In Memorium

“He was a bohemian. ‘Beat’ before the term was even invented. Old Phil the poet was a regular visitor in the 1880s and 1890s passing through on his perambulating wanders around the country NSW, Victoria, and Queensland. This was it seems a pattern he settled into out of despair following financial loss and the death of a women he hoped to marry. Occasional work and the recitation of stories and poems in lonely bush settlements sustained him and you could map his path by the appearance of poems he hawked to rural newspapers along the way” “ He appeared in offices a tall, shaggy headed, stooping old man, his unkempt, weeping willow beard swaying in the draught. Soft girlish liquid blue eyes; on his back a bushman’s swag and in his hand an old billy can. He was dirty certainly travel stained and weather soiled; but there was about him the gentleness and simplicity of a child, and a voice soft and musical” written by a Parramatta Journalist.

As an instance of what a marvel old Phil was I might narrate one occurrence. We were near Blackheath when he asked for money as the meat supply had run short. I gave him half a crown, which amount he deemed sufficient; after a time he made appearance again, carrying a bag of vegetables over his shoulder. Another bag contained beef (more than the value of money given him), a pound of tobacco, and new pipe — Phil loved his pipe. Then to my great surprise he tendered the half-crown back to me. - The look on my face made him laugh ; the money was rejected. Thinking him joking. I asked how much I was in his debt. Then was discovered how well he was thought of in those parts. 

This was not all, there was a humorous side to his nature ; after my surprise was over, he said — now Eddie (a name which the writer strove to prevail on him was outrageous, but to no purpose), I have managed to strike something good for both of us. I met a butcher, who called out— Old man, do you want work? Of course my answer was yes, at once! Well, - : ' If you go down that lane a little over a mile you will see a man whittling, be is doing the work for me ; I'm giving, him fourpence an acre for it and he's making a fortune out of it. He wants a mate or two to help push' it along. I promised to look this wonder up and get a good bit of jink on strength of the visit.  Now, if you have a mind to', we will both visit this man prospering on 4d. an acre whittling in these mountain gullies.We went, found the paddock, could hear an axe at work, but not see the user. After struggling through a dense forest of whittles, we hailed a man whose face was flushed, while big beads of perspiration furrowed down the wood stains. He was working like the reputed Trojan. He stopped work a while, when Old Phil asked If he was the man whittling for the Hartley butcher, and making a fortune whittling at four pence an acre. He looked a couple of minutes at us, then exclaimed-— 'For God's sake, go away, here I've been five months working hard, trying to earn five shillings to take me out of the country! The axe one more resounded viciously into the whittles, and we returned to camp with minds engrossed in one more illustration of ' man's inhumanity to man. Needless to say- we did not partake of that whittle fortune. 

Story by a companion of Philip’s Eddie or EO as depicted in the article.                                                     In Pensee Molong Express and Western District Advertiser 8th March 1902

“Lorimer was the true type of bohemian living a gypsy life and despising all conventionality. He would never sleep beneath a roof or on a bed. Heavens blue canopy was his roof and Mother Earths his bed. McGrath’s Hill was a favourite rendezvous for the old man and thither he would go at night fall and camp at the Methodist cemetery there. He had a weakness for cemeteries and loved to be near the silent dead. Old Phil considered there was some credit in being cheerful amid sour surroundings.” Windsor and Richmond Advocate

“Philip Lorimer was a dreamer and in the worlds best sense a poet. His was the poetry of thought rather than rhyme, not that his measure was always halting — but he set a higher value on evoking pure ideals than upon mere mechanical correctness. That his work was uneven is undoubted, but so, poor fellow, was the path he trod. The man who has to write his verses exposed to the summer heat and winter cold, tramping across windswept plains and over mud-choked roads, owning no earthly possession save the rags which hang about his half-starved carcass, cannot be judged by an ordinary standard. Such was the life Lorimer led for years, and it was during this nomad existence that all his work was done. Crude in the main it may be, but never commonplace.

He loved nature too well for that. Nor was it ever bitter, and this reflects with vivid colouring the man's gentle, loveable soul. During all the years he wandered over Australia, neglected and forsaken by those who could have made him supremely content for less money than paid their meanest servant, forced, at times to herd in traveller's huts with men who, drawn together by a common wretchedness, cursed the hand that doled them out their pint of flour, always ill clad, often hungry, not seldom ridiculed by cads not fit to black his poor, sun cracked, travel-worn boots. Lorimer remained through it all a gentleman in the word's only true sense, and to the last let no note of bitterness mar the sweetness of his songs. 

A good crop of years have gathered since Lorimer and myself first met. I was sitting in the old station smoking-den towards the close of a winter's day, when a shadow crossing the window made me look up, and as I did a quaint figure filled the narrow doorway. ' A traveller wanting rations' was my first thought. The old felt hat with drooping rim, the woollen comforter loosely tied, the patched coat, and travel stained, knee- Worn, tweed trousers, hanging over wrinkled, weather-perished bluchers, the billy in its calico case — all proclaimed ' The Flour Inspector.' But the swag was miserably small, and in his hand my visitor carried a package carefully wrapped in oilskin, which seemed no part of a professional tramp's output. 

' Pardon me, but is your name Kenneth Mackay ?' he said, and the moment I hoard the tones of his voice I knew that he was one of that legion who had lost their line of march, never again to stand shoulder to shoulder with the children of love and hope. I told him that  it was — wondering the while who he was, and how much he intended to ask me for. Poor Philip, how I misjudged him ' You write verses,' he continued, adding ' and so do I. My name is Philip Lorimer.' 

Then over a pipe we became friends, as men do in the bush, and I found that the package contained his manuscripts. That night, made presentable in a suit of clothes fished up for the occasion, he dined with us ; afterwards he told me it was the first time he had sat at a table with ladies for years ; but this I can say, that in all his roaming he had forgotten nothing that a well-bred man should remember. Since then I alway suspect a gentleman who has forgotten how to behave himself. 

In the weeks that followed we all grew to love the simple-minded enthusiast, who, at our earnest entreaty, was induced to seek shelter during the worst of the winter in an empty house on the station. While there he wrote much which has since appeared in various country papers published through inland Australia. For Philip contributed to the press of jail the colonies. I well remember his pleasure when a poem of his appeared in the Sydney Mail as he was always anxious to do work for the metropolitan press for the sake of the wider circle of readers thus obtained. The one ambition of his life, to see his poems published in book form, has been denied to him, but after all the end he aimed at has been won.

Throughout inland Australia he has been more widely read than all our poets put together, and in many a hut, by many a camp fire, he will be remembered and loved when more pretentious bards are neglected and forgotten. In Sydney he was practically unknown, but' it seems to me that the bushmen for whom he sang so long and so sweetly might well show that they do not forget, by helping to put a simple monument to their dead singer. - . Nevermore will the fern- shaded streams greet him with their music, nor the winds sing him to sleep  in that lone cave among the mountains whose walls echoed to Kendall's sobbing muse. 

Poor, neglected, bankrupt in earthly hope,' he has gone as the dreamers go. For him no more weary tramps over dust-shrouded tracks, no more hunger, misery and pain. He is at last at rest, and if a blameless life wins for its possessor a peaceful sleep, then he sleeps well. — Vale Philip!” Kenneth Mackay MP Illawarra Mercury.

Philip D Lorimer who died recently at Rookwood Asylum Sydney was a strange example of that specially Australian literary production- the bush poet. He was a son of an eminent surgeon and had been educated at Edinburgh University. He was a friend of Gordon and Kendall and the 3 regularly met in Melbourne. For years and years Phil ‘humped his bluey’ round the out stations of New South Wales and Queensland occasionally selling a poem to the squatter but more often reciting his compositions to the hands at the house station the master and his family perhaps listening on the verandah. He was a reticent man and seldom talked never telling the history of his transformation from a brilliant graduate with a professional career open to him into a peregrinating poet. 

Phil Lorimer. 

"A man I sing whom memory reveres."

AND so poor Phil - vagabond Phil - has passed in his checks, and, minus swag, has gone into quite (to him) new country, in which, may be, he will associate with 'kindred' souls, and strike the chords anew - not for the price of a long beer or a tuck in, but to add his mite to the harmony of the celestial sphere where, as Thomas Cooper tells us, Fraternal spirits  each with civic palm o'er deepest thought brooding of things to come.

I am not sure that is MAL APROPOS to quote Coopers "Purgatory of Suicides" in this connexion, for, in a manner, poor Lorimer was a suicide, albeit a poetical one, for his wandering life, entailing hardship and privation, no doubt hastened his end. Phil wrote some very tuneful screed, however, much of which I have in my possession amongst the lot  being some MSS - which, as far as I am aware appeared in print. When I resided in Windsor he'd give me a periodical call, and in return for the slight monetary help I gave him, he'd leave me some verses. 

Our meetings were brief, and something in this fashion : "Give me a shilling - also two or three slips paper."

Having got what he asked for, he'd vanish for a while into 'Bella Bushell's, emerging therefrom in a very short time with the slips of "copy" in his hand. Then with a "Good Day!" He'd make tracks for "fresh fields and pastures new" - though there could be very little of New South Wales new to Phil Lorimer. 

I have a somewhat painful recollection that the poet was not quite compos when he handed me to copies, and that may account for some crudeness in composition. But that as it may, a man of undoubted genius has passed from among us, and much as we may deplore his habits in life, the many of us who knew him can not but hope that he has found rest - eternal  peace in that quiet land across the dark river - the Euthenasia of the poet's dreams.

PT of Windsor and Richmond Gazette 1897 (Click to view photo in gallery).

"It is always thus that a man born with a poets brains. Kendall died in poverty. Gordon shot himself. The sculler or bruiser can find a reward, but the poor poet may die for ought Australians care."

Philip Lorimer is the most truly poetical of all Australian Poets. His Bohemianism is the most intense of its kind I have seen’.

At the end of the day Philip Durham Lorimer died an outcast, and his wealthy family allowed him to spend his last days, and to die, in the Parramatta Asylum, alone. Very sad indeed.