John "Jack" Mitchell, often referred to only as Mitchell, is a recurring fictional character in short stories and sketches by Australian writer Henry Lawson. He is widely considered one of Lawson's most memorable characters.[1]
Mitchell is a "shrewd, kindly, swagman."[2] In the story "Enter Mitchell", Lawson describes him as "short and stout and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He had red hair and small, twinkling grey eyes, and ‒ what often goes with such things ‒ the expression of a born comedian."[3] Mitchell is usually depicted as a traveller, often accompanied by a companion with whom he shares stories.[2]
Manning Clark characterised Mitchell as follows:
Jack Mitchell knew a thing or two; he had been around. He had the sardonic wit; he expected little from life; he expected nothing but brief pleasure and then never-ending pain from a woman; he knew only one real pleasure in life, in which he let them see how the bushman could "one-up" all comers; he let slip hints of his melancholy, and his conviction that things would never be any different."[4]
Lawson created two Mitchell stories, "Some Day" and "A Camp-fire Yarn", by changing the character name from Marsters to Mitchell, and a third by re-titling "That Swag" to "Enter Mitchell."[5]
Critic John Barnes suggests that Mitchell functions as a persona rather than a fully developed character, replacing the author as narrator and storyteller, an "instrument by which Lawson can create states of feeling and so define his sense of being human."[2] He has been likened to the Romantic outcast figure of The Wanderer.[2] Lawson's Mitchell stories explore the domestic consequences of the bohemian lifestyle.[6] In the 1925 story "Mitchell on Matrimony", we learn that Mitchell's wife has left him, and Mitchell suggests to his companion that husbands should be more considerate of their wives.[6]