WAS LAWSON BORN IN A TENT?

Cohn Roderick

HENRY LAWSON was born in the early hours of 17th June

1867, i.e., during the night of 16th-17th June, at Gren-

fell, New South Wales. The spot on which he is reputed

to have come into the world is today marked by an obelisk

about a mile to the south of Grenfell, in the north-east

corner of Lawson Park.

That the obelisk stands on the site of the claim on the

One-Mile field which his father worked is very likely true,

and it is likely that the tent which served his parents as

a hone stood on the claim. But that Lawson was actually

born on the One-Mile is not at all certain. The site was

determined by the Grenfell Municipal Council in 1924,

principally on the declaration of John Clarkson, who as a

butcher's boy of 16 had delivered meat to the tent. 1

Observations to support that determination were taken from

the Grenfell Record of 17th December 1915, in which L.T.

Maher of Croydon, New South Wales, wrote:

"Recently I met Mrs. Louisa Lawson (Henry's

mother).., and she informs me that Henry was born

on the One-Mile. When I showed her a very

accurate sketch ... of the One-Mile and Main Lead,

she pointed to a spot near where Mr. George O'Brien

lives, on the One-Mile, as the place where the

Australian genius was born - in a tent."

2.5

Louisa Lawson also told Maher that

heavy rains had fallen, and the nurse had to be carriec3 over

the flood that came down the One-Mjle,'

Against these recollections other evidence must be set which

throws doubt on their reliability. It must be remembered that

Louisa Lawson's mind was of a romantic turn and that at times

she lived - paradoxically enough for a woman of such practical

ability - in a world of fantasy. She is reputed to have

written a romantic poem, "A Birth at the One-Mile', of which

no copy has yet come to light, but which could perhaps dissipate

the doubts aroused by external evidence.

When we turn to the issues of the Grenfell Record of 15th

and 22nd June 1867, we find no references to storms or floods.

Not until 29th June are floods reported anywhere in New South

Wales, and even then, there is no mention of flooding on the

Grenfell goldfields. On the contrary, the Grenfell Water

Company on that day anticipated that their dam "near the mouth

of a wide gulley having its rise in the Boqolong Ranges and

distant about half a mile from the town, will no doubt be filled

by the first heavy rainfall." The first flooding recorded at

Grenfell from 15th June onwards occurred on Tuesday, 24th September, 2 when "three dams gave way"

"It commenced raining heavily at Grenfell on

Tuesday about 11 a.m. and continued to pour down in

torrents almost without intermission until late on

Wednesday night... ,streams of water rushing down the

Star and other gullies into the main creek, which

before night cut off all pedestrian communication

between George Street and Surrey side'."

It is not credible that the "storm and tempest" which we

have been told accompanied the arrival of Louisa's baby should

have occurred without their being recorded.

Indeed, the proceedings qf the Grenfell Police Court on

17th June would seem to in&cate that weather conditions on the

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night immediately preceding were hardly likely to have been

tempestuous. 3 On that day

"James Cameron was charged with stealing a

silver watch of the value of $8,from the person

of Thomas Mackenzie on the night of 16th-17th

instapt, about half-past twelve o'clock.

Constable 1itzpatrick deposed: he was on

duty about half-past twelve o'clock, on the

night in question, when he saw the prisoner and

Mackenzie sitting together in the road opposite

Mr. Harry's store...."

- a situation scarcely to be desired on a wet and windy night.

And in the same report we read:

"Drunk and Disorderly

"Margaret Carroll was charged with this

offence. Constable Doolan deposed to having seen

the prisoner dri'nk in the street in the midst of

a crowd of men, to whom she was addressing a

torrent of vile language, on the previous day."

We may safely assume that the only remarkable torrent on

that day was the one that fell from tipsy Margaret's lips.

Much extravagant invention has accompanied recitals of the

circumstances of Lawson's birth. To these Henry Lawson him-

self lent currency by his poem, "The wander-light" (Bulletin,

Sydney 10th December 1903)

And they heard the tent-poles clatter,

and the fly in twain was torn -

'Tis the soiled rag of a tatter

Of the tent where I was born....

To this romantic picture we may add the extraordinary

descriptions written some fifty-four years later by Lawsons

sister, Gertrude - born 1877 - of hardships endured by the

mother at the child's birth. Writing in 1921, Gertrude added

a patch of frontier colour to the story by representing her

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mother at the time of Lawson's birth as "the one woman

among 7000 men."

The nurse, who materialized from some unexplained source,

"had to be carried over two miles of flooded country to

help bring the child into the world."

This nurse, Gertrude says in her next sentence,

"returned to her home the same evening," presumably over the

same two miles of flooded country, "and the next day woutd

not come at all."

Louisa falls into a desperate state: "milk fever set in,

with its attendant delirium, and in a short time mother and

son lingered upon the borderland.' Enter now the hero of

the piece, a broken-down bush 'doctor", shocked from his

delirium tremens in a distant cave at revolver point by a

sympathetic digger. This worthy, "Doctor Whiley", rides.

"slushing through mud and rain", under "a tearful moon" to the

tent, where he applies two bull-pups to the delirious mother's

breasts and dispels the 'milk fever'. Thus "for Austr.ilia he

(Doctor Whiley) had kept a light burning that some day would

flash out the blue flame of genius.'

This tale is typical of almost everything that Lawson's

sister wrote about him. There is scarcely one reliable

sentence in the hundreds of pages she wrote for George Rolrne,t-

son, Lawson's publisher.

gainst Gertrude's excursions into romantic fiction posinq

as biography, let us now set the facts and the circumstances

of life onGrenfell when Lawson was born.

In the first place, there were three medical practitioners

in the town by 'l5th June 1867, J.W. Freame, M.D. of the

University of Glasgow; W.E. Austin, 5 "surgeon, accoucheur,

etc."; and Dr. Clarke, who advertised on that day that parents

might "have their children vaccinated daily". In addition,

there were at least two chemists and druggists, J.C. Davies

and J.F. Armstrong.

An active Hospital Committee had been at work since the

beginning of 1867 erecting a hospital, and on the Hospital

Committee was Lawson's father's mate, William Henry John

Slee. Since the hospital was opened on 2th June, it is hard-

ly credible that Slee, who, according to Louisa Lawson, first

saw the baby when he was "a few days old", would have seen

his mate's wife suffer any desperate post-natal maady in a

tent. And the fact that Louisa Lawson was able to travel to

Forbes to register the birth of Henry Lawson on Monday, 22nd

July 1867, suggests that the disabling fever described in

1921 by her daughter is a myth.

Indeed, thero is ground for believing that the whole story

of Lawson's birth in a tent on a wild and stormy night is a

myth. It appears to have first begun in 1903, with the

publication of "The Wander-light", and since then it has been

embellished in an attempt to match Lawson with Burns.

Against it we may set, not only the evidence of a well-

organized community presented in the columns of the Grenfell

Record, which began publication on 15th June 1867, but also

the matter-of-fact recollections of Louisa's elder sister,

Emma. Writing to J.F. Thomas in 1924, Emma Rotenburg said:

"I promised ... to write you what I remember of

Henry Lawson's early childhood and life. He is or

was my nephew I saw first an hour old or less, a

poor thin wee baby.... Henery father & mother joined

the rush (to Grenfell) also I & my husband. We

camped near each other. Two months later Henery was

born. I did not expect him to live.

Aunt Emma went on:

"Quite a lot of rubbish has been in print of his

life and parentage.... About his father's life and

sojourn in Grenfell: he was not quite six months

there. No one knew him: he was a quiet man, liked

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his home, & as he was a Norwegian did not make many

friends as he could not talk about Australia, only

of sea trips & his old home, & he was not known to

anyone in Crenfell & he was a foreigner & they called

each other by their Christian name, always Peter &

Hanse.... On his miner's right was his name Larsen 4

it had been issued at Mudgee. So no one knew who

Larsen was. So all that rubbish the C,renfell Counci)

& Mayor saying so many people knew him & remembered

him was impossible. No man in 50 was known by his

surname amongst a lot of rough diggers coming from

all parts of the world."

There appears to be some truth in this,-sinco the claim

known as "The Result" was staked by W.H.J. Slee, Charles Jan

sen, John Lawrence, 7 and peter the Frenchman. 8 "Peter" was

Nils Uertzberg Larsen's nickname, and from his mateship with

Slee it is reasonable to deduce that he was 'Peter the Erench-

man".

Aunt Emma closed her letter to Thomas with these words:

"I lived three years in Grenfell after my sister

& Husband left & was never oncehasked about them."

Aunt Emma subsequently had several conversations with 3.1'.

Thomas, who pursued the question of the exact birthplace of

Lawson. Thomas later wrote to J.K. Moir, saying 9 :

"I had it authoritatively from an aunt of Henry

Lawson, who was present at her sister's confinement,

that he was born in a hut in the then mining town-

ship of Grcnfell, close to the improvised Lock-up,

locally known as 'The Logs' (because built of logs).

Lawson's mother, during the night, could hear confimees

(drunks', no doubt) in 'The Logs', making a rumpus."

Although this hearsay report is not good evidence, it does,

when laid alongside the Police Court reports of 17th June,

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appear to have a grain of reason in it. Against it must be

placed the documentary fact that only the name of the nurse,

Mrs. Dean,apnears On Henry Lawson's birth certificate as a

witness to the birth. The entry "Witnesses" reads "None", as

does the entry "Accoucheur".

• Out of this welter of conflicting testimony the only

reliable and significant facts that emerge are these: that

Henry Lawson was born at Grenfell on 17th June 1867, and that

his home for the first few months of his life was a tent on

the mining claim pegged out on the One-Mile by his father

and his father's mates.

Precise evidence on the baptism of Lawson has not yet come

to light. No baptismal record has yet been found, so that it

is not possible at present to corroborate the story that a

deaf clergyman, mistaking "Hertzberg" for "Archibald",

christened the child "Henry Archibald". That his full name,

in the family circle, was Henry Archibald Lawson, is neverthe-

less beyond dispute. In 1877 his mother entered his name in

the family Bible (an Oxford 1872 edition) as "Henry Archibald

Lawson": he signed his first extant manuscript "Hal"; and he

used the name "Archie Lawson" to cover his identity in 1888.

Furthermore, in what appears to be an uncompleted registration

form drawn up by Louisa Lawson at Grenfell on Wednesday, 24th

July 1867, but unsigned and not sworn, Lawson's name is

entered as "Henry Archibald Lawson", his father's name being

given as "Peter Archibald Lawson". it appears, then, that

the mother's 'intention was to name him after his grandfather,

Henry Albury, and his father.

1 Back to Grenfell, Official Souvenir, 1924, p.75. The unreliability of Clarkson's declaration is clear from his description of the 19-year-old Louisa Lawson, the poet's mother, as an "old lady". "Tho old lady was very particular," said Clarkson.

2 Grenfell Record, Grenfell, 28th September 1867. As for the story of the dams giving way, John Clarksori said in 1922 that "of the seven dams on the One-Mile, six were washed awa by a thunderstorm about the time of Henry's birth." It is expected that Clarkson's octogenarian reminiscences would not be precise.

3 Grenfell Record, 22nd June 1867.

4 Aussje, 15th October 1921. Gertrude's talc is obviously drawn from Lawson's "A Hero in Dingo-scrubs".

5 Dr. Austin was appointed Medical Officer at the i(ospjt in July, "until September 21, 1867". (Grenfell Record, 6th July 1867)

6 Mitchell Library, MSS. Al 29.

7 Henry Lawson adopted this name for himself in letters and manuscripts written in the years of his decay (1908 onwards) "Lawrence" also approximates the attempt by the Maori child ren he knew at Mangarnaunu in 1897-8 to enunciate "Lawson",

8 Back to Grenfell, p.38.

9 Thomas to Muir, 27th September 1935. J.K. Moir Papers, Public Library, Melbourne.