by Paul Terry
The song was immediately popular in the Winton area and might first have been performed at the town’s North Gregory Hotel soon after it was written. It was sung at Gallipoli and on the Western Front during World War I but it did not become truly famous until 1938 when the internationally renowned baritone Peter Dawson recorded it on a gramophone record with the music arranged by Thomas Wood. Then, with the uniquely identifiable music and words pouring from wireless speakers around the country, it really was Australia’s national song.
For the rest of his life, Paterson spoke little about ‘Waltzing Matilda’. He was never one to push the virtues of his own work and his reticence to discuss the song he had co-created might reflect no more than the natural reserve that he brought to all aspects of his public life. It has been suggested that he simply did not like the song, or that as a happily married man it brought back memories he preferred to forget. The latter may be so, but the former seems unlikely. Late in his life, in a chat at his Sydney home with a journalist friend, Vince Kelly, Paterson reportedly said he had ‘a greater affection for “Waltzing Matilda” than almost all his other verses’. If so, it is fitting that the song that delighted millions of Australians brought some pleasure to the man who wrote it.
8
GROWING PAINS
Paterson returned to Sydney, suddenly single and probably a little bruised by the unsavoury nature of the break-up with Sarah Riley. As he resumed work in his law office, he perhaps gave little thought to the song he had written with Christina Macpherson. Duty to his family still called and, by necessity, the unloved profession of law had to be practised. What his business partner John Street thought of the treatment of his cousin Sarah is not known.
On a mild spring night in October 1895, Paterson joined dozens of well-heeled guests at a spectacular coming-out ball for Alice Walker, at Rosemount, the grand Sydney home of her uncle. A well-bred young lady from Tenterfield Station in northern New South Wales, Alice was connected to some of the colony’s finest and wealthiest families, and the guest list at her ball read like a who’s who of Sydney society. Notably, most of the guests were unmarried. If, as seems likely, Paterson’s visit to Dagworth Station had been made in August, then he, too, was single when he joined the other guests at Rosemount that spring evening.
He arrived to find warm light spilling from the many windows and music tinkling out from the ballroom. Servants bustled around offering champagne and wine, and bouquets of artistically arranged flowers made splashes of bright colour throughout the house. In the gardens, Chinese lanterns glowed softly in leafy, walled enclosures. Each newcomer was welcomed and then, when everybody had arrived, eighteen-year-old Alice was formally introduced to her 200 guests. After a sumptuous meal, an ‘excellent band’ struck up lively waltzes and finely dressed couples took to the floor.
Perhaps the handsome and worldly Barty danced with Alice that night. Maybe they even chatted lightly as they enjoyed a chaperoned stroll in the leafy gardens. Barty’s days as a single man were a long way from over—his aunt Nora wrote at this time, ‘Bartie [sic] has so many lady friends’—but the pretty, athletic debutante he met at Rosemount that night may well have caught his eye because they married eight years later and their long and happy union endured until his death.
In the meantime, his social life was a whirl. A week after Alice’s coming-out party he joined hundreds of others at a garden party at Government House, and a week after that he rode in the final event of the Sydney Hunt Club’s season—the point-to-point steeplechase from Blacktown to Prospect. Paterson dearly prized steeplechase victories but in this case he had to settle for second. On 14 December, he attended a performance in Sydney of A Club Life, a comic opera that he had co-written with the composer Ernest Truman. The Sydney Morning Herald said it was ‘handsomely staged and for the most part brightly performed’. At the end of the opening night performance, the audience cheered as Paterson and Truman bowed on the stage.
In January 1896, the journalist and poet, Bernard Espinasse, published a revealing article about Paterson in the Melbourne journal Table Talk. Espinasse discovered a reserved and private Paterson, a man with a deep well of humour and broad interests. Interestingly, Paterson told his interviewer that he regarded himself not as a poet, but as a ‘versifier’. Espinasse agreed that his subject, so loosely built, with the legs of a horseman, certainly did not look like a poet . . .
That is, till you looked at his face. And then possibly the first thing to strike you in the dark complexioned, mobile countenance would be the abundant evidences of humour. But the eyes are once more the windows of the soul. Quick moving, large and bright, they carry in their depths a light which promises well for the future of another and still better ‘Clancy of the Overflow’.
It was this article that revealed the family racehorse as the source of the ‘Banjo’ pseudonym, answering a question that might otherwise have plagued Paterson fans for generations. Espinasse also discovered that Paterson often received gifts and letters of congratulations from bushmen. Many of these gifts were simply addressed to ‘The Banjo, Sydney’ but always reached their destination. And while Paterson was a hero to the rough-and-ready bushmen, Espinasse found a man with refined tastes:
Mr Paterson (who, by-the-by is just into the thirties), is a moderate smoker, almost a non-drinker, and owns to a fancy for dogs. He has already spent a good deal of money on paintings by local artists, and intends to add very considerably to his present art gallery. One fine water-colour sketch of a mob of wild horses by Mahony occupies the pride of place on his walls . . .
Later that year, Paterson created one of his most enduring characters in ‘Saltbush Bill’—‘a drover tough, as ever the country knew’. This rugged character was reprised several times in years to come, appearing in a number of papers in 1897, 1898, 1903 and 1905, but it was another Bill—Mulga Bill—who best captured the essence of the changing times. In July 1896, ‘Mulga Bill’s Bicycle’ appeared in The Sydney Mail, complete with illustrations. With typical Paterson humour, it tackled the new fad of cycling, but for poor Mulga Bill it was calamitous.
’Twas Mulga Bill from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, ‘Excuse me, can you ride?’
Mulga Bill was reluctant to brag but did so anyway. None could ride like him, he said. In fact, he was rather gifted. Inevitably, Bill’s first ride was a disaster. ‘White as chalk’, he rocketed down a mountain road, so badly out of control that even the wombats in their holes feared for their lives. When the bike struck a stone, Bill’s maiden bicycle journey came to an inglorious ending in the waters of Dead Man’s Creek. The bike remained in the creek and Mulga Bill returned to horseback. It was a funny tale that made people laugh but also hinted at a sense of nostalgia for the numbered days of the horse as the main means of transport.
Meanwhile, Banjo’s real identity—already an open secret in the literary world—was now known to all. Newspapers described him as ‘modest with much right to be otherwise’ and noted his ballads could be heard ‘wherever the white man has settled’. He continued to earn a few shillings by writing for The Bulletin and other journals, including The Australasian Pastoralists’ Review and Sketch. Writing was his joy but the law still paid the bills.
He was now a sought-after figure in Sydney’s arts and literary scene. In 1897, his interest in the arts was reflected in his appointment as co-editor of the literary magazine, The Antipodean. It was a high-quality, if sporadically produced, publication that—like the redoubtable J.F. Archibald—dared to suggest Australian artists or writers could stand alongside their Old World counterparts.
Those published in the December 1897 edition included the no
velist Rolf Boldrewood (real name Thomas Browne) who wrote Robbery Under Arms, Ethel Turner, author of Seven Little Australians, and Paterson’s rival, Henry Lawson. The 1898 edition—which included Paterson’s ‘Saltbush Bill’s Second Fight’—was sold around the country for the price of one shilling and sixpence, and the advertising assured readers that it was good value for ‘Banjo’s contribution on its own’.
Sydney had a burgeoning bohemian scene in the 1890s, and Paterson could sometimes be seen in the company of clever, creative types at desirable locations. Among his friends were The Bulletin artist Phil May and the legendary bush poet and horseman, Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant. In June 1898, a society journalist Florence Blair, who wrote chatty articles on bohemianism in Sydney, reported that Harry Morant and Barty Paterson were often to be seen on Thursday afternoons at the studios of the artist Tom Robertson, surrounded by ‘many jars and art objects . . . brightened by flowers and draperies’:
H. Morant looks like a man who has been used to horses all his life, has a sunburnt face and a non-society air, but ‘Barty’ Paterson as he is familiarly called, although the singer of bush delights, is a thorough town man in appearance, thin faced and clean-shaven, always to be seen at Government House balls, Town Hall concerts and fashionable first nights, with a great passion for polo.
This portrait of Paterson as an important figure in Sydney’s social circles was an accurate one, yet the presentation of him as a shining star of the bohemian scene does not gel with the memories of those who knew him. As the artist Norman Lindsay remembered in 1965’s Bohemians at the Bulletin, Paterson tended to avoid mixing with writers, artists or ‘other self-elected intellectuals’. According to Lindsay, Paterson preferred the company of men of action, rather than men of words. And while he had many acquaintances, he had few really close friends.
Lindsay felt the best word to describe Paterson’s personality was ‘sardonic’. He spoke with a slow drawl but never with an excess of words. His conversation was terse and factual and ‘quite deleted of intellectual flourishes’. He was an aristocrat whose class status kept others at arm’s length—yet he was not a snob. He judged a man by his achievements, not his pretensions. To Lindsay, Paterson was a man to respect, if not like. And despite an apparently mistaken recollection that Paterson suffered from bile, Lindsay remembered a man whose sharp intellect was matched by a fine physical presence:
[He was] a tall man with a finely built, muscular body, moving with the ease of perfectly co-ordinated reflexes. Black hair, dark eyes, a long, finely articulated nose, an ironic mouth, a dark pigmentation of skin due to the prime affliction of his life—bile. Every morning he suffered its effect of nausea till he had got rid of its accumulation. His eyes, as eyes must be, were his most distinctive feature, slightly hooded, with a glance that looked beyond one as he talked. If he focused it on you, it could be tolerant or completely ruthless, as he accepted or rejected you as a human being.
One man whom Paterson readily accepted was Harry Morant. Their introduction came by way of a letter from Paterson’s uncle, Arthur Barton, a pastoralist from north-western Queensland who had hired Morant to break in some horses. Morant was heading to Sydney and planned to call on Barty. Barton felt it prudent to include a good description of the man who was visiting his nephew. Morant was a man, Uncle Arthur wrote, of manners, education and skill—he even claimed to be the son of an English gentleman—yet he was reckless, utterly fearless and not entirely to be trusted:
He can do anything better than most people: can write verses; break in horses; trap dingoes; yard scrub cattle; dance, run, fight, drink and borrow money; anything except work. I don’t know what is the matter with the chap. He seems to be brimming over with flashness, for he will do any daredevil thing so long as there is a crowd to watch him. He jumped a horse over a stiff three-rail fence one dark night by the light of two matches which he had placed on the post!
Barely had Paterson finished reading the letter than Morant arrived at his office. Bronzed, clean-shaven Morant had the physical prowess of a consummate horseman and clear, confident eyes. He was a man after Paterson’s heart and they hit it off immediately. Time ‘passed on golden wings’ that afternoon as they talked of stag hunting on Exmoor and ‘ripping’ cattle in the scrubs at the back of Dubbo. Morant so enjoyed the chat that he realised with a start that it was three o’clock and the banks were now closed. He needed to cash a cheque. Could his new friend oblige with a fiver? With thoughts of Uncle Arthur’s letter fresh in mind, Paterson politely declined. For his part, Morant ‘bore no malice for the refusal’.
*
Paterson and his new friend had much in common. Morant was clearly of good stock, and, like Paterson, he was a bush balladeer. Both were masters of horses, although as a horse ‘breaker’ the Englishman Morant was second to none. It was this skill that provided the pseudonym he used for poems published in The Bulletin. Both men were accomplished steeplechasers and polo players. Each admired the other. But at the same time, their differences were profound. Sober-minded, respectable Paterson was a man who lived by the rules. Hard-drinking, womanising ne’er-do-well Morant lived by rules of his own.
When he arrived in Australia in 1883, the man who would be forever known as ‘The Breaker’ was already on the make. Exiled from his family in England, possibly over gambling debts, he was packed off to the colonies in disgrace. Soon he appeared in western Queensland as Edwin Murrant—the only son of the widowed matron of a workhouse in Bridgewater, England. But soon Edwin Murrant became Harry Morant—a subtle difference in surname that underpinned his claims to be the illegitimate son of one of England’s most honourable gentleman, the dashing naval officer, George (later Admiral Sir George) Digby Morant.
The Breaker’s claim to descend from one of the Empire’s best and oldest families is borne out by the nature of his education. As a child of the workhouse, he was schooled in the arts of fighting, thieving and scamming. But he also received one of the best scholastic educations that money could buy. As noted by Nick Bleszynski in Shoot Straight, You Bastards!, a workhouse matron who earned just £40 a year had sent her son to a prestigious public school normally available only to the children of the elite. If Catherine Murrant could not pay to make young Edwin the mannered gentleman he became, then who did? There is a strong case that the benefactor was indeed the worthy George Morant, paying his dues for a moment of passion with a woman below his station back in the early spring of 1864.
Although Morant senior later vehemently denied paternity, there was no doubt that the twenty-eight-year-old Edwin Murrant, alias Harry Morant, was of good background. As events later showed, he entered the good graces of fine families in England and Australia with ease. Cultured and compelling, he could write a poem to charm a lady, or skewer a squealing heifer with a spear from the back of a galloping horse. The Breaker was a man of many talents.
He arrived in Queensland penniless and seemingly in disgrace. After a short stint as a horseman with a travelling circus, he drifted west to the sun-baked inland where his skills on horseback secured him a job as a stockman on a cattle station near Charters Towers. It was there that he met a striking Irish lass, the beautiful and spirited twenty-four-year-old Daisy May O’Dwyer.
They became Mr and Mrs Edwin Murrant in March 1884, but the marriage was doomed to be a short one. Daisy was not what she seemed, and nor was Edwin. Daisy claimed to have moved to Australia for health reasons but there was a cloud over her past. She had worked as a governess in Dublin but left Ireland suddenly after a scandal that might have related to the suicide of the young man of the house where she worked. Although she hid secrets of her own, she soon realised her new husband was not a good catch when he scammed his way out of paying the £5 fee for their wedding.
Things soon got worse. In April, Edwin appeared in court charged with the theft of a saddle and thirty-two pigs. He was acquitted of both charges, but the fledgling marriage was already in terminal decline and, five weeks after the wedding, Daisy threw hi
m out. She went on to become famous as the anthropologist Daisy Bates, and Edwin, who changed his name to Harry Harbord Morant, began a new life that would end in front of a firing squad seventeen years later.
The newly single Harry raised hell across western Queensland. Constantly claiming a remittance would arrive from his people in England at any day, he drifted from town to town, often departing with creditors hot on his tail. On horseback, he had no fear. He performed breathtaking stunts for no more than a dare. Hard-riding and hard-drinking, he left a trail of dropped jaws, broken hearts and unpaid debts. He was a man to remember.
By 1895, Morant and Barty Paterson were on excellent terms. They exchanged letters in which Morant described his outback adventures to his office-bound friend in Sydney. Harry wrote of bloody hunts for cleanskin heifers through the scrub country, ‘pig sticking’ with a lancer’s spear, battles with outlaw horses and a drunken escapade in which he was badly injured when he fell into a deep cellar. Although Paterson later turned his back on his one-time friend, in the halcyon days of the 1890s he undoubtedly admired and respected Morant—and was maybe a little envious of his dashing, irresponsible ways.
The passing years did not blunt The Breaker’s enthusiasm for dangerous stunts. In 1897, he earned fame for his mastery of one of the wildest and meanest ‘outlaw’ horses ever to hurl a man from its back.
It was at the Hawkesbury Show, north of Sydney, in May that he tamed Dargin’s Grey—the feared equine star of the lauded Martini’s Buckjumping Show. The crowds shouted that day that Morant would be the subject of an inquest, ‘sure as eggs’, if he tried to mount the grey outlaw. But the crowd knew less about The Breaker than they did about horses and Morant tamed the beast despite breaking both stirrups early in his ride. The fickle crowd turned from forecasting Morant’s sudden death to applauding his heroism. The way The Hawkesbury Herald remembered it a few years later, the triumphant Morant was both brave and humble: