wall of the hospital she was already in. (She was discharged exactly three months later on August 14.)

"Residence Harpenden. First attack? No. Age on first attack: 19. Duration of existing attack 10 days.

"Supposed cause: Lactation and worry. [I suppose this is the Victorian version of post-partum depression?]

"Suicidal? Yes. [It looks like 'no' has been altered to Yes] Relatives insanity? Yes, mother and sister.

"A 'first medical certificate' of 3 October 1900 refers to information given by a Florence Pope. 'Her husband Henry Lawson tells me his wife attempted to get out of the upstairs window. Has begged him to kill her or give her the means to kill herself'.

"A '2nd medical certificate' of 8 October. 'She is very depressed and taciturn'. A further reference to Florence Pope of '123 New Bond Street London'. I cannot read the word after this, but it could be 'nurse'. Both certificates signed I think by a 'William Henry Blake' presumably a doctor.

"Clinical notes: Face assumes an expression of terror at times ... cries constantly ... very timid. She was quite terrified at the vibrations of a tuning fork which was placed by her ear ... imagines that she is going into everlasting punishment which says she deserves ... that she has killed her children through her cowardly attempt in trying to destroy herself ... July 10 Is much better mentally ...

"August 14 Discharged recovered."
These note by courtesy of Peter Morton, Flinders University, who examined the hospital records. Peter writes: "None of the notes bear on her relations with Lawson. It does say 'no relative attended to give [her] history'."

While Bertha was in 'Bedlam', the Lawson children were boarded with her friend, Mrs Brandt, in Shepperton, a small town in Surrey in the borough of Spelthorne (more on Shepperton). Henry and Maquarie found a vacant half-house ('Bow Winders'), opposite the manor house (Charlton House) which was on the north side of Charlton Road, about an hour's walk from Shepperton, in the farm labourers' village of Charlton. Here there was the Harrow Inn and a Gypsy camp which had settled on one of farmer Leonard's paddocks about three or four hundred metres from Charlton Road. Here Lawson continued work on the rest of the stories that formed Joe Wilson and His Mates. They were there about three months. The wages for local people were very low, and many of the young women had gone into service, or factories. AG Stephens, with typical tartness, wrote: "... the peasant who had travelled confronted the peasants who had stayed at home. They eyed him; he eyed them; silence, and sensitive prickles. He had travelled too far." Lord Beauchamp came to Henry's aid and paid half of Bertha's hospital fees. (NB: I'm uncertain whether Henry moved to Charlton and had the children boarded at Shepperton after Bertha's suicide attempt and admission to Bethlem or before, while she was in another hospital in London.

"There are two pubs of differing characters in the village: the Bugle Horn and the White Swan ... Just off the main village street are St Luke's Houses ..."   Source

"In 1829 they enclosed the village green which had been in front of the House, and added it to their grounds. This is the reason why the original gateway to the House stands nowadays apparently stranded in the middle of the lawn. The green had been the site of the ancient and notorious Horn Fair, which was transferred to a field nearby until it was suppressed in 1874 on the grounds of the drunken behaviour of the revellers."   Source   More on Charlton   More on the Horn Fair

Charlton Gypsies

"Sometimes, on fine days, when he was in the beerhouse a few doors away, Henry would see the 'Gipsy hags' come in and warm their pints of ale in the funnel-shaped warmer over the coal fire. Whenever they were about he would wander up to the triangular patch of ground, between Charlton and the Four Lanes, known to the locals as the 'Medder', and stare at the painted wagons, and the swarthy wild-eyed men around the camp-fires and think of the tales his mother had told him."  (Prout, 1963)  He wrote about the town in 'Chawlton' and the Harrow Arms pub he called the "Farmer's Arms".

Cross Waterloo Bridge and take train from a big grimy station there on the right-hand side—up the river by train to Shepperton-on-“Tems.” You might stroll round—they are pleasant lanes between deep ditches and blackberry hedges on autumn afternoons. You might stroll round by pleasant brooks, within sound of the river; and by some brickfields, that cannot spoil the scene, and come into the story towards the end, and little unsuspected “hamlets”—that’s the word—lying in wait, half-hidden in side pockets, nooks and corners of the hedges—like shy children who want to give you a pleasant surprise—and you’ll come to either Halliford, Sunbury, Upper Sunbury, or Sunbury-on-Thames. But I want to get you to Charlton, and you’ll be lost in English lanes. But you’ll be directed. You’ll meet a fresh, peachy-bloomed-faced, clear-eyed youth, with the bulk limbs and plod of an English farm labourer, a detached and shelving underlip, which might do if it were trimmed and shored or braced up—were it not for a vague chin, which is hopeless—and a general expression like a blank note of interrogation—if such a thing could be. But he’ll direct you according to the best of his lights.

“Chawlton, sir? Oh, yes, sir! Chawlton. You take that lane wot yer see there, sir, and foller it till yer come to a bridge goin’ across the water, sir. No, sir, that’s not the “Tems,” sir—that’s only a backwater runnin’ inter the Tems, sir. Git through the fence to the right jest before yer come to the bridge, sir; don’t cross the bridge. Don’t cross the bridge, sir. Git through a panel jist at the foot of the bridge where yer see a path worn, sir. (Don’t take no notice of that lane on the other side, sir.) When yer git through yer’ll see medder in front of yer, sir—yer’ll be in the medder, in fact, sir. Go right across the medder till yer comes to a gate with a turnstile and another stile on either side, sir. Yer can take whichever yer like, sir.” (I looked at him for a sign of a bucolic humour, but none was there.) “Go through there an’ yer in Harry Leonard’s farm, sir. Go right through by the house, and it’ll bring yer right inter the road agenst Chawlton, sir. (Mind and don’t take no notice of that there lane I told yer of, sir.)” ...

“Chawlton” is the farm labourers’ village opposite, on the frontage of the farm. Six square, two storied cottages, or rather hutches, of dirty, smoky-looking brown brick, with dirty, smoky-looking tiles, but why I don’t know, for this is far from London’s smoke and grit. Perhaps it was soiled or inferior material from the kilns. Gable roofs all running the same way, and the houses in a straight row and exactly alike. Two or three-foot hawthorn hedge in front, and no division whatever, save an old batten here and there—and the footpaths running up to the back fence—between the vegetable gardens behind. The cottages are double, yet square; four pigeon-hole rooms aside; kitchen-dining-and-general-living-room, with the narrowest and steepest of little stairs running up through it—sort of dirty little ladder with the rungs boxed in. Inevitable dark little parlour in front, with the pitiful little useless toy “suite” on time payment, which is never used. They draw the blind and open the front door sometimes, like the dusty lid of a chest on end, to let some one see the suite, who hasn’t seen it before. Two bedrooms upstairs. I haven’t seen them, so I don’t know what they’re like. There must be a spare room for Granny, or Aunt Emma, when she comes for her annual holiday. Some of the family, if there is one, sleep on made-up beds downstairs on such occasions ...

Along towards Shepperton, some hundred yards or so from the end hutch of the village, was the village beerhouse—“beer-shop” they call it in London (they call things by their names)—with a low door that you stumbled in through, on to sanded floors, and under a low dark old ceiling, with the inevitable great beam, anywhere but in the centre. I stood outside that door late one night, after returning from London, and rapped at family bedroom window above—in the roof—and scared them all, and shook hands with the landlord afterwards—when he put his head out—to soothe him, and said I only wanted to borrow some matches. But that was nothing, for was not I a gent?

I still see the Gypsies dropping in, calling to each other on fine days, and calling for their ale, the hags demanding the funnel-shaped warmer from over the bar, pouring their half-pint into it, and sticking it down amongst the coals. And then hurrying out and on after the caravans.
From 'Chawlton', by Henry Lawson

IF they missed my face in Farmers’ Arms
When the landlord lit the lamp,
They would grin and say in their country way,
‘Oh! he’s down at the Gipsy camp!’
But they’d read of things in the Daily Mail
That the wild Australians do,
And I cared no day what the world might say,
For I came of the Gipsies too. 

‘Oh! the Gipsy crowd are a mongrel lot,
‘And a thieving lot and sly!’
But I’d dined on fowls in the far-off south,
And a mongrel lot was I.
‘Oh! the Gipsy crowd are a roving gang,
‘And a sulky, silent crew!’
But they managed a smile and a word for me,
For I came of the Gipsies too ...

... And the young queen looked in my eyes that night,
In a nook where the hedge grew tall,
And the sky was swept and the stars were bright,
But her eyes had the sheen of all.
The spring was there, and the fields were fair,
And the world to my heart seemed new.
’Twas ‘A Romany lass to a Romany lad!’
But I came of the Gipsies too.
From Lawson's poem 'Gipsy Too' (raises the question of whether Henry had an affair with a Gypsy woman or was just romanticising his life while his wife was in the mental hospital)

"As had been the case in Sydney, Lawson wrote prolifically, rigorously revising and editing his work between drinking bouts. He had no trouble getting his work published, his first books being Children of the Bush and The Country I Come From. These were followed by what many consider to be his finest stories, Joe Wilson and his Mates, sixty-five pages which fudge the boundaries of fiction and autobiography, novel, novella and short story: what today would be seen as discontinuous narrative. The character of Joe, passionate, haunted, someone who uses alcohol as a buffer against the pain of the world, is very much that of his creator; while Mary, who comes from a higher social position than Joe, would seem to have been based on Bertha. The critic, Geoffrey Dutton, writes, 'The triumph of these stories is how much they hold of both autobiography and fiction; Henry and Bertha never led the physical life of Joe and Mary, but it is their mental and spiritual story. It is as a great artist that Lawson finds a symbolic home in the Bush for their loneliness and precarious love, and for his own fragility'."   Source

May 18: As the Royal Yacht sailed into Sydney Harbour, the first radio transmission was made in Australia. Norman Lindsay arrived in Sydney, from Melbourne, on the same day as the Duke (later George V)  and Duchess of York. He took up a cartooning and illustrating position at The Bulletin having been recommended to JF Archibald by Dr Jack Elkington.

June: As arranged by Lawson and his agent Pinker, Blackwood's published Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career, which ran through six impressions to 1904. Lawson himself often in severe financial straits, and Blackwood's was generous by sending cheques quickly and on acceptance of work for publication.