This is the sixth extract of chapters of my work on John Feltham (aka Jules Francoise) Archibald 1856-1919, founding editor of the Sydney Bulletin – one of the most popular newspapers in Australia’s history.
By DAVID MYTON
One evening in June 1887 a tall, slim, young man of 20 years with burning brown eyes and a magnificent moustache hurried through Sydney byways to the George Street offices of the Bulletin. Summoning all his courage and resolve, for he was of nervous disposition, he thrust an envelope into the Bulletin’s post box. It held a poem, signed HAL. It carried his hopes and dreams of being a famous literary star. A poet, no less.
It was a gamble. The Editor, JF Archibald, was known for his tough, uncompromising – some would say ridiculing – manner in his “responses to correspondents”. One story[i] has it that Archibald had a quick read of the poem and then threw it in the waste paper basket from which the journalist Fred Broomfield retrieved it, was impressed, and suggested Archibald take another look. Which he did, and on reflection was similarly impressed.
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Meanwhile Lawson, a man of poor education, inflicted with deafness and currently working as a house painter and odd job man, waited, and waited, watching for some hope in the Responses to Correspondents column. And then, there it was, in the issue of July 23 1887, just 14 words that changed his life: “HAL: Will publish your ‘Sons of the South’. You have in you good grit!” Then almost three months later, on October 1 1887, it was published under the title ‘A Song of the Republic’[ii]:
Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you.
Lawson was proud of it because “it was my first song and sincere – written by a bush boy who was a skinny city work-boy in patched pants and Blucher boots, struggling on the edge of the unemployed gulf”[iii]. Lawson was on his way and he had the Bulletin to thank for it, especially its editor J F Archibald. Just a few months later, at Christmas 1887, Archibald published another poem – Golden Gully
No one lives in Golden Gully, for its golden days are o’er,
And its clay shall never sully blucher-boots of differs more,
For the diggers long have vanished – nought but broken shafts remain,
And the bush, by diggers banished, fast reclaims its own again.
Now, when dying Daylight slowly draws her fingers from the ‘Peak’
The Weird Empress Melancholy rises from the reedy creek
Then on December 22 1888, Archibald went one step further – he published in entirety one of Lawson’s short stories called ‘His Father’s Mate’ …
It was Golden Gully still, but golden in name only, unless, indeed, the yellow mullock heaps, or the bloom of the wattle-trees on the hillside gave it a better claim to its title. But the gold was gone from the gully, and the diggers were gone, too …
Archibald liked the poet-writer, saw something profound in him; later he recalled the day “when I first beheld the burning eyes of Henry Lawson”[iv] and he praised and encouraged him – “You’ve got talent …”.[v] Archibald applied much of his editing genius to Lawson’s work, smoothing it out, taking away the rough edges.
Lawson was to become the epitome of the Bulletin spirit, especially in regard to the revered manner in which it regarded the new nationalistic Australia and the world of the Bush. A G Stephens, one of Lawson’s sternest critics, acknowledged his ability to “represent glimpses of life with remarkable truth, strength and sympathy. His writings in verse and prose … abound with little nuggets of observation and insight; bright with simple pathos, natural humour, and tense vehement expression”.[vi]
Unfortunately, over the years Lawson became an alcoholic, impairing not just his poetry but also his relationships along the way. He died a sad and lonely death in September 1922, but with a legacy of some of the best verse and story writing in Australian history: just two examples that stand the test of time – the poem ‘Andy’s Gone With Cattle’ and the brilliant short story ‘The Drover’s Wife’. Belatedly, he gained official recognition for his talent and for his contribution to Australian letters - the Commonwealth Literary Fund granted him a miserly £1 a week pension from May 1920, just two years before he died. He was also given a state funeral on September 4 1922.[vii]
There was someone else, though, who had insights into life in the Australian bush, but from a different angle and who, where Lawson saw penury and misery, he saw adventure and joy. Taken together, they were the ying and the yang of the Australian spirit. He also owed a lot to J F Archibald. His name was Andrew Barton Paterson, known from 1889 as The Banjo.
Paterson was born in 1864 at Narrambla near Orange, New South Wales, but later moved with his family to Illalong in the Yass district. His father, originally from Scotland, was a grazier, his mother, Rose Isabella, was native born near Orange. Unlike Lawson, he had a happy upbringing, but he did suffer from a muscle-damaged right arm, leaving him with one arm slightly shorter than the other[viii]. He enjoyed a bush boyhood, watching …
“The exciting traffic of bullock teams, Cobb & Co. coaches, drovers with their mobs of stock, and gold escorts became familiar sights. At picnic race meetings and polo matches, he saw in action accomplished horsem*n from the Murrumbidgee and Snowy Mountains country which generated his lifelong enthusiasm for horses and horsemanship and eventually the writing of his famous equestrian ballads.”[ix]
He was sleek, clean-cut and handsome, successful, industrious and generally optimistic. He was gifted with the ability to write well, and worked hard at his craft. By profession he was a solicitor, qualifying in August 1886.
He was as different from Lawson as it is possible to be – with the exception that both of them loved writing about Australia, albeit from different perspectives. Another thing they had in common was that they each owed much of their success to the help, support and encouragement of J F Archibald, editor of the Bulletin.[x]
His first poem in the Bulletin was ‘El Mahdi to the Australian Troops’, published on 22 February 1885 although it seems likely he had submitted other articles which may have gone unsigned[xi].
And wherefore have they come, this warlike band,
That o’er the ocean many a weary day
Have tossed; and now beside Suakim’s Bay,
With faces stern and resolute, do stand,
Waking the desert echoes with the drum –
Men of Australia, wherefore have ye come?
On August 22 1886 Archibald wrote to Paterson asking if he would pop in to the office so they could talk “about a lot of things”. He gave some information regarding what the Bulletin was about, adding its chief policy was to “howl for the undermost dog”.
Archibald asked for future contributions and praised Paterson, saying “Your ‘copy’ is on the average clear enough to be dreamt on by good sober printers in holy dreams of heaven”.[xii] Then on December 21 1889 the Bulletin published one of Paterson’s greatest poems [xiii]. It was called ‘Clancy of the Overflow’:
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent a letter to him,
Just “on spec”, addressed as follows: “Clancy of The Overflow”.
And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar)
‘Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
“Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.”
There followed more poems and stories until April 26 1890 when the Bulletin published yet another jaw-dropper: ‘The man from Snowy River’.
There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses – he was worth a thousand pound.
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are
And the stockhorse snuffs the battle with delight.
There was much more to come from Paterson, as there was from Lawson. Meanwhile, other poets and writers were at work giving their literary take on the Bush or the city, such as Will Ogilvie, E J Brady, Joseph Furphy, Christopher Brennan, Mary Gilmore and Victor Daley. But Lawson and Paterson stand out.
The Bulletin gave them their initial platforms, and out of its pages, leavened with other contributors, there came forth the Bush Ballad, a distinctively Australian contribution to literature. (Paterson also wrote another memorable ballad: Waltzing Matilda, first composed in 1895 and published in 1903 – as sheet music).
Whereas Paterson wrote of the hardships that all had to share in pioneering the land “he rarely expressed resentment against privilege. His writing reflected the interest of the independent, struggling man pitted against nature but not that of the embittered man struggling against a landed master … adversity was not overwhelming – rather it was to be accepted as part of bush life”.[xiv]
Lawson, however, saw an Australia whose “spirit is sensual despair, whose tutelary genius is the siren of the wilderness … his muse is the muse of Flood and Fire; of drought and Death … the wretchedness and the repulsiveness of the starved soul, as of the starved body”[xv].
The differences between Lawson and Paterson were not lost on the two men. They’d read each other’s poems and stories in the Bulletin, and despite their differences actually quite liked each other. Indeed, at one stage Paterson used his legal skills to help Lawson to draw up contracts with publishers[xvi]. Said Paterson:
“… Lawson was a man of remarkable insight in some things and remarkable simplicity in others. We were both looking for the same reef, if you get what I mean, but I had done my prospecting on horseback with my meals cooked for me, while Lawson had done his prospecting on foot and had to cook for himself …”[xvii]
Then the two came up with a cunning plan. Lawson suggested they write against each other in verse: Paterson would write something, Lawson would criticise it, and so on. The criticism was not directed at the poetry, but the content – Lawson’s grim pessimism versus Paterson’s rollicking optimism. And one other thing these brothers in verse were reckoning on: they were not on retainers, so they were paid on what they published. If it worked to plan, it should be a nice little earner.
Lawson’s first offering was ‘Up the Country’ in which he has been looking for sunlit plains, shining rivers and other pleasant scenes spoken of by “southern poets” (ie Paterson). Alas, all he found were burning wastes of barren soil and sand, where the Bushman sees “Nothing … but the sameness of the ragged stunted trees …
Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger, endless roads that gleam and glare,
Dark and evil looking gullies, hiding secrets here and there!
Dull dumb flats and stony rises, where the toiling bullocks bake,
And the sinister goanna, and the lizard and the snake.
Paterson had his say in ‘In Defence of the Bush’, noting that “Mr Lawson is back from up country where he went” …
And you’re cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn’t cool and shady – and there wasn’t plenty beer,
And the loony bullock snorted when you first came into view;
Well, you know it’s not so often that he sees a swell like you;
And the roads were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,
And no doubt you’re better suited drinking lemon squash in town …
Lawson’s answer to Banjo came in ‘The City Bushman’, in which he borrows the rhythms of ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ to ask
Would you like to change with Clancy – go-a-droving? tell us true,
For we rather think that Clancy would be glad to change with you,
And be something in the city; but twould give your muse a shock
To be losing time and money through the foot-rot in the flock,
And you wouldn’t mind the beauties underneath the starry dome
If you had a wife and children and a lot of bills at home
In Paterson’s ‘An Answer to Various Bards’ published by the Bulletin on October 1 1892, the poet states that Lawson and others who curse the bushland “should let their fancy range, And take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change” …
And a bushman never struck me as a subject for “the tomb”
If it ain’t all “golden sunshine” where the “wattle branches wave”,
Well it ain’t all damp and dismal, and it ain’t all “lonely grave”.
And, of course, there’s no denying that the bushman’s life is rough,
But a man can easy stand it if he’s built of sterling stuff…
Lawson hit back with a sort of manifesto in the Bulletin of November 18 1893, ‘Some Popular Australian Mistakes’ - 23 points about what inland Australia was really like, not what people believed it to be. Much of it is a directory of terms, others observations such as a shearing shed “is not what city people picture it to be – it is perhaps the most degrading hell on the face of this earth”:
“In conclusion. We wish to Heaven that Australian writers would leave off trying to make a paradise out of the Out Back Hell; if only out of consideration for the poor, hopeless, half-starved wretches who carry swags through it and look in vain for work – and ask in vain for tucker very often. What’s the good of making a heaven of a hell when by describing it as it really is we might do some good for the lost souls there?”
Many other poets, writers and correspondents joined the debate, which helped to drive up the paper’s circulation. Looking back in old age, Paterson described Archibald as “the most outstanding personality that Australia has yet produced”. Throughout his life Paterson stressed the positive role Archibald played in shaping his successful literary career.[xviii] Paterson died in 1941. In the words of Clement Semmler:
“By the verdict of the Australian people, and by his own conduct and precept, Paterson was, in every sense, a great Australian. Ballad-writer, horseman, bushman, overlander, squatter—he helped to make the Australian legend. Yet, in his lifetime, he was a living part of that legend in that, with the rare touch of the genuine folk-poet, and in words that seemed as natural as breathing, he made a balladry of the scattered lives of back-country Australians and immortalized them.”[xix]
There is a neat little coda to Lawson’s relationship with Archibald and the Bulletin which occurred in September 1892, by which time the poetic “duel” with Paterson was running out of puff.
Archibald thought Lawson could do more in a different environment so he bought him a railway ticket to Bourke in north-western New South Wales and threw in a five pound note to help him on his way. In the words of Manning Clark this was “probably the great creative experience in Lawson’s life … it led to the transfiguration of Lawson … to the creation of the wondrous Henry Lawson”.[xx] Indeed, he was in top form, soaking up the atmosphere of the Bush in all its manifestations. From his fertile mind out came short stories such as ‘The Drover’s Wife’, ‘In A Dry Season’, ‘The Union Buries Its Dead’, ‘Rats’ and ‘Hungerford’.
These were his own creative achievements, but were it not for Archibald they may never have been written. Henry M Green, Australian journalist and literary historian, said Archibald more or less invented the bush ballad.
“Finally, came the Bulletin … encouraging, selecting, intensifying local characteristics and, on the literary side, pruning and shaping them into effective form. The core of the nationalistic achievement of this young literature … was the ballad, which represented something essentially new”.[xxi]
Has one newspaper ever given birth to so much talent? Has one editor ever been so influential in the development of his country’s national voice? In Australia at least, no-one has been as influential as J F Archibald and the Bulletin.
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[i] Peter Kirkpatrick, The Sea Coast of Bohemia, Literary Life in Sydney’s Roaring Twenties, UQP, St Lucia 1992, p34
[ii] Extracts from Henry Lawson’s literary works in this chapter are taken from Henry Lawson, A Camp-fire Yarn. Complete Works 1885-1900, and Henry Lawson, A Fantasy of Man. Complete Works 1901-1922, both Redwood Editions, 2000, and compiled and edited by Leonard Cronin
[iii] Henry Lawson, ‘A Fragment of Autobiography’, in Leonard Cronin (ed), Henry Lawson, A Camp-Fire Yarn, Complete Works 1885-1900, Redwood Edition, Lansdowne Publishing Pty Ltd, 1984, p34
[iv] J F Archibald, ‘The Genesis of The Bulletin’ (Being the memoirs of J F Archibald), The Lone Hand, Sydney, May 1907, p53
[v] Manning Clark, Henry Lawson. The Man and the Legend, Melbourne University Press, 1995, pp 102, 105,115, 148
[vi] Leon Cantrell (ed), A.G. Stephens: Selected Writings, Angus & Robertson, 1978, p251
[vii] Brian Matthews, 'Lawson, Henry (1867–1922)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lawson-henry-7118/text12279, published in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 10 April 2014. This article was first published in hardcopy inAustralian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, (MUP), 1986
[viii] Rosamund Campbell and Phillippa Harvie, ‘General Introduction’ in Singer of the Bush. A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson. Complete Works 1885-1900, Redwood Editions, Victoria, by arrangement with Lansdowne Publishing Pty Ltd, Sydney, 2000, pxi
[ix] Clement Semmler, 'Paterson, Andrew Barton (Banjo) (1864–1941)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/paterson-andrew-barton-banjo-7972/text13883, published in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 10 April 2014. This article was first published in hardcopy inAustralian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, (MUP), 1988
[x] Singer of the Bush, pxi
[xi] Ibid
[xii] Ibid
[xiii] Extracts from Banjo Paterson’s literary works in this chapter are taken from Singer of the Bush. A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson. Complete Works 1885-1900 and Song of the Pen. A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson. Complete Works 1901-1941. Both Redwood Editions 2000, and collected and introduced by Rosamund Campbell and Philippa Harvey
[xiv] R M Younger, Australia and the Australians. A New Concise History, Humanities Press, New York, 1970, p386
[xv] Stephen Alomes and Catherine Jones, A Documentary History: Australian Nationalism, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1991, p73
[xvi] Semmler, op cit
[xvii] Paterson newspaper interview (Sydney Morning Herald 1939) in Campbell and Harvie, op cit p xxiv
[xviii] Singer of the Bush, pxii
[xix] Semmler, op cit
[xx] Manning Clark, Speaking Out of Turn. Lectures and Speeches 1940-1991, Melbourne University Press, 1997, p189
[xxi] Quoted in Douglas Stewart, Writers of The Bulletin, 1977 Boyer Lectures, The Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney, 1977, p19
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