Waltzing Matilda

Paterson was reputed to be a handsome young man, very popular with the ladies, an outstanding tennis player, a fairly good boxer and rifle-shot. "He danced beautifully," his admiring sister said. He fell in love with a girl from the well-to-do society in which he and his grandmother moved, but that engagement ended shortly; he spent too much time with his polo pony, Pegasus, and did not pay enough attention to the girl. That became an often repeated complaint in Paterson's life.

When he was 21 he began writing verses, published by the Sydney Bulletin. He signed them "by The Banjo." His pseudonym had nothing to do with a musical instrument. The Banjo was a family-owned racehorse whom he had ridden in picnic races in the country. (In their ceaseless assaults on the English language Australians came to call a frying pan a banjo, and the horse's name derived from that.) Paterson seemed reluctant to let anyone know that he—gentleman rider, member of the Sydney Hunt Club, occupant of a cramped office in the law firm Street and Paterson—was The Banjo.

The literary editor of the Bulletin, J.F. Archibald, was a nationalist, determined to create Australian literature whether anyone wanted it or not. Until he appeared, writers in Australia generally thought of England as home, wrote for English readers and neglected the life around them. Archibald published Paterson's first poem without ever meeting him. He wrote Paterson, asking him to call.

"I climbed a grimy flight of stairs until I stood before a door marked 'Mr. Archibald, Editor,' " Paterson later said. "On the door was pinned a spirited drawing of a gentleman with a dagger through him, and on the drawing was written: 'Archie, this is what will happen to you if you don't use my drawing about the policeman!' It cheered me up a lot."

At their meeting Archibald said, "Do you know anything about the bush?" Paterson told him he had been reared there. "All right," Archibald said. "Have a go at the bush. Have a go at anything that strikes you."

Paterson responded with a poem about a bush fire. It was formless and undistinguished, but Archibald published it. Next came a curious soliloquy called A Dream of the Melbourne Cup. A tough horse player stuffs himself with indigestible food and liquor to produce a nightmare in which he will dream the name of the winner of the cup. At that time the cup had been in existence for 25 years.

Paterson's poem was published three weeks before the 1886 race. There were 28 entries, and he worked the names of five horses into the poem—but not Arsenal, who won. The dream race begins:

...here they come,
And the hoof-strokes roar like a mighty drum
Beat by a hand unsteady;

Trident, a Sydney entry, comes down the straight head-to-head with another horse. The sleeper remembers: he had bet on Trident! With odds of a million-to-five he'd won a million! But when he tries to collect, the bookie fades away and he wakes with indigestion.

Archibald scribbled on the margin: "Doggerel. Fun in the idea." Modern readers may agree, for Paterson could write some perfunctory lines, such as