With the portraits of local identities Ben Hall, Stan McCabe, Jan Lehane and Henry Lawson being relocated from the Main Street to their new home at the Girl Guide and Scout Hall at the start of this year, The Grenfell Record will be featuring a short history of each identity put together by the Grenfell Historical Society and Museum.
HENRY LAWSON
Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson was born 17 June 1867 in a town on the Grenfell goldfields of New South Wales.
His father was Niels Hertzberg Larson, a Norwegian-born miner.
Niels Larsen went to sea at 21 and arrived in Melbourne in 1855 to join the gold rush.
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Henry Lawson’s parents met in the Mudgee locality, and Niels married Louisa Albury on 7 July 1866 when he was 32 and she was 18.
On Henry’s birth, at Grenfell in 1867, the family surname was Anglicised and Henry’s father, Niels Larson, became Peter Lawson.
The newly married couple were to have an unhappy marriage.
Louisa after family raising, took a significant part in women’s movements, was a poet and publisher, and likely had a strong influence on her son’s literary work in its earliest days.
Lawson attended school at Eurunderee from 1876 but experienced an ear infection around this time.
This left him with partial deafness, and by the time he was fourteen he had lost his hearing entirely.
Lawson was a keen reader, and this became a major source of his education because, due to his deafness, he had trouble learning in the classroom.
In 1896 Lawson married Bertha Bredt Junior, daughter of the prominent socialist, Bertha Bredt.
The marriage ended very unhappily, with Bertha filing for divorce.
They had two children, son Joseph and daughter Bertha.
Lawson worked in Albany, then received an offer to write for the Brisbane Boomerang in 1891.
He returned to Sydney and wrote for the Bulletin, which in 1892 paid for an inland trip where he experienced the harsh realities of drought affected New South Wales.
It was said of the trek Lawson took between Hungerford and Bourke as “the most important trek in Australian literary history.”
Like many Australians, Lawson lived in a city, but had had plenty of experience in outback life, in fact, many of his stories reflected his experiences in real life.
In 1903 he bought a room at Mrs Isabel Byers’ Coffee Palace in North Sydney.
This marked the beginning of a 20-year friendship. Despite his position as the most celebrated Australian writer of the time, Lawson was deeply depressed and perpetually poor.
He lacked money due to unfortunate royalty deals with publishers. His ex-wife repeatedly reported him for non-payment of child maintenance.
He was gaoled at Darlinghurst Goal for drunkenness, wife desertion, child desertion, and non-payment of child support seven times between 1905 and 1909, for a total of 159 days.
Lawson became withdrawn, alcoholic, and unable to carry on the usual routine of life.
Byers (a poet herself) regarded Lawson as Australia’s greatest living poet and hoped to sustain him well enough to keep him writing.
She negotiated on his behalf with publishers, helped to arrange contact with his children, contacted friends and supporters to help him financially, and assisted and nursed him through his mental and alcohol problems.
It was in Mrs Isabel Byers’ home that Henry Lawson died, of a cerebral haemorrhage, in Abbotsford, Sydney on 2 September 1922. He was given a state funeral.
His funeral was attended by Prime Minister Billy Hughes, and the (later) Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang (who was the husband of Lawson’s sister-in-law Hilda Bredt), as well as thousands of citizens. He is interred at Waverley Cemetery.
Lawson was the first person to be granted a New South Wales state funeral (traditionally reserved for Governors, Chief Justices etc.) on the grounds of having been a ‘distinguished citizen’.
Grenfell honoured Henry Lawson, the famous Australian Poet, by marking his birthplace with a permanent Memorial. Opening of the Henry Lawson Obelisk in 1924 during the Back to Grenfell Week Celebrations. The Obelisk stands on the land where Henry was born.
Members of his family and friends of the Lawson family were present were Special Guests for the celebrations, and the Opening and Dedication.
