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Patricia
Clarke reveals the family connections between poet A.B. 'Banjo'
Paterson and novelist Rosa Praed
Interconnecting
relationships between major families in the small world of colonial
Australia are commonplace to historians researching nineteenth-century
material. But literary links? Who would expect a family connection
between Australia’s great balladist, 'Banjo' Paterson, and Rosa
Praed, the first Australian-born novelist to achieve a significant
international reputation?
The
link was Nora Murray-Prior, one of the 'hidden' pioneer women of
our colonial era, who nurtured her network of relatives through
letters. In strikingly direct and fluent prose, interspersed with
acerbic comments on the issues of the day, Nora kept the branches
of her family, whether on far-flung stations or in city suburbs,
informed of the doings of others.
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| Portrait
of Rosa Campbell Praed Reproduced from the frontispiece of My
Australian Girlhood: Sketches and Impressions of Bush Life by
Mrs Campbell Praed (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1902) |
Born
on 3 December 1846 at Boree Nyrang, a station of some 30 000 hectares
between the settlements of Orange, Molong, Wellington and Dubbo
in the central west of New South Wales, Nora Clarina Barton was
a member of the distinguished Barton and Darvall families. Her uncle,
lawyer Sir John Darvall, was a Member of Parliament and a Minister
in several New South Wales governments; her brother, Robert Darvall
Barton, wrote Reminiscences of an Australian Pioneer.
In 1863,
one of Nora’s older sisters, Rose Isabella Barton, married Scottish-born
Andrew Bogle Paterson. Their first child, Andrew Barton Paterson,
later famous as 'Banjo' Paterson from the pseudonym 'The Banjo'
he adopted for his early contributions to the Bulletin, was born
at Nyrambla, a relative’s station near Orange, in 1864. When Andrew
Barton Paterson (always known to his family as Bartie or Barty)
was a young child, they moved to Illalong, a 4000-hectare property
near Binalong, north-west of Yass, where his father was manager.
After some early schooling, Bartie Paterson became a pupil at Sydney
Grammar School. He boarded with his grandmother, Emily Mary Barton,
who, after the death of her husband in 1863, had sold Boree Nyrang
and moved to 'Rockend' at Gladesville. Emily Barton was herself
a prolific poet and accomplished correspondent. A collection of
her poems, Straws on the Stream, was published in 1907, and a new
edition with the same title but containing a different selection
of poems was published in 1910. Some of her early letters and a
diary are included in Strugglers and Settlers: Darvall Family Letters
1839-1849 edited by a descendant, Jeremy Long.
Not
long before Bartie Paterson arrived in Sydney to stay with his grandmother,
his aunt, Nora Barton, returned from a trip to England. For a short
time she trained as a nurse at the Sydney Infirmary under Lucy Osburn,
recently arrived in Sydney to introduce the Nightingale system of
nursing training. In 1872, Nora, at the age of 26, married widower,
station-owner and politician, Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior, then 53.
Murray-Prior was Postmaster-General in several Queensland governments,
and a member of the Legislative Council until his death in 1892.
By her marriage, Nora acquired eight stepchildren, some nearly as
old as she was. They included Rosa, then 21, who only two months
previously had married English-born Campbell Praed. For the next
three years Rosa and Campbell lived on an isolated cattle station
covering nearly the whole of Curtis Island, off the Queensland coast
between Gladstone and Rockhampton.
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Unknown
photographer
[Portrait of A.B. Paterson, bush balladist (1864-1941])
photograph
From the Ravenscroft Album Pictorial Collection
(PIC Album 384-385)
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From
her marriage until the death of her husband, Nora Murray-Prior’s
home was at Maroon, a station on the upper Logan River, close to
the Queensland-New South Wales border ranges. From Maroon her mail
stretched far and wide. Her correspondents included her sister Rose
Paterson at Illalong and stepdaughter Rosa Praed, first at Curtis
Island and, from 1876, in England. Both depended on Nora for support
and long-distance companionship. They shared confidences about childbirth
and their abhorrence of further pregnancies, problems in educating
their children, their latest reading, as well as family news.
Nora
told Rosa Praed that her sister Rose was the family member with
whom she had most sympathy but 'she takes the world "hardly" & has
rather morbid views on life'. Her husband is a great good fellow,
of whom I have always been very fond ... When they were first married
they were well off, but he & his brother went into stations on the
Barcoo just before the bad times in 67 & 68. Of course the drought
of that year & then the depression in trade smashed them up. One
died soon after & this one took the management of the station which
had been his own, from the man who had bought it from the bank.
They have never been poor in the sense that we call poor out here,
& are now tolerably well off ... as they have had some money left
them ... but she has had much toil & trouble & looks thin & old.
Whenever
she was left long without a letter, Rose Paterson complained from
Illalong: I am in a state of semi-starvation for want of news. We
might as well be on a desert island as here for all we know of the
doings of the rest of the world or even of our own family-now that
Mama has so many of us in different places to write to ... [our
brothers] never have half an hour to spare for us poor exiles existing
(not living) in monotonous torpidity in this poor old ruin of a
habitation.
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Portrait
of Nora Clarina Murray-Prior, nee Barton, 1873
From the Murray-Prior Family Papers (1810-1945)
Manuscript Collection (MS7801)
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As Bartie
Paterson grew up, Rose kept Nora informed of his progress at school,
his accidents-particularly injuries to an arm which was broken several
times-and a 'very bad attack' of typhoid that kept him 'pale & thin'
but 'fortunately' with 'no deafness or mental weakness as result
of the fever'. By the time he was 16, Rose Paterson reported family
discussions on whether he should be articled to a lawyer or try
for a university scholarship. Nora relayed this news to Rosa Praed.
From
1880 when Rosa’s first novel, An Australian Heroine, was published
in England to great acclaim, Nora kept her sister informed of Rosa’s
publishing successes. Rose Paterson was amazed. She wondered how
Rosa Praed had 'managed to get so good an education in the colonies'.
Nora could explain that Rosa, to a great extent, had educated herself
through omnivorous reading. Education was always on Rose Paterson’s
mind. Although Bartie was sent to school in Sydney, his five sisters
were taught by Rose and a succession of governesses, some of them
unsatisfactory.
When
Rosa Praed became ill in England and it was thought she would have
to return to Australia to recuperate, her father Thomas Murray-Prior
proposed travelling to England to bring her back, a return trip
that would take close to a year. It surprised Rose Paterson that
he could contemplate such a trip without his wife: leaving you on
the station all the time of his absence-I wouldn't stand that if
I were you-surely Mrs Praed’s husband is man enough to bring or
send her out if her health requires it-or if it is a pleasure trip
in prospect why not distribute the children & go too.
She
did not think Rosa Praed was 'to be pitied since she has the talent
& power to make a income ... for herself independently of her [husband]'.
After Murray-Prior sailed for England, Rose returned to the same
subject telling her sister: It was very self-sacrificing of you
to urge your husband to go home & to take the double duties upon
your own shoulders for so long for the sake of your step-daughter.
I hope she will appreciate the sacrifice.
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Portrait
of Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior, c.1877
From the Murray-Prior Family Papers (1810-1945)
Manuscript Collection (MS7801) |
As Rosa
Praed’s fame gathered momentum, Rose and Nora were caught up in
the excitement of having such a famous relative. Rose Paterson thought
Policy and Passion, Rosa Praed’s novel portraying social and political
life in colonial Queensland, 'a very original, powerful & remarkable
book'. When Rosa Praed turned to theosophy, both for spiritual guidance
and as a source of material for novels, Rose urged Nora to tell
her of 'Mrs Praed’s latest experiences with the Theosophists'.
Rosa
Praed’s reputation as a novelist was past its peak by 1895 when
'Banjo' Paterson became famous as the author of the immensely popular
The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses. In that same year, he
wrote the words of Waltzing Matilda at Dagworth Station, north-west
of Winton in far west Queensland. Rose Paterson did not live to
see her son achieve these heights, although he was a highly-regarded
Bulletin poet before her death in 1893 at the age of just 49.
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| Covers
of My Australian Girlhood: Sketches and Impressions of Bush
Life by Mrs Campbell Praed (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1902)
and Rosa! Rosa! A Life of Rosa Praed, Novelist and Spiritualist
by Patricia Clarke (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University
Press, 1999) |
The
paths of 'Banjo' Paterson and Rosa Praed, these two writers in such
different genres, crossed again soon after the start of World War
I. 'Banjo' Paterson had been a war correspondent during the Boer
War and, when war was declared in 1914, he rushed to report this
new conflict. Nora, who had been on a leisurely tour of Europe at
the start of the war, became trapped in England and, with her eyesight
failing, had passed the family letter writing to her daughter, Ruth
Murray-Prior. Ruth told her half-sister Rosa Praed: Of course the
fever attacked [Bartie] again this time but the Commonwealth would
only allow one correspondent to go with the First Contingent & he
was not that one ... he is now trying by influence & other means
exerted on the powers that be to get to the Front ... & is so keen
that I suppose he will get where he wants to before very long. But
for war correspondents, it is a very long way to the front.
Letters
written by Nora Murray-Prior and members of her extended family
are in the Manuscript Collection in the National Library. More of
her letters are on microfilm in the Newspaper and Microfilm Room.
Patricia
Clarke has written a number of books about women in colonial Australia,
including several biographies of women writers. Her latest book
is Rosa! Rosa! A Life of Rosa Praed, Novelist and Spiritualist,
published by Melbourne University Press
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