“ONE GENIUS ENOUGH!”

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 September 1927, Page 9

“ONE GENIUS ENOUGH!”

HENRY LAWSON’S FAMILY PILGRIMAGE TO GRAVE Henry Lawson, the anniversary of whose deatli was celebrated in Sydney by a pilgrimage to his grave in the Waverley Cemetery, -left Australia a rich legacy of verse and prose. He left it other legacies—a widow, a son, and a daughter. * The Commonwealth Government gave Henry Lawson a State funeral, following his death five years ago. The Prime Minister, Mr. W. M. Hughes, delivered an impressive tribute. But official recognition of Australia’s most representative poet ended there. The small pension granted by the Federal Government from its Literary Fund was not continued to his widow, who is still earning a living as an employee of the State Widows’ Pensions branch. It could have well afforded, out of its surplus millions, to continue that slight allowance. The Poet's Family The only son of the poet, Jam's Lawson, who figures in some of his father’s best-known verses: — “You are a child of field and flood, But with the gipsy strains”— is a tall, slight young man, now teaching in the State school at Rockdale. Ho has some of the family gift for literary expression, and writes occasionally for periodicals. He spent some years at Hawkesbury Agricultural College. Miss Bertha Lawson, the poet’s daughter, is a«B.?< of Sydney University. She has a position at the Mitchell Library. There are relics of her father there, including the stick he carried in his later pilgrimages and the pen with which he wrote his last verses. A brunette, with a soft-speaking voice, Miss Lawson is naturally proud of her father's memory. When spoken to by a “Telegraph Pictorial” representative recently, she said she did not write herself —“one genius is enough.” She hoped that literature lovers would honour the day of her father’s death by going out to the grave. “I think they will, if they know about it in time,” she remarked, rather wistfully. The grave is‘in the Church of England portion of the cemetery. Near it is a stunted cypress tree—the only t ree within some yards of the headstone. It is a simple headstone erected by the family. No “storied urn or animated bust” marks the place, overlooking the sea, where Henry Lawson sleeps his last sleep.