DHL in Australia research, 1972-2002

Part 1: September 1972-March 1990

In 1972 Dr Warren Roberts, Director of the Humanities Research Centre (HRC) in Austin, Texas - where we* had been examining Ottoline’s letters - suggested we look into Lawrence’s time in Australia.  After we had finished the manuscript of Ottoline in mid-1974, we came out to Australia, arriving in Sydney in early September.  There we read Kangaroo (which we had known only from the chapter on Lawrence in John Douglas Pringle’s 1956 book, Australian Accent) and did some preliminary, but extensive, research.  But in March 1975 we had to return to London because of copyright problems with Ottoline.

[*”we” is Sandra Darroch (nee Jobson) and “I” (who is Robert Darroch)]

The main record of this early stage (mid-1974 to late-1975) of the research is contained in letters to and from various people.  The first relevant letter, dated 6/8/74 and sent from London, was to the HRC and its assistant director.  (At first this was a joint project, but in early 1976 I assumed the major role, Sandra assisting part-time with the research.)

6/8/74

Kensington Park Road [KPR]
London

Dear Dr Farmer*

Many thanks for your letter.  I had a long talk with Charles Ross last Saturday up at Oxford where he was receiving his degree…My book on Ottoline is now virtually completed…I have two projects in mind.  The first is a short-term idea which my husband and I will collaborate on.  We would like to do a fairly small book or monograph on D.H. Lawrence in Australia:  his stay there, its influences on him, and the work he did there…we plan to finish [it] within 12 months…

Sandra Darroch

[*Dr David Farmer was assistant director of the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin]

4/9/74

Humanities Research Center [HRC]

Austin, Texas

Dear Miss Jobson

…I like the idea of a small book or monograph on D.H. Lawrence in Australia…I know there are some materials in the National Library in Perth…

David Farmer

In Sydney we began examining “back copies” of newspapers and other records. 

15/1/75

Sheehy Street

Glebe, Sydney

Dear Dr Farmer

…I and my husband have travelled out to Australia and have begun our research here.  Already we have found out material and facts which were hitherto unknown…We aim to retrace Lawrence and Frieda’s footsteps in Australia, to reconstruct the period they were here, and to find out what was going on at the time, and what influenced him…looking at what Australia did for Lawrence, and what he thought about Australia…

Sandra Jobson Darroch

We contacted a wide range of people and authorities, seeking their co-operation & assistance.  The following letters are just a sample.

11/2/75

Sheehy Street

Glebe, Sydney

Dear Mr Spigelman*

John Pringle suggested we write to you.  We are currently researching a book on D.H. Lawrence in Australia…Mr Pringle said that you knew more about [recent research on “Fascist-type groups” in Australia] and might be able to direct us to the relevant [sources]…The object of our book is to try and reconstruct what Lawrence did in Australia…

Sandra Jobson

(*Dr Jim Spigelman was Principal Private Secretary to the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.  He is now, at the time of writing, Chief Justice of NSW)

21/2/75

Sheehy Street

Glebe, Sydney

Dear [John Richardson*]

We are writing a book about D.H. Lawrence’s experiences in Australia in 1922 and wonder if any of your readers might have met the Lawrences during their time in Thirroul.  We are particularly anxious to gather day-to-day information…We would be delighted to hear from your readers on the subject.

Sandra Jobson

[*Executive Editor of the Illawarra Mercury]

3/3/75

HRC

Austin, Texas

Dear Mrs Darroch

…I was glad that your and your husband traveled out to Australia to begin work there.  As your project moves along, I would like to hear something about the hitherto unknown material concerning Lawrence…

David Farmer

4/3/75

Sheehy Street

Glebe, Sydney

Dear Mr Powell*

We are doing research with a view to writing a book about D.H. Lawrence in Australia in 1922.  We are interested in any information that touches on this subject and wonder if you could let us know what relevant material there might be in your Library.

Sandra Darroch

[*Graeme Powell was Officer-in-Charge of the Manuscript Room at the National Library of Australia in Canberra]

We returned to London and sorted out the Ottoline problems.  Then our minds returned to Lawrence and Australia.

10/6/75

KPR

London

Dear Charles*

We were pleased to get your letter…It was good to hear also about your DHL work which is of great interest to us now that we’re busy on DHL in Australia…Already we have unearthed a great deal of interesting material…and have begun developing a theory that much more in Kangaroo is based on Lawrence’s actual experiences in Australia…we did a great deal of work in the Mitchell Library in Sydney…Now we are back in London dealing with the final details of Ottoline…When you get to Texas would you please give our regards to drs Roberts and Farmer…

Sandra

[*Charles Ross was an American scholar.  We had attended his graduation at Oxford (see 6/8/74 above).  He specialised in Lawrence, and was to go on and edit Women in Love for the CUP.]

24/6/75

KPR

London

Dear Walter*

Many thanks for your letter…We would be very interested to know whether those ML Skinner letters refer in any way to Lawrence…We have just made a very exciting discovery about Lawrence and Kangaroo.  It bears on the curious paradox that much of the political content of the novel is based on events that occurred in Sydney in 1921, yet Lawrence did not visit Sydney until 1922.  Can you guess the answer?  If you do, don’t tell anybody.  This takes our project into new DHL territory altogether and will provide an insight into how he wrote.  The work is going well, and we plan to return to Sydney via Texas towards the end of the year – grants permitting!  Meanwhile we are reading and delving at the British Museum and other libraries…

Sandra

[*Walter Stone was one of Australia’s Grand Old Men of letters, and publisher of the Wentworth Press.  A biblophile of passionate proportions, he had been very kind to us in Sydney, and promised help with the West Australian side of our research]

24/6/75

KPR

London

Dear Richard*

Since I last wrote [we got our grant]…Our work on DHL in Australia meanwhile goes apace…The other day we made quite an interesting discovery about Kangaroo.  For some time we were puzzled by a curious paradox about the book:  how was it that Lawrence wrote so perceptively and with such knowledge about Sydney and the political scene when he spent such a ludicrously brief time there?…Then, as we delved into the period, curious facts began to emerge.  For example, research by Rawson and others has shown that much of the political doings in Kangaroo were in fact going on in Australia in the post-1918 period, and where the parallel between Kangaroo and real events is strongest is in 1921 – almost a year exactly before Lawrence arrived.  In particular, a riot in the Sydney Domain on May Day 1921 is quite obviously the model for the “Row in Town” chapter in Kangaroo.  Yet Lawrence was not one for research, nor did he really have the time for any.  Then the penny dropped.  In Kangaroo, Lawrence…says the backyard was “full of papers”…Lawrence [could have] got most of the Australian material for Kangaroo from a big pile of old newspapers…that he found in the house…

Sandra

[*Richard Walsh, whom Sandra had known at university, was then editor-in-chief of the great Australian publishing house, Angus & Robertson, and was also a figure of some influence in literary circles in Sydney.  Sandra had approached him about a grant for our research, and through his good offices we had been given a $2000 grant, with the promise of perhaps a more substantial fellowship grant to come.  He was, alas, to play a less helpful role in our future, for it was his accession to some power at ACP in 1986 and absolute power in 1992 that spelt the end of my journalistic career (though I hung on for six years between those two dates).]

20/10/75

KPR

London

Dear Mr Pringle*

I’m planning to return to Sydney in December to complete our research into D.H. Lawrence – we’ve made a fascinating discovery which changes the current theory about how Kangaroo was written…May I get in touch with you when I return to Sydney?

Sandra Jobson

[*John Douglas Pringle was editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia’s oldest and most prestigious newspaper.  He had written, as mentioned above, one of the best books ever written about Australia and Sydney, Australian Accent, which contained a chapter about Lawrence in Australia.  He was a particular champion of Sandra and her writing and journalism.]

The intensive research did not start until we returned to Sydney, me in November, Sandra a few weeks later.  I had been summoned back from the News Ltd office in London, where I was working, following the dismissal of [Labor Prime Minister] Whitlam.  I spent the next year or so working for The Australian, as did Sandra.  But we were also pursuing our research into Lawrence in Australia.  At first, the research continued to be mainly in newspapers.  But we also made a trip down to Thirroul, primarily to see Wyewurk, in early December 1975.  Our artist friend Paul Delprat accompanied us and did some sketches of the occasion.  The highlight of the visit, apart from the rude reception we received at the front door of Wyewurk, was an interview with the son of the woman – Mrs Lucy  Callcott – who let Wyewurk to the Lawrences in 1922.  I wrote to him a week later.

9/12/75

Mosman Street

Mosman NSW

Dear Mr Callcott

Thank you very much for allowing us to come and see you last week and for helping us with our research on D.H. Lawrence.  Since I saw you I spoke to the head of the Mitchell Library in Sydney and they – and we – are very interested in several of the photographs you showed us.  We would very much like [to copy] five of them…

Robert Darroch

15/12/75

Harbord Street

Thirroul

Dear Mr Darroch

I am in receipt of your letter of 9/12/75…You have requested that I send certain photographs to the Mitchell Library…I do not think it advisable to have these pictures of my parents reprinted and possibly used for publication…The Lawrences were nonentities whilst in Thirroul.  A rather odd couple…I feel that there would be no purpose having pictures of my parents copied…and I would strongly resent it…I do not like any of the named characters in the book, nor their activities, especially Jack Callcott, the young returned soldier with revolutionary ideas who lovingly embraced Somers in a tense moment on the rocks at Thirroul at night…

L.R. Callcott

22/12/75

Mosman Street

Mosman NSW

Dear Mr Callcott

…First let me reassure you – we have no intention of intruding into your life more than you wish.  That would be most discourteous of us.  And we have no intention of identifying your parents – or anyone else in Thirroul – with characters in Kangaroo…

Robert Darroch

These problems aside, the research was progressing.  But it was very much on the surface.  We needed to get below that surface.  Then luck, or coincidence, or the smallness of Sydney, or something else took a hand - and the process of discovery, or uncovery, began.  The first crucial event was an Australia Day party-cum-wake at Evan William’s place on January 26, 1976 [Evan had been Whitlam’s Press Secretary].  I found myself sitting next to Tom Fitzgerald, a SMH [Sydney Morning Herald] journalist and former editor/publisher of an intellectual magazine, Nation.  I knew from my preliminary research that he had written an article (“The Beard of the Prophet”) in Nation in 1958 about Lawrence and Thirroul.  I told him about my current research and, when he evinced interest, said words to the effect that, after examining some of the 1921-22 Sydney newspapers, I had come to the conclusion that there was a lot of factual material in Kangaroo, and that I was unearthing an unexpected number of correlations between what Lawrence said in the novel and contemporary events in Sydney in 1921-22.  I then went on to make this comment:  “I am almost beginning to suspect that there might be some truth in the secret army plot.”  At this, Fitzgerald said:  “Strange you should say that.  Before he died, I had lunch with Eric Campbell [leader of the New Guard, a public semi-fascist “army” that was active in Sydney following the 1929 election of Labor Premier Jack Lang].  Campbell asked me:  ‘Do you know why we were called the New Guard?’  I replied, no.  Then he said: ‘Because there was an Old Guard.’” He [TF] suggested I read Campbell’s book, The Rallying Point.  This I did.  The diary (at first undated, but the early dates are inferred  from my general diary) began with the results of that reading.

27/1/76 Mosman (where we were staying temporarily):  [reading The Rallying Point]  Interesting points.  Campbell says (pp 27-29) that after Lang came to power in 1929 he rang up an old friend, John Scott, about the danger of “civil disturbance” & the two of them met & decided to recruit a similar para-military force to that they had organised in 1925 on the instructions of [the then Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne] Bruce.  But apparently another group, called “the Old Guard”, was also organising what seems to have been some sort of secret army.   Initially Campbell & Scott joined forces with what Campbell called “the Gillespie-Goldfinch organisation”, but Campbell apparently grew dissatisfied with this group’s obsession with secrecy, & decided to break away & “go public”.  Scott stayed (p 50) behind with the “Old Guard”.

Between 27/1/76 and 5/2/76:  [Did a lot of research, with Sandra, at the Mitchell and Fisher libraries and was given the name of an historian, Peter Spearitt, who might be helpful.  He gave me a long list of  possible leads, such as the George Waite papers, the Vol Molesworth papers, the De Groot papers, etc.  I also sought permission to examine at the Attorney-General’s Department reports by NSW police on the 1930-32 crisis, delightfully named “the secret bundles”. These reports also touched on earlier precedents. The diary now picks up the story:]

5/2/76 Mitchell Library (the main repository of Australian books & documents in Sydney):  Reading the “secret bundles”.  Some sort of trouble in the Domain on Sunday 15/5/21 [a year before Lawrence arrived].  Magistrate there to read the Riot Act if necessary.  Union Jack burnt.  Report of interference with ALP [Australian Labor Party] meeting the previous Sunday.  Examining Sands Directory [listing all Sydney residents & businesses], looking for John Scott.  No luck.  George Waite papers:  letter from Chinese Nationalist Association 1/11/22 to GW re aliens:  “I don’t want Scott on the job, neither do you I’m sure.”  [This is probably not “our” Jack Scott, however, though at the time I thought it was.]

6/2/76 Mitchell:  [George Waite papers]  GW involved with anti-conscription league in 1917.  Mentions Army directive in 1916 stopping “bodies of soldiers in uniform creating disturbances at public meetings”.  Mention of “fascisti” & Advance Australia League (WJ Miles sect). 

9/2/76 ditto: [GW papers]  Cutting from Communist paper [The Communist] 25/8/22:  “Let the leaders of the workers in NSW ponder the fact that the use of armed force against the workers of Australia was discussed & advocated at the recent Employers’ Conference held in Brisbane.“  Waite denounced the May Day 1921 demonstration.  Copy of an interesting magazine, King & Empire, dated October 1922. 

[just how interesting was yet to unfold]

22/2/76 Fountains Restaurant (King Street):  Met [Bruce? Brian?] Nyland.  He’s been working on DHL for over a year.  Mainly interested in Thirroul.  Ready to go into print [he didn’t].  Started on the same line I did, but switched to Thirroul & “Spirit of Place”.  Encountered similar hostility.  Nyland had contacted Fred Esch [the author of a major article on Lawrence in Australia].  What Esch knows:  [Denis] Forrester [Lawrence was befriended by two English couples on the boat from Perth to Sydney, the Forresters and the Marchbanks.  They kept in touch while L was in NSW and Forrester took the only photos of the Lawrences while they were in Australia, and also wrote a memoir which was included in Nehls’s Composite Biography of DHL.] [Forrester] contacted Esch after his SMH article on Lawrence & sent him 5 photos.  Nyland mainly interested in the missing photos [much later we – John Ruffels and I - found the missing photos, unrecognised, in Forrester’s son Norm’s photo album in Strathfield].  (later at the Mitchell:)  In 1935 Sands found reference to WJR Scott “attorney” for The Cornhill Insurance Company Ltd 26 Bridge Street.

25/2/76 Australian Archives (Hunter Street):  Met Marie Narkie (?).  Told her my theory [that there may be factual secret army material in Kangaroo].  She will check & see if she can come up with anything.

4/3/76 Victoria Street (our then home in Sydney’s Kings Cross):  Rang Nyland again.  He had been following up my tips.  Saw the Malwa [the boat that brought Lawrence to Sydney] passenger list.  Found ad for Mrs Callcott’s Thirroul lettings.  Fred Esch is trying to get in touch re getting the National Trust to buy Wyewurk.

7/3/76  ditto:  Saw Fred Esch & wife at Wollstonecraft.  Wants us to help preserve Wyewurk.  Showed us photos he had taken of  W[yewurk] some years ago.  Had letters from Forrester & Mrs Southwell.  Has done quite a bit of work on DHL.  Suggested various lines of research.  Local Thirroul doctor (Dr Crossle) had some contact with Lawrence.  There is, apparently, a visitors’ book of Wyewurk (in Adelaide?).  List of visitors’ names (a Harding Brown of the Imperial Services Club).  Esch had had similar problems with tenant of W[yewurk].  Artist Garry Shead has done pictures of W[yewurk].  DHL’s “Australian contact” apparently not Forrester [Esch had thought Lawrence did have contact with some local Australian(s)]. 

10/3/76  Mitchell:  Fred Esch rang.  Suggested Bea Miles’s father might know something about Lawrence & secret armies.

[Bea Miles was a notorious Sydney “bag lady” and her father was W.J. Miles – see above – who founded the proto-fascist Australia First Movement with PR Stephensen, who later knew Lawrence in Europe and published his paintings.] 

11/3/76  Victoria Street:   Rang Wollongong Council.  Spoke to Miss Macdonald in reference section.  No rate books for Thirroul.  But she will try to dig up something.

12/3/76  Mitchell:  Saw Mitchell Librarian.  Wants to know why I want to see “closed” files.  Told her whole story.  She promised to help.

13/3/76  ditto:  More secret bundles.  File 7/5594.  Political meetings in the Domain.  Vital files removed.  Copied police report on New Guard.  Little on Domain troubles 1921.  Report played down May Day “riot”.  “A minor scuffle”.  Far-left papers sold.  Examples attached.  Will get permission to see Colonial Secretary files next week.

14/3/76 ditto:  Saw 1922 Who’s Who.  Lists Major William John Rendall Scott, DSO, insurance agent.  City address.  To check further.

20/3/76  Victoria Street:  Spoke to a Miss Katzman (Spearitt contact) who’s doing a Uni NSW  thesis on 1921 Domain troubles.  Digger Vigilant Society.  Told her about secret armies.  Her research not deep.  Thought papers overplayed the May Day incident [when apparently a Union Jack was burnt by Labor supporters].  Thought religious bigotry had caused a lot of the trouble. 

2/4/76 Australia Archives (Hunter Street):  Examined Army records.  Main findings:  whenever civil trouble brewed 1924-32 Army took precautions.  1932 report of secret organisation in NSW.  Earlier, some sort of “Internal Security Plan” developed.  Replaced in 1924 with ISP No. 2.  Ammunition issued & preparations made to combat possible civil disturbance.  This could be significant, as earliest secret army we know of is the White Guard in Melbourne in 1923. 

[In 1923 a civilian force called The White Guard was recruited to replace striking police.]

8/4/76 Mitchell:  Read copies of King & Empire (journal of the King & Empire Alliance) 1921-23.  Vol 1 No 1 January 21 1921.  K&E Alliance formed “recently” to combat disloyal elements & enemies of Britain & the Empire.  History of Alliance No 3 March 1921.  Meetings in Sydney Town Hall in July & August 1920.  “…thousands of residents of city & suburbs” joined the K&E.  Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal secretary.  Toured country areas addressing public meetings.  Wellington, Dubbo, Moss Vale, Tumut, etc.  Quote issue No 2 February 1921:  “…then vigilance committees composed of members of the King & Empire Alliance & their friends should be organised…to teach the ignorant, convert the misled, and wake up the sleepy majority…”  “The spirit that animated the AIF [Australia’s armed forces in World War 1] is not dead but sleeping.”  Jan 1922 10,000 members, 34 branches.  “Volunteers for the Army of Empire…loyalists…are urgently needed today…and they will be forthcoming just as readily…”  Interesting item:  in Junee “little Alma Scrivener” gave a recitation (on the Malwa passenger list were Captain Arthur Scrivener & Mrs Dorothy Scrivener).  Rosenthal & WJR Scott “organisers & inspirers of the Alliance” (Jack Scott of Campbell notoriety?)

11/4/76  Victoria Street:  Provisional hypothesis No 2 [I cannot recall what No 1 was]:  Following today’s further research on the King & Empire Alliance, here is how I see the possible genesis of the Diggers Clubs in Kangaroo, etc:  Following the war there was a lot of latent military fervour & pro-empire sentiment, especially among AIF officers.  Also there was bad feeling about the anti-conscriptionists & socialists & Irish-Catholics.  Communism & IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] ideas strong in ALP.  Much resentment among servicemen that they were not getting their due rewards.  These forces (plus the need to defeat Labor in council & State elections) convinced M-G Sir C. Rosenthal & Major WJR Scott that some patriotic organisation should be formed.  This was done mid-1920.  Ex-Army officers prominent.  Organising continued 1920-21 and Alliance prominent in Anzac Day & May Day incidents in 1921.  Rosenthal elected Ald, then MLA [Member of State Parliament].  Fed Govt decides early 1921 to dismantle compulsory military training & officers see this as threat to peacetime militia.  Fear Anzac spirit will fade.  Worse, officers see growing threat from extreme socialists like Jock Garden [militant socialist & secretary of NSW Trades & Labor Council] will subvert society & weaken White Australia & leave Aust open to the Japanese.  So Scott is relieved of his Treasurer’s role in the Alliance & under Rosenthal’s orders begins laying plans to retain some form of ex-service activity.  Diggers Clubs mooted, other ideas tossed around.  Perhaps some organising of secret cells.  This is in May-June 1922.  Then Lawrence arrives on the Malwa.  On the boat he met a young officer (cf Frieda’s “young officer”) who knows Scott.  Maybe Scrivener.  Perhaps Scott & Rosenthal are looking for an editor or propagandist for the K&E magazine.  They are put in touch.  Lawrence, who sees the chance for a good plot, is interested & flirts with Scott & Rosenthal, but soon the flirtation ends.  Scott warns L not to reveal anything.  [ends hypothesis] 

 [almost totally wrong, but one has to start somewhere]

13/4/76 Mitchell:  Looked at electoral roll for Mosman & Neutral Bay & 1924 Sands for someone in Murdoch Street who might fit some of the clues in K.  [In the novel Lawrence mentions a house in “Murdoch Street” but later alters that to “Road”.]  Also looked at [Warren Perry] bio of Rosenthal. Some interesting stuff.  Finished first tranche of K&Es.  Lots of interesting material.  Rang Katzman & Nyland.  Wrote to Army records re Cpts Waring, Scrivener & La Touche [Army officers on the Malwa]. 

22/4/76 ditto:  Finished whole of K&E.  Tried to trace ellusive WJR Scott.  Some info.  Scott & Broad, insurance brokers, 92b Pitt Street (room 7, 5^th floor), just down Daking Place from Rosenthal’s office at 8a Mendes Chambers, Castlereagh Street, 3^rd floor (also the address of King & Empire Newspapers Co Ltd).  Major William John Rendal Scott, DSO (2 mentions in dispatches) born Bingara NSW 21 June 1888.  Went to Sydney Grammar.  Married 1918 a Canadian nurse, Jean Marguerite.  She (only) in 1922 electoral roll at “Cresy”, Wylde Street, Potts Point.  Rosenthal lived at 48 Victoria Street [just up the road from us at 88] Challis Flats (with his wife, Harriet!*). 

[*In Kangaroo, Lawrence called the wife of the main Australian character, Jack Callcott - the person who tells Somers about the secret army of Diggers and Maggies - Harriett Callcott.]

23/4/76 ditto:  Oct 1927 telephone directory lists J Scott insurance broker 26 Bridge Street.  1927 Sands puts Scott at 10 Hardie Street Kings Cross.  It looks like Scott was divorced or separated.  Jean Marguerite, “secretary”, at 117 Maclay Street [Kings Cross] in 1930.  Scott’s father Donald was manager of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney (Exchange Branch) in 1920.

[Around 23/4/76 I began compiling my first article on Lawrence and Australia.  It was published on 28/4/76 in my then newspaper, The Australian.  It was called “The Mystery of Kangaroo” and had a “break-out” headed “The Scott Connection” in which I speculated that much of the “mystery” of Kangaroo – its Diggers and Maggies secret army material – might be explained had Lawrence run across a man called Jack Scott in Sydney in 1922.  The genesis of the Darroch theory or thesis can be dated from this article.]

27/4/76 Clontarf (home of Sandra’s parents):  Rang Nyland.  Book with publishers.  He, too, anxious about Wyewurk.

28/4/76 Victoria Street:  My big Kangaroo article published today.  Lots of interest & praise.

8/5/76 Fisher Library (main Sydney University library):  Started reading copies of the Daily Telegraph April-June 1922.  [The Fisher had them in hard-copy, not microfilm.]  Good picture of Rosenthal.

9/5/76 Clontarf :  Today made a valuable discovery.  This morning the Nation Review [a Sunday journal] published a review by Humphrey McQueen [a radical historian] on a new book on the New Guard by Keith Amos.  H McQ mentioned a raid on Jock Garden by a New Guard squad whose members were designated by the names of a pack of cards [it was called “the Pack of Cards Raid”].  (The leader was the joker, no queens, 49 in all.)  This is startlingly similar to the reference in K that says the Diggers officials are Master, Jack & Teller.  This “Jack” reference can hardly be accidental.  Also, according to Amos, Rosenthal was offered the leadership of the New Guard in 1930.

10/5/76 Mitchell:  Started working on the [John] Haughton James [someone who did research into the background of the New Guard in the 1960s, primarily for Nation] papers (mentioned by Amos) in the Mitchell.

12/5/76 ditto:  A night of discovery!  Sandra & I went through the HJ research notes.  HJ says the New Guard flowed from the Old Guard or “The Movement” which, says James, sprang up spontaneously in 1930 after [Lang was elected].  Groups of men appeared out of the woodwork in the affluent Sydney suburbs offering to help police maintain order & guard essential services.  These groups came in bands of 12 with a leader & appeared to be arranged in larger groups of 4 squads (ie, 4 x 13 = 52 – the number of cards in a pack!!).  There were apparently about 500 of them overall (10 x 52?) , and materialised almost instantaneously.  They had insignia & were armed with pickaxe handles.  But there was also four “Country Movements” – Riverina, Western, New England & Eden Monaro.  These were probably linked with the Farmers Army formed during the 1917 [transport] strike.  However, there was also another group operating at the same time [ie, c. 1930-32] called The Legion of Frontiersmen, “a British Empire show” comprising old soldiers & who wore uniforms with tall hats (?).  HJ also said that there was a later organisation called Simpson’s Army that was active after World War 2.  (Whenever there is a Labor Government, a secret army seems to spring up.) 

13/5/65 ditto:  Read police report ML file 4228 (19/4/32) [apparently another, and less reticent, secret bundle].  The Old Guard was formed in Sydney in November 1930.  It is stated to be affiliated with a similar organisation in Victoria called the White Guard formed after the 1923 police strike [and which apparently remained in existence until 1930-32].  Sir Brudenell White CIC.  The [NSW] Old Guard’s “staff” were General Heane CIC, Col Somerville QMC, Col Bertram Admin, Philip Goldfinch Finance, & Colonel Jack Scott General Staff branch.  (Scott!)  Had about 5000 members [which tallied with the figure Haughton James cited]. 

14/5/76 ditto:  Re-read The Rallying Point last night (read it too quickly earlier).  Something is wrong.  Campbell’s account of how the New Guard was started can’t be correct.  Scott could not have been “amazed” to discover another group was organising, for he must have been part of that other group (the Old Guard).  The NG had to be a public breakaway from the OG.  The truth must be that Scott & Campbell had been involved from the early 1920s.  But because so many prominent people, including militia & serving officers, were involved, it had to remain secret (this explains why Labor knew nothing about it, otherwise the Army would have been purged by Labor governments). 

c. 15/5/76 ditto (no precise date):    Reading the De Groot papers [De Groot was - apparently - a New Guard operative who beat Lang to cutting the opening ribbon on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932].  Mainly about the New Guard & its organisation (similar, in some ways, to the OG’s organisation).  Talks about how to defend Edgecliff, Potts Point, Darling Point, etc, if invaded from [the working-class suburbs of] Surry Hills, Woolloomooloo, Paddington, etc.  Machine guns on steps in Victoria Street, etc.  New Guard system seems to be in groups of 16.  Had 5 country zones, four city zones plus Sea N[ew\G[uard] & Air NG.  About 100 local branches in Sydney.

17/5/76 Victoria Street:  Some very fortuitous events.  At tennis yesty Sally Rothwell  [a school-friend of Sandra’s] said she was related to [Jack] Scott!!!!!  When she saw the Kangaroo article [we had not been to tennis for several weeks] she rang up her uncle who was actually brought up in Scott’s house!!!!  He, the uncle, was Scott’s stepson!!!!  She told me that Scott was married three times (the second wife was her relative), that Scott & Broad still exists, that there were a lot of DHL books in Scott’s house, that Scott split with Campbell, that when World War 2 [WW2] broke out Scott went round interning Germans, and that Scott lived most of his life in Kings Cross.  He was also something of a womaniser, she said.  She promised to put me in touch with her uncles (apparently two of them!).

18/5/76  ditto:  Lunch today with [SMH editor] John Pringle [see above re Australian Accent] at the Union Club [a very “establishment” club in Sydney of which Sandra’s father was a Member, and of which I later became a Member].  Discussed DHL.  He seemed impressed, but doubted the Scott connection.  Didn’t wear a tie, but they allowed him in.

19/5/76 ditto:  Sally rang re meeting with her father (not uncle!) and his brother.

20/5/76 ditto:  a 4^th year honours S[ydney]U[niversity] student rang.  Wants to do a thesis on DHL’s fascist background. Calmed him down.

c. 26/5/76 ditto:  Darroch’s Theory:  The sensitiveness of material means great changes, less sensitive, less change. 

[like much of my research, this turned out to be totally wrong, the reverse being true – see entry for 17/3/00]

9/6/76 Journalist Club:  Today at lunch I met John & Peter Oatley, two stepsons of Scott.  Scott, apparently Sally’s step-grandfather, married the two Oatley boys’ mother, nee Kaeppell (?) about 1926, presumably after his divorce from Jean Marguerite.  They first remember Scott coming to their house in Gordon, then later to their home in Collaroy when they moved there in 1922 or 1923.  He was a very frequent visitor.  They remember him as a tall (over 6ft), thin man with a hooked nose and a pointed face & chin.  He was a ladies man, even a philanderer, but not effeminate.  Extremely interested in military matters – virtually his only interest.  They also remember Rosenthal (“Rosey”) coming to their home, together with other senior officers (eg, Gordon Bennett).  They knew Scott was mixed up in the New Guard & that he knew Eric Campbell, but they did not know why they split. They remembered that he joined some anti-New Guard group in the 1930s & remained with them until 1939, when he went round Sydney in a car interning Germans.  He was very pro-Japanese in the 1930s & wrote pro-Japanese articles for the SMH.  In the 1939-45 war he was “in intelligence”.  But he volunteered for active service & was sent as c.o. to some island off Timor where he was captured by the Japanese & spent the rest of the war as a POW.  He spent some of this “in some comfort” in a camp “near Hanoi”, for which he was later criticised by newspapers.  Later he went to Melbourne (after a divorce from his second wife) & married the widow of a cousin, a Street.  (His mother had been a Street [a leading Sydney legal family].)  He died in the 1950s, possibly in Adelaide.  He had been very interested in collecting books, and dealt in these.  He had autographed copies of Galsworthy.  He had a collection of DHL books, which he kept under lock & key (they thought because of their riske nature).  They thought he was a very weak character, easily dominated by his second wife.  They would have arguments, after which he would come down stairs with a revolver & threaten to shoot himself.  He liked cards, especially poker.  He borrowed lots of money.  Disliked driving.  Imperial Service Club apparently his only club.  Not sporting.  Spoke well.  Very conservative politically.  Fairly gregarious.  Wow!

[wow, indeed]

13/6/76 Victoria Street:  At tennis yesty Sally sd Scott left no papers or books.  Streets very secretive.

6/7/76 Mitchell:  John Smith Garden (“Jock”) 65 in 1948.  In 1922 he was preaching in South Kensington (UK?) Church of Christ. 

7/7/76 ditto:  Given another “New Guard” file (police secret bundle 5424).  Police confused over what is New Guard & what is “the other organisation”.  Definite effort to find out what is going on.  In March 1932, each NSW police district ordered to investigate & report.  For example, police in Lismore report that there are about 260 New Guard members & 700 “Country Defence Association” members.  Similar in many other towns.  Other “the organisation” names:  Bathurst , “The Western Movement”; Eugowra, “The Western Districts Movement”; Mudgee, “The Anti-Socialist Party”; Gulgong, “The Country Movement”; Moss Vale, “The Peace Association”; Bourke, “the Citizens’ League”; Orange, “The Western Division”; Oberon, “The Country”, etc, etc.   Some reference to the leadership as “the Unknown Three”.   Lt-Col Hinton of Orange founded “The Western Division”.  Police report that “the Country Movement” has nothing to do with the New Guard.  No sign of “the Movement” in Broken Hill [staunch Labor territory].  (Lithgow ditto.)  Police in one district report that a man called O’Connell told them [in April 1932] that he had been asked “by a person from Bathurst”  if he could get 10 men in his district to form themselves into a defence or protection corps to combat action by the unemployed to seize food, etc.  Report 19/11/31 to Det-Sup Mackay that “the Old Guard” was formed in Sydney 15 months ago & affiliated to the White Guard in Melbourne.  March 1932 conference in Mudgee where selected men, paid by Goldfinch, were summoned & empowered to go back to their districts & choose 12 men to accompany them to Sydney when required.

8/7/76 ditto:  Ended search of secret bundles, Colonial Secretary & police files.  Some (from Sands) interesting names:  Dr Francis Clements Crossle of Bulli, Dr Alfred Cooley of Hurstville & Dr Percy Cooley 183 Macquarie Street. 

21/8/76  Victoria Street:  Humphrey McQueen [lefty historian] to lunch.  Fascinating.  Told him all.  His info:  secret armies from 1917 onwards.  Much secret army activity in Brisbane (in 1919?).  Red Flag riots.  Trevor Botham thesis on this.  And in Perth, too (wharfies & soldiers combine, police defeated).  Suggested DHL could have learned about Digger clashes there.  Said a WA general organising a secret army post-1919 (Drake-Brockman?).  Told me about Bill Richards,  “the mad psychiatrist”  [of whom more later*].  Brisbane line [a WW2 “defensive” line drawn across Australia] a Vichy line, according to Richards.  1939 split in Army.  Alf Conlon & The Directorate.  McCauley, Kerr, Pansy Wright.  1939 air crash in Canberra.  Secret army heads wiped out (Brudenell White, Fairbairn, Gullett).  Link with the Orr case [too complex to explain].  Maybe secret armies into the 1970s.  Did Scott deliberately get captured, so he could become a Vichy-style leader?  The “Guardians”.  Brisbane 1921 riots organised by Herbert Brookes [of whom more soon].  Heavy, heavy conspiracy stuff.

[*No, there is no more later, for I will spare the reader that particular can of worms.  In fact, I did not record in the diary my ongoing contacts with Bill Richards, who later opened the lid for me on that stange, seething world inhabited by the extreme right in Australia and elsewhere, and those foolish enough to delve into it.  (His theories about Cecil Rhodes, Lord Esher, the Round Table, Lord Milner, Lionel Curtis, the Legion of Frontiersmen, Alfred Deakin, the “Armies of the Night”, the Masons, Rotary, the Brisbane Line, the Directorate, Alf Conlon, the 1939 air “Fairbairn” crash in Canberra, the founding of ASIO, Ted St John, Lynko Ubanchich, Del Agnew, the Sinless Perfectionists, and so on, and so on, and so on, gave me whole filing cabinet of secret army and conspiracy theory material that still clogs up my garage, and even, at the time, my mind [though I have long since stopped looking under my car for bombs]).  One day, if time and space are granted me, I will relate my (hilarious) encounter with Bill on the lawn outside the Great Hall of Sydney University, one cool Sunday morning back in the 1970s.  A funny bloke, the late Bill Richards, Australia’s “Mad Psychiatrist”.]

8/9/76 ditto:  It is becoming increasingly obvious that DHL’s time in WA is significant.  H McQ asked if DHL met KS Prichard [WA lefty writer].  He didn’t, but her husband Hugo Throssell did [wrong].  Could he have been an early model of Jack Callcott? [no].  Will ring his son Ric in Canberra.  But Cpt Throssell is the sort of person who could have provided L with Digger material [wrong again].  Also, the figure of Trewhella is becoming the key that cd unlock the secret of Kangaroo.  Who is he?  Will do a full analysis of bio material in K on cards.

9/9/76 ditto:  Today began a full-scale text analysis of Kangaroo.  (Nothing of interest in Throssell.)

12/9/76 ditto:  Something’s wrong with L’s picture of the Trewhella family tree.  They do not add up.  Victoria’s brother Alfred John is a mining engineer in Mullumbimby (Thirroul).  Is he Jack Callcott’s “best mate”?  Is she a Trewhella or a Willmott?  L is confused about something here.  

[actually, it was me who was confused]

15/9/76 ditto:  Last night, in ch 3, read that Callcott is an “expert on Japan”.  Scott!  Today got a letter from Shan Benson, who is adapting K for the ABC.  Has done some research & confirms that L’s description of the weather on May 27/28 is accurate.  Would imply he [Lawrence] began K early that week starting May 29. 

4/10/76 Mater Hospital (having knee operation):  Reading A Divided Society by Marilyn Lake about Tasmania in WW1.  During 1917 “the Great Strike” broke out (about Sydney tramways).  All Australia had strikes in support.  This raised the jingoists & Nationalists [main anti-Labor party] to new fevour.  In Tasmania meetings were held at which loyalists & citizens volunteered to stand ready to meet mob rule.  “The strike sharply accentuated class & party animosities in Australia.  People quickly adopted extreme positions.”  1918 the formation of Vigilant Loyalty Leagues urged (already such organisations existed on the mainland).  Description of 1919 Brisbane [“Red Flag”] riot.  Formation of metropolitan units.  Tasmanians rushed to praise actions of Queensland [ex-]soldiers.  In Launceston one prominent OBU [One Big Union – a IWW “front”] was counted out (similar to counting out incident in K).  Lake says that, contrary to belief, the war did not unite Australia, but divided it.  “A new development in Australian history after 1916 [the year of the first conscription referendum] was that imperial loyalties became increasingly the preserve of the right.”  Around 1919-20 Australia, after being one of the most radical of societies, became one of the most conservative.

10/10/76 ditto:  Sandra dined with David Landa [school friend of mine at Sydney High who had become NSW Minister for Planning] re preserving Wyewurk.  Held out some hope.  Suggested we make a written submission supporting case for preservation.

 [we did, but nothing was done, and a great opportunity was thus lost]

11/10/76 ditto:  Re Trewhella:  is he a Sydney contact, related or connected with Scott, or does he originate in Thirroul?  But as Callcott is Scott, & Syd-based, L surely would have tried to gather local material to confirm or counter Scott in Sydney. 

12/10/76 ditto:  Quite obviously, the secret army organisation is like this:  begins with a top officer or officers/civilians deciding to form some standing precautionary organisation.  As Army officers are involved, those in the know are kept to a bare minimum.  Scott (why Scott?*) and Rosenthal got something together in 1920, maybe 1919.  No – it flows from an earlier contingency plan.  Enough are pulled in so that the 12-get-12 system operates.  Scares in 1923-24-25, and some activity.  But in 1930-32 real danger surfaces & within weeks the secret plan goes into operation & 5000 men mobilised.  Once the danger is over, however, the organisation reverts to mothball status.  Perhaps only Scott and 5-10 others involved in NSW, with liaison with other States.  Quote:  “How easily the veneer of civilisation could be ripped off, and mob rule ensue.” [from the K&E, I think]

[*Major Scott was deputy to General Rosenthal organising the repatriation of the Australian troops from France and England in 1918-19.]

13/10/76 ditto:  L appears to have been compulsively gregarious (according to Callow [cf Son and Lover, The Young Lawrence]), full of ideas for forming colonies of kindred souls.  In Sydney, but more particularly Thirroul, he surely would have been tempted to mix.  (Of course, it should be kept in mind that L did not require much information to touch off a flight of imaginative fiction – cf the Polish Vicar in The Rainbow, ref. Callow p 102.)

14/10/76 ditto:  It is odd that L did not visit the Sydney Domain, or did not use it [it being the main forum of politics in Sydney].  He must have at least heard of it (it was there the 1921 May Day riot took place).  Re L’s speed:  (Callow, p 159) “He had written the first draft of The Trespasser at speed between Whitsun & August” (ie, in 8-10 weeks [about the same speed as Kangaroo]).  Also, L apparently was not averse to telling fibs (cf story about poems for English Review, ref. Callow p 141).  L’s first pseudonym was Richard Greasley [as in Richard Lovatt Somers].  L has extraordinary concentration (according to Callow), writes quickly with scant information, and is liable to turn any material, personally experienced or heard second-hand (eg, Siegmund [in The Trespasser]) into a novel, etc. L’s contact with Australia, with Sydney, and its undercurrents was necessarily so brief that almost everything – all observations, each tittle of gossip & item of news – must have been pressed into service for K.  Thus K must be a sort of compressed, compacted record of L’s experiences in A.  The problem is to break up the compressed, distorted cake of a diary & reconstruct its original shape.  In this we need a key, or several keys, to point the way to how the reconstruction should go.  With enough pieces of the jigsaw in place, the whole thing should eventually come out.

 [if only it had been that simple!]

15/10/76 Victoria Street:  Why does L say (p 32) that “Jack had to carve the meat, because Somers was so bad at it”?  Surely L was an expert at carving meat?

16/10/76 ditto:  re the likelihood of K being true:  L would not keep the truth out of his novels to please or placate or avoid the enmity of anyone.  His art was more important, counting for more, than his physical safety.  His daring often verged on the foolish.  As Callow says, he could be very destructive, for the sake of the thing.  L’s view on this is crucial to K.  Remember what he told [his friend] George Neville in 1912:  “How can anyone complain so long as the narrator tells the truth? And suppose their puny feelings are hurt…what does it matter that their lesson is given to the world…?”  According to Callow, p 240, Frieda said that L wd rather walk with the dullest person in the world, than walk alone.

19/10/76 National Library (Canberra):  Reading the Brudenell White (MS 5172) & Herbert Brookes (MS 1924) papers.  Brookes diary entry says he (on a visit to Sydney) walked around the [Botanic] Gardens with a Major Oakley* (no mention of what they discussed).  Interesting letter 6/3/22 from [Victorian Premier] Sir H. Lawson re some communication from Brookes re “domestic violence”.  Letter 31/5/22 from [ex-General Sir John] Monash re “the party indicated in my letter…full approval of my colleagues…place my letter before your colleagues…”.  Interesting telegram 4/8/20 from Robert D. Elliott [see “Nothing to Sniff At” article mentioned below (and in Rananim 7-8/1) re Elliott’s role in the formation of the Australian Protective League] about some “secret meetings”.  However, the HB papers, on a cursory glance, show he has little to offer.  Probably had slight contact with some secret organisation, but no letters from anyone of note.  [a major blunder on my part, for, as we shall see, Brookes was the main organiser of secret armies in Australia]  Have to get permission to see the BW papers.  Saw H McQ who will send me Botham thesis [on the Red Flag riots in Brisbane].  Very co-operative.

[*I wonder, in retrospect, if that was a Major Oatley? – either husband of Peter Oatley’s mother, or Trixie Oatley’s husband (see, various, below)]

22/10/76 Victoria Street:  Returned from an “Evening for Authors” at the Pitt Club.  A man called Barker came up & said he knew Dr Crossle’s widow, who lives in Bellevue Hill.  Said Crossle was a literary man who wrote a novel & corresponded with people like [Australian author & artist] Norman Lindsay from 1922 onwards.  Also met Michael Wilding [academic & author of several articles on Lawrence]  who said he has actually seen the MS of Kangaroo in Texas [at the HRC].  He said there was some crossing out, also deletions [he meant pages torn out].  He mentioned a Jack Lindsay [Norman’s literary son] book in which DHL is mentioned going into a bookshop in Sydney [Dymocks].  Also Judah Waten [an Australian author] was a milk boy in WA when L visited Mollie Skinner.  Will follow up.

25/10/76 ditto:  Lunch with [lawyer and ex-MP] Ted St John.  Spoke about PR Stephensen’s right-wing activities & Eric Butler*.

[*head of an extant local right-wing secretive organisation, the League of Rights – this being my first contact with contemporary extreme-right-wing movements in Australia - a contact that was to lead on to serious and deleterious consequences for me and my journalistic career]

30/10/76 Hobart (there to cover constitutional conference over Whitlam sacking):  met Peter Coleman [former NSW Minister & ex-editor of my later publication, The Bulletin].  Suggested I read up on “Inky” Stephensen (as did Ted St John).  He [Stephensen] was mixed up with WJ Miles with a semi-fascist organisation (Australia First Movement) & was pro-Japanese & interned during the war. [Keith] Muirden has written a book on this, & Stephensen’s papers are in the Mitchell).  Stephensen wrote an early review of K, praising it.

1/11/76 Victoria Street:  Wrote draft of Readers Digest piece (rejected!).  Wrote instead piece for Australian Colour Magazine, illustrated with Paul’s [Delprat] drawings.  Accepted.

c. 5/11/76 ditto:  I now believe that L led a secret life in Australia.  Even on a superficial look, the existing interpretation cannot  be right.  Where, for example, did he get the secret army plot?  Not from any published source (for I have searched them all [except the Sydney Sun]).  It could not have been guesswork or inspiration, the correlations with reality are too strong.  Therefore he got it from someone.  Who?  Scott?

6/11/76 ditto:  Today, I think, is possibly an historic (or at least noteable) day in Lawrence research.  For today I became convinced that my (way-out) theory about DHL, Australia & Kangaroo is correct.  I now believe that:

1.       Lawrence did lead a secret life in Aust.

2.       The Diggers plot in K is true.

3.       There was a secret army in Sydney, identical to the Diggers & Maggies.

4.       Lawrence met its leaders, Rosenthal & Scott.

5.       They are Cooley & Callcott.

6.       They sought DHL’s aid (possibly to edit or contribute to their K&E mag).

7.       He sucked them dry, mainly to get plot.

8.       They warned him not to divulge anything.  (However, he was already writing Kangaroo.)

How do I know that what I believe about L & K is correct, while the orthodox account, so consistent, widely-held & universally accepted, is wrong – totally wrong?  First, the novel was written in odd circumstances – suddenly, quickly, about a place & subject L knew nothing about.  Yet K is very accurate. The political theme – so surprising – is unbelievably, incredibly true.  It is straining credibility beyond breaking point that this is invention or coincidence, especially when L leaned on reality whenever possible.  The key is surely the Mollie Skinner quote about doing a novel in diary form (L advised M[ollie]S[kinner] to “splash down reality”).  The novel is only explicable thus.  The final convincing came from re-reading the “Jack Slaps Back” chapter.  Knowing now that there was a secret army & that DHL’s descriptions approximate it, then the dialogue in this chapter (“You’ve found out all you wanted to know?”) can mean only one thing – I’m right!  Now all I have to do is get, not circumstantial or textual proof, but real proof – like a link between Scott & DHL.

 [easier said than done]

10/11/76 ditto:  Mrs Denham* wrote giving permission for me to see the Brudenell White papers [there wasn’t anything in them – they had been completely sanitised].  According to Rees’s Brave Men, L disappears entirely from his fiction after Kangaroo.  In that respect, K is the end of an era.  After K, DHL “died”.  Wyewurk had a piano! (cf the singing scene in K).  (at Mitchell:)  reference to Scott (unnamed) re Amboina [Ambon] in Muirden’s Australia First book, p 33.

[*Mrs Denham, nee White, was, I think, the daughter, of Brudenell White.  The way to her hd bn paved by our friend Margaret Carnegie – see 14/1/93  below.]

14/11/76 Victoria Street:  Shan Benson [ABC producer] to dinner last night.  Said Bill Fancourt, PR [public relations staffer] at BHP at Port Kembla, stayed in Thirroul and heard a rumour that messenger boys had to stop at the gate of Wyewurk because of the virulence of the rows inside between Lawrence & Frieda.

15/11/76 ditto:  Did L meet an Australian, either on the Osterley [between Naples & Colombo] or in Ceylon or on the boat between Colombo to Perth?  His conversion from Perth to Sydney (cf postcard to Mrs Jenkins) seems a bit sudden. 

[yes, he did – Gerald Hum, see below]

17/11/76 Mitchell:  By June 1922 the KEA was trying to merge itself out of existence via British Empire Union & other organisations [Labor lost the State election in March that year].  (So any [journalism] offer re the K&E would have had to have been made to L before this.)  L is odd about the Australian accent.  In ch 2 he makes an attempt to convey it  “…must have tyken it…” and gets the idiom correct (“Right-O!”).  Yet Jack, etc, have no accent.  But, of course, they were GPS [Greater Public School] boys, and had no marked local accent.  Of course, L&F would only have had hand-luggage in the train to Thirroul.  Their trunks would have been lifted out on Monday, and thus L wd have had to come up to Syd to fetch them [as Somers does in Kangaroo].

18/11/76 ditto:  Bulletin report (4/5/22):  “The anti-Labor side in the NSW [Legislative] Assembly is stiff with ex-soldiers of ability & character – professional men like Rosenthal…”.   More praise for Rosenthal 15/6/22 in the Bulle, saying he & other “highly qualified business & commercial MLAs with bright records as fighting soldiers”.  (cf in K DHL said Cooley is praised by the Bulletin)  DHL read Bulletins (for he extracts quotes & passages from them) 8/6/22 & 22/6/22 (and probably 15/6/22).  Indeed, he must have been reading every issue while in Sydney. 

4/12/76  ditto:  Looks like Colonel Ennis [Maggies leader in Kangaroo] is [Brigadier-General] Macarthur Onslow.

[December 1976 marked the end of the first year of serious research into Lawrence and Kangaroo.  It had been a very productive year, and had led to the formulation of what later was to be known as the “Darroch Thesis”, and resulted in several newspaper and magazine articles.  It had started with a growing suspicion that Lawrence was leaning on reality in Kangaroo to a degree hitherto unsuspected – an insight stemming from what a journalist does, or should do, well:  reading newspapers.  Next came the possibility that a real secret army existed in Sydney while Lawrence was there, and that he might have based his own secret army plot on this actual secret army.  This was tantamount to heresy in the context of Lawrence scholarship, but the facts led to no other possible conclusion.  Then came the discovery of Scott and Rosenthal and their King and Empire Alliance.  This converted, in my mind at least, probability into virtual certainty, especially given a reading of the “Jack Slaps Back” chapter.  After this, the focus of research changed, from primarily discovery, to trying to find the link between Lawrence and, in particular, Jack Scott.  The next few years were taken up with this quest, which had both its high and low points.]

7/12/76 ditto:  Yesty I made a discovery.  I think I know the solution to the secret army puzzle in K.  The problem is to link what DHL describes with what we know of real secret army organisations.  Here are the facts: [fiction] L has Digger Clubs of 50, organised with three office-bearers, master, jack & teller.  Maggie squads organised in 20s with three officers, leader lieutenant & secretary.  [reality] 1923 White Guard emerges organised in 10s.  1925 Scott-Campbell force has 500 “stalwart ex-servicemen”.  Old Guard emerges in 12s in 1930.  New Guard has “action groups” of 500 & overall 1112 or 1012 (including leaders).  Pack of Cards squads have 49 (4 x 12 plus joker).  All this can be explained with two leaders getting 10 jokers each of whom get 50 by getting four jacks to enlist one teller or secretary who gets 10 men.  10+1+1=12  4x12=49, plus one joker=49.  This could explain the 10 & 12 phenomenon.

 [over this I wrote in 1981 “no, no, no – see entry 6/8/81”]

12/12/76 ditto:  Finished second big article for The Australian on the Pack of Cards raid.

21/12/76 Mitchell:  Discovered 7 sheets at the start of vol 8 of the De Groot papers giving organisational details of the League of National Security [the Victorian equivalent of the Old Guard].  Very important.  

[this tends to confirm a suspicion I and Andrew Moore have that De Groot was an Old Guard “plant” in the New Guard]

8/1/77 on plane to Greece (to cover UNESCO initiative – “The Manifestation on the Rock” - re saving the Acropolis from Athenian smog):  Interesting that Mollie Skinner said L had told her he could not do a Boy in the Bush with another book because “he did not know about goldfields”, etc.  Presumably, however, he knew more about mining than secret armies!

9/1/77 ditto:  Maybe Trewhella is an early manifestation of Scott (ie, W.J.).  Also Mosman connection.

18/1/77 Victoria Street:  Big article published last Saturday.  Not reaction yet.  Interesting thought:  something must have happened to L after he arrived in Sydney, for he did two unusual things.  He went straight to Thirroul, about which he knew nothing, and he began writing a major novel, after saying the same week he had no such intention.  Also, L’s accuracy is amazing. Therefore, when he deviates from accuracy, one might suspect he is trying to disguise something.

[I could not have been more wrong]

27/1/77 ditto:  Last night went to [bibliophile] Walter Stone’s Australia Day party.  He introduced me to another bookman, Col Alex Sheppard.  We had a long chat.  He said that during 1930-32 the Army helped the New Guard (sic) with weapons, etc.  [like many others, Sheppard mixed up the Old Guard with the New Guard, at least in retrospect, for the Army would have had nothing to do with the New Guard]  A senior [militia] officer had asked him,  “Are you in the Guard?  I thought you would be.”  [see below for what Sheppard later told Tom Fitzgerald]  Said Rosenthal wasn’t big, but had a booming voice & overbearing manner.  His Jewishness wasn’t very obvious.

8/3/77 QF007 to London (having decided to leave Australia and return to UK):  Resuming after a break.

[a break in which I had been researching, and writing articles about, current far-right political activity in Sydney, having been given information by Ted St John about a group, connected with the League of Rights, called, by their opponents, “the Crazies”, who were trying to infiltrate the NSW Liberal Party, a story that I was to return to later, with unfortunate consequences] 

What would make sense is this: Scott is Jack Callcott & Jaz is the Thirroul person who lives next door.  None of Scott’s personal life is put in – quite the contrary.  He is just used physically & politically.  All the personal stuff – relations, etc – are Jaz, or whoever Jaz is.  (Even L could not put Scott directly into the novel.  But he had to use real Australians, so to disguise them  he would use half of one real person & tack half of another on to the character, making a composite that would acquit him of guilt for using real people, while doing just that.)  

[this speculation turned out to be one of my better ones]

9/3/77 ditto:  How did L meet Scott?  We may never know.  It must have been by chance.  Note the theme of coincidence that pervades the first few chapters. 

3/5/77 KPR (Kensington Park Road, our London residence):  Of all the possible things L could have written about, he chose the oddest:  secret armies in Australia, a subject about which he knew absolutely nothing, and had little chance of finding anything about it, unless….  (He told Mollie Skinner in a letter:  “How can I recreate an atmosphere of which I know nothing?  I should only make silly howlers…”.)

15/5/77 ditto:  It is interesting how L disguises things.  The reversal technique is his favourite, ie, if you have something you want to use that is sensitive, just reverse it:  eg, Scott single, Callcott married; Cooley single, Rosenthal married, etc.  We might get somewhere going through K simply reversing things.  (Also, Rosenthal/Cooley quotes are often Lawrence’s, cf Baroness quote.) 

18/5/77 ditto:  Ralph Maud (Southerly 1956) makes the point that the ideas L puts into Cooley are reminiscent of L’s ideas expressed in a letter to [B]ertram [R]ussell] in 1915:  “There must be an aristocracy of people who have wisdom, and there must be a ruler…” etc.  According to John Alexander (Meanjin, June 1965)

[at this point I was doing a lot of reading of books and articles]

L wanted to write a novel about each of the five continents.  According to Alexander, L averaged 3500 words a day for the 42 days he took to write K.  He makes some good points:  “On the basis of previous writings, it should be assumed that Lawrence will work closely with actuality most of the time.”  And:  “The onus of proof of ‘unreality’ is on the critic, not on Lawrence.”  He says that Struthers’ religious utterances sound oddly in the novel.  But [Jock] Garden was a lay preacher! 

19/5/77 ditto:  Geoffrey Serle (Meanjin, June 1965) says that he was told by “an old soldier” that there was great planning in the soldiers’ clubs during 1919-20 about how to defend Melbourne south of the Yarra by blowing up the bridges when the proletarian north rose in revolution.

20/5/77 ditto:  If Scott did befriend L and divulge secret army info to him, then indeed a bond of mateship must have been involved.  “You can trust a mate with anything – everything.”  Jack tells Somers.  Thus the Jack Slaps Back incident must have been dramatic & vicious.  L was almost a scab.

21/5/77 ditto:  A thought:  why was the letter of introduction to Mr Toy of the Bulletin written?  To get L work?  Why was it not presented?  Because L had better prospects elsewhere?

22/5/77 ditto:  Tom Fitzgerald’s 1958 Nation article said that L sought the local barber, Laughlin, for long, regular chats.  Yet he made no apparent use of the fruits of his questioning.  It is odd that Frieda knew Laughlin well enough to send him a signed copy of her reminiscences 12 years later.  This is most strange.

[yes - very, very strange – see below]

23/5/77 ditto:  Pringle [Australian Accent] makes the good point that there are no Australian women in K.  Victoria could have come out of any of his novels.

24/5/77 ditto:  It is odd that in his letters from Thirroul L says nothing about the subject or content of his novel.  All he will divulge is that it’s “a queer show” in which “nothing happens, but much should  happen.”  Why the mystery?  Is this a clue?  He has plenty to say about Australia, but nothing about his book on Australia.  At least he should have told Mollie Skinner what he was writing about.  Odd.  Re opposites:  Jack Scott hated cars;  Jack Callcott is a motor garage proprietor.

25/5/77 ditto:  In a letter to Baroness Richthofen [I was going over the letters] L implied on May 29 he was not staying long, so the decision to start K must have been made by Tuesday May 29 at the earliest.  He took Wyewurk only for a month.  Interesting thought:  this “we know nobody” is not to be taken that way (for they did know people).  Rather it means nobody knows that he is a writer, or who he is (it came later as a great surprise to people who knew him in Thirroul).  He wants anonymity.  (Just as he later asked Mabel Dodge not to tell anyone who he is, and that he was planning to write “an American novel” on the same lines [as Kangaroo].) 

26/7/77 ditto:  According to MDL [Mabel Dodge Luhan] L hated cars.  She also makes the point that F had the gift to make quick friendships, so Harriett’s compulsive neighbouring cd be true of F.  She describes L’s day:  cleaning, then sitting on the ground, knees drawn up, writing.  But late in the day he put chores and writing aside & would relax.  But he could not bear to be still.  MDL interesting on F’s bruises, weeping. 

27/5/77 ditto:  On arrival in Perth L wrote to MDL saying he would catch the next boat to Sydney (“Perth a raw hole”).  So his previous intention to stay in Perth (or go south to the apple-growing regions) had suddenly changed.  Why?  Surely he would have sought out some information about Sydney, even an address to look up.

30/5/77 ditto:  In a letter to JMM [John Middleton Murry] 3/10/24 L said (obviously about something JMM hd sd in his letter about something that F had told him) re Kot [Lawrence’s friend Koteliansky]:  “Kangaroo was never Kot.  Frieda was on the wrong track.”  So, F did not know who K was based on, which means she could not have met Rosenthal. 

3/6/77 ditto:  I don’t know if it means anything, but in a letter to MDL 12/4/26 L said (re her memoirs):  “…why oh why didn’t you change the names!  My dear Mabel, call in all the copies, keep them under lock & key, and then carefully, scrupulously change the names: at least do that: before you let one page go out of your hands again.  Remember, other people [Lawrence’s emphasis] can be utterly remorseless, if they think you’ve given them away.”

5/6/77 ditto:  Certainly, if Moore’s Letters are any indication, L did not expatiate in his letters about the novels he was writing.

10/6/77 ditto:  L says in K that Somers flees downstairs from K’s chambers.  Tallies with Rosenthal’s chambers in Castlereagh Street.

9/6/77 British Museum (reading room):  Reading DHL Reviews [main journal of Lawrence scholarship, hereafter the DHLR].  Must subscribe.

 [did]

10/6/77 ditto:  Well, today was to have bn an historic day in L research – a day of make or break for Darroch’s theory.  I  took the vital microfilm of the K holograph to the BM and looked at it – all.

 [Some weeks previously I had been approached by Michael Black of the Cambridge University Press, who had learned of my interest in Kangaroo, with the idea that I should put in a proposal to edit Kangaroo for the forthcoming CUP edition of Lawrence’s works.  To do this I was given access to the necessary primary sources, such as the autograph manuscript (holograph) of the text Lawrence wrote in Thirroul.]

I assumed I wd find copious corrections & changes, as L went back to disguise things so as to render his progressive discovery of Scott’s secret army less sensitive.  [this was, and is, a very important point]  I found no such thing, which was worrying, to say the least.  [see note 21/3/00 that explains this paradox]  What I did find were minimal changes & not one single alteration (that I cd find) that wd amount to disguising.  Conclusion:  either I am very wrong, or he disguised it perfectly as he went along.  [which was intrinsically unlikely – a worrying moment in my research quest]  However, there are many changes of interest (such as the chapter cut out) & I will have to analyse the MS more closely.

14/6/77 ditto:  Stanley Hocking in DHLR vol 6 no 3 says that F in Cornwall liked being alone during the day.  She encouraged L to go out by himself.  (So he could have done things without her knowledge).

23/6/77 KPR:  Barbara Weekley [L’s step-daughter] says in Spender’s book that L never talked about his past novels.  Apparently he put them out of his mind, once written.  She also remarks on his doctrine of courage.  That he had the courage to write K, given the circumstances, cannot be in doubt.  Nor is it odd that he would have kept silent about it afterwards.

24/6/77 ditto:  Barbara Weekley describes a visit from PR Stephensen to L at Villa Bandol.  “Bouncy little man.”  L obviously keen on him.  Extent of PRS’s influence cd be greater than I think, esp given his later fascist tendencies.  He might have known Scott.  Will check.

29/6/77 ditto:  Cynthia Asquith (Remember and be Glad) quotes Aldington:  “It was strange and a little frightening…to realise that he possessed not only an intense appreciation of the living passing moment, but an uncanny awareness of people and a habit of making intuitive guesses about the secret lives and thoughts of others.”  She also remarks that L complained to her that people in trains, etc, were always talking to him, “especially colonels & curates”.

7/7/77 ditto:  An interesting point.  K is mainly a novel about an author in Australia.  It is in the form of a fictionalised diary, recording with considerable truthfulness L’s daily doings.  Yet it has one major omission:  it contains no hint of the primary thing he was doing – writing a book about A.

8/8/77 Victoria Street:  (Resuming after a while.)

 [We had returned to Sydney that August, lured back with a job offer on The Bulletin, where I spent the next year or so, and continued my research – most usefully, as it turned out.] 

Got Scott’s Army record & reference to him in the Official War History.  Will start a file on him.  More interestingly, Ernest Whiting has come good.

[Ernest Whiting, a gentleman from Melbourne, had written to me after one of my early articles had been published saying that he had heard that the man who told Lawrence about secret armies, etc, had met him on one of the ships bringing him to Sydney.  I had written back to him seeking more information, and asking where he got the information.  This is now his reply.]   

He originally said that he heard that L had learned of the secret army from a man on a ship.  But Whiting cd have read that [speculation] in one of my articles.  But he has now written back to say that the secret army contact who told him this had now died.  So, unless he is lying (and there is no reason why he would), then he did hear from someone knowledgeable that K’s genesis was on the Malwa.  He said he is now consulting his other contacts (who include Colonel Spry, ex-ASIO chief) & promises further detail.  Perhaps I may yet find my smoking gun!  I await my reply from Mrs Street [of the Melbourne Street family Scott married into after WW2].

19/8/77 ditto:  Tonight Lionel Wigmore, author of “The Japanese Thrust” [section on the Official War History] rang.  He had mentioned Scott & Ambon [where Scott was captured by the Japanese in WW2] in his history, so I wrote to him seeking more information.  LW actually met Scott in the 1920s!!!  Tall, well-spoken, aquiline nose, “a history, military type”.  Thought he lived in Killara.  Insurance inspector.  Thought that my theory possible, tho he had no inkling at the time of Scott’s possible secret army involvement.  But Scott definitely in intelligence.

27/8/77 Mitchell:  Starting a serious attempt to track down Scott’s whereabouts in 1922.  Scott at 55 Roslyn Gardens, Elizabeth Bay [next to Kings Cross], in 1925.  Moved to 210 Victoria Street in 1926, according to electoral rolls.  No mention of where he is in 1922.

6/9/77  Victoria Street:  While walking early this morning in the Botanic Gardens I saw the South Head Lighthouse flashing.  Maybe L saw this from this side of the Harbour?  [as it turned out, I was mixing up the Macquarie Light, which I cd see and which L also saw, with the SH Lighthouse, which L said he saw but could not – another error of mine, and his]  This week Peter Coleman [ex-Bulletin editor] rang me at work.  He said he had come across some notes of a visit he & Barry Jones [future MP] had made to Jack Lang in November 1969 [Lang was the NSW Labor Premier elected first in 1925 then, with Old Guard consequences, in 1929].  Lang said that although he had not met L, nor read K, he knew of “some sort of fascist group” of the same class (“the officers’ group”) as the New Guard, but that they didn’t amount to much [compared with the New Guard, obviously].  He said this “officers group” had been active in 1925 during the Walsh-Johnson dispute [when Scott & Campbell organised their “500 stalwart ex-servicemen”].  He said that later the New Guard wanted to kill himself & Goldfinch.

[a very odd comment, given Phillip Goldfinch was one of the leaders of the Old Guard] 

c. 7/9/77 ditto:  Turns out that my Mrs Street [to whom I had written re Scott’s papers, which she said did not exist] is wife of [then, in 1977, Australia’s Foreign Minister] Tony Street, who is none other than Scott’s stepson!

10/9/77 ditto:  Jack Kenny [old journo & Bulletin librarian] to dinner.  Said he had been golfing with Nugget Coombs [retired public servant of some note] last Sunday and had told him about me and my theory.  He was interested and said I should contact [Australian author] Xavier Herbert who knew much more.  [I did, and he didn’t]  JK recommended I look into M.H. Ellis, former Bulletin senior executive who was mixed up in right-wing activity before and after WW2.

14/9/77 ditto:  An important day.  This afternoon got a letter from Ernest Whiting.  He sd L was met on the wharf in Sydney by a man who took him to the North Shore for three days.  [in fact he said that Scott matched the description of the man who took L to stay on the North Shore for three days]  How does Whiting know this?  And yet his letter (see full text) has the ring of authenticity about it.  EW also talks about the post-WW2 “Association”.  This, too, sounds authentic.

[note, in particular, the reference to “three days”, a period that Whiting could not possibly have known was the precise time* L spent in Sydney before going down to Thirroul] 

[*but see note 16/4/98 below]

17/9/77 Mitchell:  Read H.M Ellis papers.  Nothing on DHL.

 [Again, a blunder, for it turned out that there was something of considerable interest in these papers – a letter, which unfortunately I did not diarise, to Jack Scott mentioning “the Garage” – see 23/2/97 below*.]

[*In the Ellis papers I later found a letter from Ellis to Jack Scott referring to a trip Scott was proposing to make, Ellis asking if “the garage” was going to pay for it.]

25/9/77 Victoria Street:  L’s letters to Seltzer reveal that L was having trouble with his novels.  Re K:  “I do hope I shall be able to finish it: not like Aaron, who stuck for two years, and Mr Noon, who has been now nearly two years at a full stop.”  (21/6/22)  Now, K is a very unusual book.  Could its peculiarities be due to L’s experimenting with new methods [that would get over these problems]?  Perhaps he could not write, had lost all confidence, and was seeking a new means to use?  Did he indeed take his advice to Mollie Skinner after he had stumbled on a possible plot – something that wd provide him with the material to finish a novel?

29/9/77 ditto:  From Secker letter 15/2/22 it seems that L wanted to do “a Ceylon novel”.  He told Seltzer he planned to do “an American novel”.  We know he did a Mexican novel.  So K is his “Australian novel”.  Also, Ennis [cf Colonel Ennis in K] is name of someone L met in Ceylon (cf DHL-Secker 24/4/22).

1/10/77 ditto:  It is odd, and maybe important, that in Darlington [WA] L met another Jewish architect: Eustace Cohen.  Odder still, the secret army in Perth – the [Civil & Civic] Argonauts Club – was run by a Jew – Boas!  Perhaps it is not surprising that L made contact with Rosenthal, both architect and a Jew, on his arrival in Sydney!!

 [This seductive possibility should not be taken too seriously, even after we find out, anon, that Rosenthal had been working in WA some years earlier.]

2/10/77 ditto:  Middleton Murry’s  point about L killing off his alter ego in K is well taken, but it could go further.  Kangaroo is also killed, and he is symbolic of L.  After this L surrenders his woman-free love of  men and becomes fish-like and cold:  dead.

4/10/77 ditto:  L probably felt perfectly safe in what he wrote.  He thought, at the outset at least, that his primitive disguise methods were adequate – cutting up the real people, swapping them around, & recombining them in his “fictional” characters (Callcott, Cooley, Trewhella, etc).  This lured him into feeling secure.  Beside, he had no other choice.  Yet he did not comprehend the sensitivity & significance of the material he was using.  He probably thought it was all childish play-acting.  He cd nt, dare nt, consider the consequences.  He was in, & could nt get out.  He had no alternative.  Besides, by the time they (Scott, Rosenthal, etc) read it, he would be gone, & far removed from any chance of retribution.  Or so he thought.

30/11/77 ditto:  Today I saw Col A.C. Wilkinson, who went to school with Jack Scott & his brothers Humphrey & Leigh.  [This meeting, arranged by Mrs Tony Street, through the good offices of Margaret Carnegie, took place at the Royal Sydney Golf Club.]   Jack, apparently, was the eldest.  They all went to Mrs Robson’s school at Double Bay.  He kept in touch with Jack Scott down the years & made his acquaintance again in particular about 1946 when Scott was about to marry the widow of Geoffrey Street (Tony Street is the son of Geoffrey & “Gip” Street).  He remembered Scott (who was four years older than him) as tall and wiry & much prone to gambling, losing hundreds of pounds at the races, & trying unsuccessfully to recoup his losses at night on the dogs.  He & Gip lived at Eildon in southern Victoria, but Jack had a flat in Melbourne.  He recalled no literary aspect of Scott.  But he was “military”, maybe an instructor at Duntroon.  He knew the Ambon story & confirmed that Scott was unpopular, probably due to his discipline, or the surrender to the Japanese.  Scott hd bn considered as Australian rep of Barings [?] about 1950 but was rejected because of his “unreliability”.  Never had much money.  All three Scott brothers were war heroes.

 [Although Col Wilkinson seemed verging on the ga-ga, I got the impression he had been deputed to try to try to put me off the scent.]

5/12/77 ditto:  Last week in Melbourne (covering a story down there) I saw Scott’s will.  He left his estate, valued for probate at 939 pounds, to his widow, Gip.  However, & interestingly, his book collection was valued by the firm of H.A. Evans at 81 pounds.  So he did collect books.

 [Naturally, I asked his surviving family if the collection had any Lawrence books, but his stepson, Tony Street, the Foreign Minister, assured me that it did not.]

27/12/77 ditto:  Wilkinson, however, did provide another direct link between the fictional Callcott & the real Scott.  He said, confirming what his other stepsons said, that he was a compulsive gambler.  He described Scott gambling obsession in almost frenetic terms.  L in K said of Callcott:  “Then spurt of energy, spurts of sudden violent desire, spurt of gambling excitement.”  [my emphasis]

c. 1/1/78:  [Around this date I first ran across one of the people who was to become very involved in this seemingly never-ending project, Andrew Moore.  His story is a remarkable one in itself.  He finished a history degree at university and became a secondary-school teacher.  He was sent to a remote country town in NSW.  He joined the local history society.  At a meeting he evinced an interest in Lang and the New Guard.  Someone present said that an old lady who lived out of town knew something about that sort of thing.  Andrew went out and visited her.  She told him that her father had been involved in the 1930-32 crisis.  Very involved.  So involved that he had a trunk of papers on the subject.  Would he like to see them?  And so Andrew stumbled across the records of the Old Guard, for her father was Colonel Fred Hinton, head of the Western Division of the Old Guard in 1930-32, and later the person who kept their nominal rolls and other records, right through into the 1950s.  When he died she found the trunk in his City flat.  Andrew went on to do a PhD on the Old Guard, then turned that into the main reference book on the subject, and is today Associate Professor of History at the University of Western Sydney, and Australia’s primary expert on right-wing para-military movements.  I ran across him at the Mitchell Library soon after he began to widen his research from the trunk to other records and documents.  As we were asking for the same sort of references, one of the librarians suggested he might like to compare notes with me.  Thus began a collaboration that has lasted down to today.  He is my (TF)Huxley.] 

Andrew Moore called.  He is working on the Old Guard in the country.  Mentioned a letter from Scott to Audrey Abbott [a alternative name for an element of the Gillespie-Goldfinch organisation was “the Abbott Group”]  about 1925 following Abbott’s election to parliament.  In it Scott says he wants to meet Abbott “to discuss certain matters”.  Moore also mentions “the Silent Four*”, apparently some central cell of the Old Guard.

[*actually the four leaders of the four divisions of the country part of the 1930-32 Old Guard]

18/1/78 ditto:  Have I stumbled on the truth?  Today, looking through back files of The Bulletin for Jan-June 1922, I came across an item [23/4/33] to the effect that “little Mrs Arthur Scrivener” organised at Rawson House in aid of seamen a concert for “the Harbour Lights Fund”.  This surely must be the Harbour Lights concert Jack Callcott mentions in K.  (At which he and some other fellow sing “Larbord Watch Ahoy”, which is reprised by Jack & Somers in ch 3, called “Larbord Watch Ahoy!”. )  And on the Malwa was a Captain Scrivener (and a Miss Amy Scrivener performed in Junee for the KEA [see above]).  Shall check in newspapers and pray that Jack Scott was present at that Rawson House concert.

 [This “lead” proved one of the biggest, most persistent red herrings in the long saga, and was to lure me and John Ruffels, who had yet to hove into sight, into a great deal of wasted, or almost wasted, effort.]

24/1/78 ditto:  June 22 Bulletin mentions Rosenthal.  Also reference to Mullumbimby.  Also item on Sastri and Indian nationalism (which L extracted for K).  More interestingly, in last Sunday’s National Times [a Sydney weekly journal] Richard Hall has an article (poor) on the League of National Security in which he said that a file (Australian Archives?) on the LNS [League of National Security – the Victorian equivalent of the Old Guard] contains a “stray” note from Investigation Bureau [predecessor of ASIO, Australia’s internal security organisation] inspector Longfield Lloyd in Sydney dated 22/1/21 referring to two people, S & H, and goes on to say “S may be working along the lines indicated by you”.  S?  Scott? (Later:  file name, “Formation of Citizen’s League”.) 

[Of course, whether S is Scott or not, what is significant about this is the date: 22/1/21, for it indicated that a “Citizen’s League”, no double the KEA, had been formed in Sydney, which of course it just had, and that the IB was keeping tabs on it.]

25/1/78 ditto:  In Alexander’s MS [the Rev. John Alexander had written an article on Lawrence and Kangaroo for Meanjin – see earlier note 18/5/77 -  which was part of a longer work, which he had just sent me to read]  he cites an incident in Chapala, Mexico, about May 1923 when L told Willard Johnson & Witter Bynner that they all had to quit Chapala immediately.  F explained why.  In the night L hd woken & thought someone was trying to break into his room.  “He rushed in saying ‘They’ve come’,” sd Frieda.  L hd obviously been terrified.  This could, of course, bn a dream, or local bandits, but it might also have bn L thinking that Scott’s men hd tracked him down & were about to realise the threat Rosenthal may indeed have made (if what Cooley said actually happened) that night in Sydney (“I could have you killed.”).  This is the only indication I have come across of the (anticipated) fear L must have hd of some retribution from Australia.

29/1/78 ditto:  In K (p 160) Jaz mentions the “secret organisation” behind the Diggers Clubs.

30/1/78 ditto:  add Bulletin research:  Agatha Christie & her military husband were in Sydney in July 1922 (the papers enthused that she was the author of The Mysterious Affair at Styles).  Adrian Lawlor  [a local literary critic – see below] wrote an article in July Bulle re current English novelists in which he mentions DHL as “the hope of the future novel”.  But L apparently did nt see this encomium.  It seems the only issues he read were those of 8/6 & 22/6 (& possibly 13/6). 

31/1/78 ditto:  In a letter from F to MDL 20/6/22, F says:  “L  has written a novel, gone [at] it full tilt to p 305, but has come to a stop and kicks.”  But p 305 in MS is half-way through the “H & L on Sea of Marriage”.  L is in full flight here.  Curious.  How did F know the exact number?  Or is there something wrong with the numbering?  Odd.

6/2/78 ditto:  In original MS, under a deletion, L describes the Maggies (which he first calls “the Diggers”, but deletes) as having black (not white) tunics.  Blackshirts!   What fuel for a fascist interpretation of K!

c. 19/2/78 ditto:  The timing of L’s decision to begin a novel – its suddenness – surely points to sudden access to information that wd lead him to think he could write such a long work as a novel about a place he knew nothing.

20/2/78  ditto:  I have made many (perhaps premature) claims before in these my notes, but I shall now venture a prediction:  that I now know, roughly, the circumstances of L’s writing K.  Here are the facts I draw this conclusion from:

 

1.       on the ship [Malwa] L met [was a fellow passenger with] three Army captains, one of which was cpt A Scrivener

2.       in K Somers says “a chap on the Naldera” told Cooley about him (Somers) – ie, independent of Callcott, Cooley knew of Somers from someone met on a ship

3.       the cpt was cpt Arthur Herbert Scrivener, at one time of Cremorne [Sydney northside Habourside suburb]

4.       the Bulle that [mentions] L&F’s arrival in Sydney also mentions that Captain “Bertie” Scrivener arrived “with his English bride” & was spending his leave with “his people at Hunters Hill”

5.       the only Scrivener listed in Sands near HH is A.S. Scrivener (the only A Scrivener in [Sands]) of Lucretia Ave Longueville (a stone’s throw from HH)

6.        in the Bulle of March 23, 1922 (p 42) there is an item which says that “little Mrs Arthur Scrivener” provided “a capital concert” for the sailors at the Rawson Institute.  Item goes on to say, or imply, that one of the organisations that organised the evening was the “Harbour Lights Guild” and, further, that the evening was “a special night of sing-song”

7.       now, in K Jack Callcott mentions singing a duet at “the Habour Lights Concert” (a sea-song in fact – “Larbord Watch Ahoy”)

8.       “Little Amy Scrivener” gave a recitation at KEA function at Junee in 1922

From these facts I deduce a chain of associations:  L & Capt S on boat - contact from boat to Rosenthal - Callcott (Scott) connected with Harbour Lights concert - probably Scrivener’s mother ran these – some possibility of association between Scott & Scrivener & maybe Scrivener family (at least at Junee).  It’s thin, but it’s possible – or rather it makes the impossible, possible.  If I can place Scott at HLG concert, then the chain is strengthened considerably.  Meanwhile could Scrivener be Twewhella? 

[beware of chains of association!]

25/3/78 ditto:  saw Andrew Moore on Friday and he said that several of the Old Guard people he hd met hd thought that Major-General George Macarthur-Onslow was the military head of the Old Guard.  (M-O, head of the Light Horse in WW1, looks like “Col. Ennis” in K [Fred Hinton was a Col in the Light Horse]).

15/3/78 ditto:  Yesty I read through the NL [National Library, which had photocopied the material and sent it up to me in Sydney] file, in the Herbert Brookes papers, referring to the “Self-Defence League”.  The first-glance discoveries were dramatic.  It seems that following the Red Flag riots in Brisbane in March 1918 [this was an error – the riots were later, in March 1919] Brookes held some talks with the Federal Govt (Acting PM Watt) which led to Brookes being summoned to Watt’s office in Melb in May 1918 to discuss, with several others, the formation of some auxiliary organisation connected with the Secret Intelligence Bureau [forerunner of the IB] & designed to spread throughout Aust & garner information about anti-government activity.  Discussions apparently continued throughout 1918 & the last dated reference is a note by Brookes that the scheme, enunciated in his notes, was accepted about Oct 1918.  This scheme involved a secret connection with the SIB & a downward organising hierarchy of State leaders who would contact the various loyal bodies in each State & secretly propose [the formation of] a secret organisation throughout each State to get information, & for ”other purposes”, on “disloyal” & anti-Govt activity.  Here, apparently, we have the genesis of the KEA and L’s Diggers Clubs. 

[correct, but see next note 19/3 below]

19/3/78 ditto:  I now believe I know what happened.  Brookes was almost deranged by the “disloyalty” that surfaced in Australia following Easter 1916 [the IRA uprising in Dublin], the two conscription referenda, the 1917 general strike, & the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.  Apparently the precipitating crisis was the St Patrick’s Day march in Melbourne on Saturday March 17.  [it was contributory rather than precipitating]  The “disloyalty” so blatantly displayed caused some sort of brain-storm in Brookes, & he resolved to devote “the rest of his life” to combating such “evil”.  This led to the May 1918 letter from Watt.  [incorrect – as we shall see (see Rananim 9.1) the letter was the result of a visit to America by a Melbourne dentist called Elliott]   During the March 1919 [the right date] riots in Brisbane plan was activated, & this led to the NSW meetings in 1920 & the KEA.

 [correct]

8/4/78 ditto:  My examination of the Brookes papers, together with [Trevor] Botham’s essay [on the Brisbane riots] & Rivett’s bio of Brookes, provide compelling evidence that the KEA was

a.       the cover for a secret organisation

b.       was probably organised as L describes in K (esp the five leaders)

c.        was created by Brookes, or following his lead

The KEA was created within weeks of a Labor government coming to power in NSW in March-April 1920 & folded within weeks of that Govt’s defeat in later 1922 [incorrect – defeated in March 19, but the KEA did continue on until the end of 1922].  It had a Masonic influence, as Brookes’s notes confirm.  In all, B[rookes] confirms L, & nothing B says contradicts him.

6/5/78 Mitchell:  An oddity.  In tracing all the Scriveners, I noticed one at Kangaroo St, Manly.  Very Joycean!    Other Scriveners [include – long list] CR Scrivener, saw-miller, of Mt Irvine; GW Scrivener of Wright Heaton Co Ltd Junee; and PP [Pedder] Scrivener of the CBC [Commercial Banking Company – same bank as Scott’s father] Blaney.

6/6/78 ditto:  For a description of the Australia Army 1920-21 see JRAHS 53 on Chauvell & Monash.  [Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society; Chauvell and Monash WW1 generals]

30/8/78 Victoria Street:  (resuming after break)  Contacted all the Scriveners in Sydney.  Found out [from one of them] that Cpt Bertie Scrivener had a brother, Ray, who went to Melbourne.  He was a very good singer & aged early 20s in 1922, apparently.  Bertie was aide-de-camp to some Indian Governor.  Wife Dorothy English.  His father, Arthur, apparently some sort of merchant.  Hint that they cd have used Wyewurk as a holiday house [according to a surviving relative].  [Arthur S] worked for a city firm.  Also:  see article [no date] in IM [Illawarra Mercury, local South Coast weekly newspaper] re Jack, the lifesaver, & the barber’s sons’ memories of DHL*.

 [*lost, alas]

31/8/78 ditto:  My operative in Thirroul, Joe Davis, has come up with a few interesting things (see his letter).  Wyewurrie [next to Wyewurk] owned by Sydney hardware merchant WS Friends in 1922.  Mrs Wynn [a name in Kangaroo] probably employed by Callcotts at their estate agency.  This info from Mrs Smith, 84.  She [?] probably delivered groceries [to Wyewurk tenants].  Jack & Billy Hawke delivered the coal on orders sent down [from Mrs Southwell, the owner, in Sydney, apparently] to Humphries & Alison’s stores. 

[Joe Davis, then still a student, had contacted me following one of my articles and sought advice on research into Lawrence’s time in Thirroul.  I advised him to ignore printed sources, except Lawrence’s letters, and to do his own research.  He did, to very good effect.  He later did a PhD on Lawrence in Thirroul, and subsequently a book, D.H. Lawrence at Thirroul.  It would, I think, be fair to comment that we have not always seen eye-to-eye on Lawrence, and that he was highly critical of the Darroch Thesis in his book. Nevertheless, he was the first to mention the name WS Friend, which, as we will eventually see, is central to any research on Lawrence and Australia.]

c. 31/8/78:  A major discovery in a letter to Seltzer in Oct 1922 [7/10/22] [in which] L said, talking about the MS of K, (and I paraphrase) “You don’t think the Aust Govt or the Diggers will find anything to take exception to in K?”  [my emphasis*]  Now, he can hardly be using the word Diggers in the Australian sense of ex-servicemen, so….  And even if he did mean ex-servicemen, then what could they object to if it’s fiction?  Not proof, but nice evidence to support my theory. 

[*One should not pass by and gloss over – as many have done, particularly (CUP Kangaroo editor) Bruce Steele and (CUP biographer) David Ellis – this vital quote from Lawrence’s post-Australia letters.  Its incredible naivety apart, it is surely concrete evidence – as recognised by scholars such as Warren Roberts (see the CUP Letters vol IV, p 320) - that Lawrence realised, at least in some part, that, while in Sydney and Thirroul, he had encountered something secret and probably sinister.  To maintain, as Steele and Ellis have done, that by the use here of the word “Diggers” Lawrence was referring to the generality of ex-servicemen of Australia, and not to the secret organisation he called in Kangaroo “the Diggers”, is perverse, to say the least.  And even if we were to grant them that peculiar interpretation, why would Lawrence be concerned about what the Australian Government might think of Kangaroo? – unless he knew his novel might have revealed something that it should not have revealed.  The “Aust Govt” could hardly be worrying about the impact of Lawrence’s novel on Australian tourism. (However, also entry 1/6/02 below re Lawrence’s “apologise” reference.)]

Also:  in [Dorothy] Brett’s book [on her travels with Lawrence] she cites L railing against “armchair authors” who don’t base their novels on actual experience.  Brett also makes clear, as does Witter Bynner (in Travels with Genius), that L researched the subject of Mexico before writing TPS [The Plumed Serpent].  So research on his topics in K wd nt be unusual, indeed it is to be expected.

13/12/78 Mitchell:  Resuming after a long delay, spent mostly trying to convince Cambridge [University Press] & the DHL editorial board [of the Complete Works project] that I should edit K.  But to no avail.

[I had just been informed by Michael Black of the CUP that my proposal, prepared after many months of effort, had been rejected.]

I am a DHL pariah.  So I turn my nose from such gilded & perfumed pavements to the dirt track back in Australia.  First thing of note:  apparently among the books KSP [Katherine Sussanah Prichard, a young and aspiring WA author who had missed meeting Lawrence in Perth due to the immanency of her confinement.  They later corresponded, in Australia and when Lawrence was in America.] sent L in Sydney was Eyes of Vigilance (which L retained and commented on).  This work, published in 1920, was by Furnley Maurice, pseudonym of Frank Wilmot.  (cf Fred Wilmot, Jack Callcott’s “best mate”, mentioned in K). 

[I took this rejection rather badly, assuming (perhaps not totally correctly) it was mainly due to my interpretation of Lawrence’s time in Australia, and in particular the secret army background to the writing of the novel, which I had outlined in my proposal.  However, from then on, I abandoned any idea of what Julia Roberts called, in a slightly different context, “Sleeping with the enemy”, and struck out on my own.] 

c.13/12/78 ditto:  Francis Crossle in 1931 published a novel, Donna Juana, dated Bulli 1929.  Set in Eire.  Also:  Arthur Reed Scrivener, “Carnoo”, Lucretia Avenue, Longueville.  Mrs Laurie Lavington ditto.  [at this time I was going through Sands, electoral rolls, and other directory sources trying to geographically place people who might be involved with the research, principally the Scriveners and Jack Scott]  Also, at 51 Murdoch Street [the address Lawrence gives in Kangaroo to where Somers and Harriett go shortly after they arrived in Sydney] lived (according to 1922 Sands) Robert Arthur Williams & wife Marie (he a commercial artist). [I had eliminated all other Murdoch streets and roads in Sydney except the one in Mosman, and it was this place and area I was now mainly focusing on]  But no mention of Scott in any Sydney [Federal] electoral roll.

 [which was very odd]

13/12/78 ditto:  Perhaps some items of  interest:  “Wooloona”,  Cremorne Road [Wooloona is a name Lawence uses in Kangaroo; Cremorne is the Harbourside suburb next to Mosman];  various Scotts in Harriette Street & Reynolds Street [Mosman].  There certainly seems to be a large number of guest or boarding houses in Murdoch Street.  At 51 a large number of people seem to be residing [implying it was a guest house] mainly Johnsons.  A Cooee in Sutherland Street [Cooee being the name L gave Wyewurk].  51 Murdoch Street are the Canberra Flats [Lawrence uses the name Canberra House in Kangaroo].  There in 1922 Sands are [surnames] Piddington, Fisher, Reid, Row, Wiltshire, Collier.  In 1923 Sands Tyzack replaced Reid.  (But these could have been owners, who let their flats out, for the electoral names – eg, Johnsons - are different.) 

16/1/79 at work:  It is interesting where L gets his names in K from…Callcott, Harriett, Somers, Ennis, Cooley.  Must track them all down.

 [Around this time I was beginning to have some problems with my job on the Bulletin.  I had made something of a niche for myself with my expertise in extreme-right politics in contemporary (as well as historical) Australia, following on my work in 1975-77 at The Australian.  This was my own choice, and no one else was to blame.  However, the then main target of this extremist activity was the NSW Liberal Party, whose higher ranks the extremists – nicknamed  “the Crazies” or “Uglies” (for those interested, their actual name was the “Sinless Perfectionists”) – were trying to infiltrate, using various front and disguise methods.  I, being the acknowledged expert in such methods and disguises, had become too closely associated - indeed, involved - with uncovering and thwarting of such activities. In an effort to acquit the Party of involvement with extremists, the then Secretary NSW division of the Party, John Carrick, made a public denial (or at least made public statements downplaying such influences), and this sabotaged (as it was designed to do) a series of articles I had written for the Bulletin on the subject, and which were to be published beginning that week.  I was somewhat discredited as a result of this, and a promised promotion to deputy editor was aborted.  My personal life was somewhat disrupted, too.  Soon after this I decided to resign and return overseas.  But while I was still in Sydney, I tried to chase up and accelerate all my outstanding research leads.]

22/1/79 Victoria Street:  Curiously, 51 Murdoch Street is not given in the 1921 or 1922 Sands.  But in the 1923 Sands there is a 51.  But it is not where it should be.  There is something wrong with the street numbering.  Will check council maps.

 [there was – what was 51 in 1922 was now 31, on the corner of Florence Avenue]

26/1/79 at work and Victoria Street:  Today I finally got my key piece of evidence linking Scott with Lawrence.  It came about this way.  I had earlier this week rang Peter Oatley, Sally’s [Rothwell] father & Scott’s stepson c.1920s.  I wanted to check up some details I had omitted to inquire about when I interviewed him & his brother two years ago.  He told me his mother’s name was Andree Adelaide Kaeppel.  Her father was a journalist, & she had one brother.  In 1922, he is pretty sure, they moved from Gordon to Collaroy [one of Sydney’s northern beach suburbs].  Their address there was in Florence Avenue (near the beach – see map).  No photos of Scott.  He was a tenor & used to sing around the piano.  He did not smoke a pipe, but he habitually used a cigarette-holder.  He was still married to his [first] wife, but living separately.  She was “highly nervous”.  Now, the Collaroy address, & date are the key things.  Later: [as I did not have a copy of Kangaroo with me] I rang him back and gained more information.  The house had a Maori name:  Hinemoa.  He [Scott] was “the Major”.  He married Mrs Oatley, who was a widow, around 1928, but before that he was a frequent visitor to the Collaroy house, which was No 1, the last in the street, facing the beach.  (And it’s still there!)  But, most importantly, I read out to him L’s description of the house I had presumed had been at Narrabeen [the next beach and suburb further north, where Lawrence says in Kangaroo Somers  travelled to after arriving in Sydney].  The description goes:  “The bungalow was pleasant, a large room facing the sea, with verandahs and other little rooms opening off.  There were many family portraits, and a framed medal & ribbon and letter praising the first Trewhella….so the party sat around in basket chairs and on settles under the windows…”.  Peter Oatley said this was a precise description of their house in Florence Avenue, Collaroy.  He particularly remembered the photographs on the walls.

1/2/79 at work:  [I had discovered that Hinemoa was currently occupied by a Mr Horrie Hayman and had rung his son, who answered the phone, to arrange to go and visit 1  Florence Avenue, Collaroy]  H. Hayman was a timber merchant in 1922! (so says his son).  [Trewhella is a timber merchant, at least in his original guise in Kangaroo]

3/2/79  Victoria Street:  On Saturday, Sandra & I went up to Collaroy to see Horrie Hayman.  Unfortunately he was ga-ga.  Could hardly remember anything, & that very mixed-up.  But he drew a plan of the original Hinemoa (now much altered internally) which he, a builder, had built for his father, a Salvation Army colonel, about 1914-16.  The plan (which I reproduce here) of 7 [not 1] Florence Avenue

fits K perfectly, down to the settles round the bay window.  The family, he said, came from Devon originally, thence to NZ.  They arrived in Sydney about 1911 to take over [a Salvation Army] farm at Dee Why [next suburb south of Collaroy].  Horrie trained as a builder.  Later he became a timber merchant & builder at Dee Why.  In 1916 the house was occupied by a doctor, who ran a hospital in it.  Later his mother let rooms there.  But there could have been a period when the house was let to outsiders, & around 1922 sounded right. No memory of Mrs Oatley or Scott.  Vaguely remembered a Trewhella, but perhaps not.  But he did use Scott & Broad as his insurance agents.

5/2/79 Mitchell:  Today I discovered, in a set of electoral rolls the existence of which I had not known about before (State, not Federal, rolls, given to me in error), Jack Scott’s 1922-23 address!!!!!  It was 112 Wycombe Road, Waterleigh (ie, Mosman West).  This is about two or three blocks [actually one] west of Murdoch Street.  112 appears to have been a residential [a place where rooms are let] , because a number of people – graziers, etc – are listed as staying there.  (Sands gives the owner as a Miss Tinson).  So, Scott was there, in Mosman, a stone’s throw or so from Murdoch Street in 1922-23!!!  In 1924 State roll he disappears, to Kings Cross no doubt.  1924 State electoral roll for Many has Mrs Oatley at Florence Avenue, Collaroy (but not in 1923 electoral roll).

 [The precise ins and out of these electoral rolls, and their dates, was to assume some significance later.]

6/2/79 Victoria Street:  The day has arrived.  I have my proof.  Let me describe what happened.  After yesty’s discovery of Scott’s Mosman address, this morning I drove over to Wycombe St [Road, actually, an error Lawrence made, too]  I approached from Kurraba Road [Neutral Bay] & the [house] numbers began at 30 as I turned left into Wycombe.  Up the long hill, looking to the left as the even numbers increased.  But also the blocks of new home units increased, too.  112-114 [the actual address] sounded an ideal [home unit] site, so my hopes declined.  I passed Harriette Street on my right, then drove further up.  Just as NB [Neutral Bay] junction hove into sight I noticed 120 – home units.  I parked the car & walked back.  Sandwiched between two large blocks of units was 112-114:  a convalescent home, apparently mostly intact (though with a tarted-up façade).  I was shown to the manager, a Mr Ken Young, to whom I told my tale of research & Lawrence.  He said he moved in 10 years ago & that it had been a nursing home for about 12 years.  Before that it had been four flats [which must have been huge], the legacy of two old ladies whose father had built the [two] premises for them, home & income, many years ago.  (The places were in the Queen Anne style [now called Federation] & built around 1911, I guessed.  In fact, the premises were still listed in the Yellow Pages as “Wycombe Flats”.)  He showed me the old boundary between the two halves of the building [ie, between 112 and 114], now much altered internally.  Then we went [at my request] upstairs to see the view.  From one front room you cd indeed see, over the rooftops of the new & old buildings opposite & to the right, snatches of valley running down to the Harbour.  On the horizon was Clifton Gardens [actually Bradley’s Head Road] &, over it, Vaucluse [on the south side of the Harbour, between the Harbour and the sea].  Then he took me to a bathroom at the far right [of the premises] & pointed out, on the horizon, the Macquarie Lighthouse, quite distinct.  [I had mentioned to him that Lawrence had said there was a lighthouse in view from the building] The Harbour & Clark Island also in plain view.  Then we went back outside into the small backyard.  Disappointment:  too small, no summer house [which Lawrence described in ch. 2 of Kangaroo], nor room for one, nor a potential view from one [which, again, Lawrence put into ch. 2].  Hopefully, I asked if there [had been] a flame tree in the garden [also described by Lawrence].  No, sd Mr Young – & I could not see one, just a big camphor laurel.  I’ll now draw the garden to illustrate:

But, sd Young, perhaps Norm wd remember – & he called to an old chap who was passing by, or working in the garden.  He was like Mr Westerman [a neighbour of ours in Victoria Street] next door (snr), but about 70.  He proved to be Norman Arthur Dunn, 75, who lived at the rear of the 112 place.  He was a stonemason, & had been living there for 30 years.  (His address was 37 Barry Street, NS [North Sydney] ([phone] 90 7044.)  He had been in the area virtually all his life, having gone to the local school at the age of 8.  He worked for the man who built the [112-114] house[s], a builder called Mr Summers.  (But [that’s wrong for] the daughters would have been called the same name.)  Did he recall a flame tree in the garden?  No – yes!  There was one, he thought.  What about a summer house?  Yes, that rang a vague bell.  But very vague.  Yes, there was a tree [he suddenly recalled] & yes, a fern house.  Now, where?  It (all this is him) must have been where the shed [now] is.  Yes, that’s it.  And the flame tree – he remembered it [there] was one because of the thorns – was next to it (I draw a diagram to illustrate):

Next he described the fern house, reaching back into his emerging memories.  It had lattice around [its] sides, & ferns hanging inside.  Two benches, with maiden hair ferns inside.  And the roof (I asked)?  Yes – there was something on the roof.  A lookout.  There was a ladder (rough – just slats) going up & some sort of cubby house – no, a platform – with four posts on top.  Some sort of railing.  And a lead roof (I asked)?  No, he didn’t think so.  Galvanised iron, but flat, not corrugated.  Yes, definitely a lookout.  And now he remembered it clearly – it was built to see over the 2-storey house in front (diagonally).  That’s it!!!!!!!!!!!  [to appreciate my explanatory enthusiasm, Lawrence’s description of the “tub-top” lookout in ch. 2 should be read]  As I left with my treasure, saying I would return with a document for him to sign reiterating what he told me, I drove up Bennett Street, almost opposite 112-114 Wycombe Road, (see diagram)

& what should I find at the end of the street, but 51 (now 31) Murdoch Street.  And the tram [again, read K about L’s visit to Jack’s place in ch. 7, “Battle of the Tongues”].  So that’s why L chose 51 Murdoch Street [no, not entirely, as we shall see when Mr Toy of the Bulletin makes his appearance] & why he describes walking to Jack’s place [in ch. 7], because he caught the ferry to Neutral Bay [no, Cremorne] & caught the tram up from the wharf to Florence Avenue, opposite 51 Murdoch Street & walked down Bennett Street to 112 Wycombe Road.  Well, it convinces me, finally & absolutely.  What about the rest of the world?

[The rest of the world would have to wait, as would their reaction.  However, the significance of this, quite major discovery was that I could now, credibly, place Scott and Lawrence in the same place in May-June 1922, and thus what was hitherto almost inconceivable, was now, not only probable, but provable, at least to those with an open mind.]

7/2/79 ditto:  Took typed statement to 112 Wycombe Road.  Found Norm – good old Norm – & he signed it in the presence of Mr Young, who witnessed.  Norm made a few slight alterations (not sure it was a Mr Summers, etc).  Later, at ML:  searched (& copied) Wollondilly [electoral] roll for Thirroul, 1923.  No sign of K house names [Lawrence in K cites many house names].  Odd.  No other clues (such as name of motor driver [who drove Lawrence around district], etc).  Also:  at VG’s [Valuer-General’s] Department [main repository of land information in NSW] I finally found the full details of Craig Street [Wyewurk was in Craig Street, Thirroul].  Barrister had two houses down from Wyewurk, and Fanny Easton of Leura owned Wyewurrie [the house next door, north, to Wyewurk].  Fanny!  Isn’t that a name crossed out in the MS?  [no, it was probably “Tanny”, a probable hold-over from Aaron’s Rod, where Frieda was called “Tanny”]  Across the road, the two facing houses were owned by a Burwood [Sydney suburb] businessman & a Lucy May Friend (of  WS Friend – wasn’t that the firm that Arthur Scrivener worked for?)

 [no, but we were getting warmer] 

8/2/79  Mitchell:  The pace quickens.  Searched 1922 newspapers for Harbour Lights concert.  Nothing.  Hope BM [British Museum] has plenty of Aust papers [it did].  But did strike some sort of pay-dirt in the Illawarra Mercury, where Dr Crossle turns up & speaks at a Catholic-Irish do at Wollongong, as a Protestant.  So he probably knew quite a bit about current politics (& could have spoken to L about same, especially, & this is important, on the opposite side [of the political divide] to Scott).  There were Labor MPs at the meeting, & some State [Labor] Ministers [so it was pre-March 1922].  Isn’t this lovely?  It’s all coming together.

[Such coming, however, would take two more decades to coagulate, if it has indeed fully “come together” now.]

c.8/2/79  Sydney:  [Not every significant event is recorded in this diary, and one of the most important  events is, alas, not recorded, mainly because at the time it did not seem as significant as it later proved to be.  This occurred at some time between my visit to Horrie Hayman on 3/2/79 and my departure a week or so later from Sydney to London via Austin and New York (where I further examined the Kangaroo holograph and the Berg typescripts thereof).  Someone, and it may have been Horrie Hayman or his son, suggested that it might be useful if I were to visit a gentleman called Walter Friend in Beach Road, Collaroy, just round the corner from Florence Avenue and Hinemoa.  I have a distinct memory of doing this, a day or so later.  Walter and his wife lived in a block of four flats, which was unusual for Collaroy, which was, and is, a holiday-house semi-resort.  He was quite amicable, though rather stand-offfish.  I explained what I was doing (trying to track down Lawrence’s contacts in Sydney) and said I had come to see him because I believed he had some connection with Hinemoa and Collaroy.  (I don’t think I mentioned Thirroul or Wyewurk.)  He denied any knowledge of what I was interested in, but he did say one thing that at the time I did not place much importance on, but which is the only written legacy of that encounter.  For some reason, and I don’t recall what precisely it was, he suggested that I might like to write to his brother, explaining my quest and the reason for it (and I retain a copy of this letter).  He gave me his brother’s address in country NSW, and I did write such a letter later from London, to which I received no reply.  His brother in the country was Robert Moreton Friend, who is almost certainly, I now know, part of the characters Jack Callcott and Jaz Trewhella in Kangaroo, and was almost certainly the person who took Lawrence and Frieda down to Thirroul and installed them in Wyewurk.  Never was I so close to the truth about Lawrence, Australia and Kangaroo.  But, at the time, I had no inkling of the importance of the name Friend to my quest, and 20 years were thus wasted.] 

[However, see below note dated 23/1/94, for I made a mistake in the above explanatory comment.]

31/5/79 KPR:  [back in London]  Long time, no discoveries.  But now a few things to note.  Since arriving back at KPR I have been examining Sydney papers at Collindale [the BM newspaper library] and correlating this with the MS of K.  I now have a very good picture of L’s time in NSW…weather, sunrise/sunset, ship arrivals, newspaper items, politics, etc.  I can, perhaps, now work out how he wrote K – what his inputs were, what he wrote each day, etc.  No sign of a Row in Town, but will keep looking.  Reviews of current literature, description of storm, passenger list of Tahiti [ship Lawrence left on], background of KEA start and finish, etc.  The other major piece of research is the last chapter problem.  Here I did make some progress (see my letter to Warren Roberts and draft of [my] article).  Proved that last chapter, contrary to what critics say, was written in Thirroul.  Developed analysis of progress of text from MS to publication of editions and also a theory of how the variant endings came about.  To this last night I added the interesting thought that the cover [of the U.S. Seltzer edition] tends to confirm the theory of a deliberate or preferential predilection (I know that’s poor grammar) for the “broken attachments” ending.  (By whom?)

[While preparing my rejected submission for the CUP, I had looked into the vexed problem of the variant endings of Kangaroo (the Seltzer or U.S. edition ending considerably short of the Secker or U.K. edition).  Warren Roberts, the U.S. general editor of the proposed CUP Complete Works edition, had sent me a copy of an article on this by a U.S. academic named Jarvis.  I had also seen in a U.S. journal his (Roberts’) statement that the two editions were quite different. (I also spoke to him personally on the matter when he gave me lunch in Austin in early March 1979.)   After I looked into the question quite closely (having photocopies of all the relevant texts, courtesy of the CUP, and having recently examined the holograph in Austin and the TSS in the Berg collection in the New York Public Library [where the inks and nature of top copies and carbons could be checked]), I found that that variants, the endings apart, were not as considerable as he had made out, and told him this.  When I reached London, I decided to compose an article on my analysis of the endings, as I thought I had discovered why they were different, or at least had developed a possible theory on this, which involved Lawrence letting accident determine the ending.  But I did not publish the article.  Later, in the 1990s, as I shall relate, when the CUP edition of Kangaroo, edited by Bruce Steele, was published, I saw that he had come to the same conclusion – that the U.S. “short”  version was the correct one.  However, his argument for this was utterly different to mine, and I realised at once that we both could not be correct.  This led me to re-examine the matter even more closely, and I then discovered that we were both wrong, and that the longer Secker variant was the correct one.  (See my article in the DHLR 26.1-3 and Rananim 9/1, “Not the End of the Story”.)]

9/8/79 KPR:  A couple of  small, but significant, points that have emerged from my examining the holograph, etc.  L must have had a good idea of what he would find at Thirroul on that Monday, for he went late & arrived late, about 4pm.  Had he been looking randomly [as Frieda maintained in her memoir] he would not have risked this.  Someone [must] have told him about this specific place [Thirroul] & that particular house [Wyewurk], someone who knew it was empty & available.  Also, it appears that it had become available only recently, for it was a well-kept house, of quality, & the fact that Mrs Southwell [the owner] wanted to go down & clean it seems to indicate it was recently vacated.  Surely she, or her sister [Mrs Lucy Callcott], wd nt leave it dirty, for hygienic as well as commercial reasons.  Yet L had every intention of taking it immediately, again implying he hd information about it that wd allow him to do this.  Given L’s lack of knowledge [of Thirroul], & the timing, then he must have been told. 

17/9/79 ditto:  For the past few weeks Sandra & I have been looking closely at DT [Sydney Daily Telegraph] & SMH files [at Collindale]:  she for 1920-21, I for 1922.  First, S came across a report of a riot in Moore Park [Sydney] on Sunday May 30, 1920, during which bands of ex-soldiers attacked a Labor speakers’ platform, counted out speakers, & made a general melee.  A flag was also involved.  More significantly, Major Scott was there, as was Rosenthal, & both spoke, Scott very meaningfully (see cutting photocopy).  Probably this assault on Catholic-Labor speakers was some sort of “operation”, probably organised by Scott.  But the more exciting find was an item in the DT social notes about a function organised by the ladies of the [Anglican] Home Mission Society.  These ladies included Mrs Arthur Scrivener, Mrs Arthur Friend and Mrs Arthur Scott!!!  Now, what a concatenation of Mrs Arthurs!  I presume Mrs Friend is related to the Thirroul Friends & that Mrs Arthur Scott is Jack Scott’s mother.  (Also S notes that in 1919 Mrs Arthur Scott was present at the founding of the British Empire Union.) 

[wrong – Scott’s mother was Mrs Donald Hyde Scott]

14/10/79 ditto:  Huxley [Aldous, not TF] in his 1932 Letters Introduction makes the interesting point that L “was in a real sense possessed by his creative genius”.  H explains that this possession meant that L was dictated to in what he wrote by a force outside him.  H paints a picture of L as the victim, or instrument, of an outside or extra-conscious force.  This might explain how L came to write K, hardly knowing where it would lead, hardly what would go into it.  Must check this with other scholars.

[This is a quite profound observation on Huxley’s part, and confirmed by a reading of L’s “philosophical works”, especially Fantasia of the Unconscious.  I now believe it is the key, not only to how K was written, but to L’s creative processes generally – see my article “Something Stirred” in Rananim  6/2, also various entries below, starting in Perth in July 1994.]

5/11/79 ditto:  Of course, F never met Rosenthal.  Those conversations between Harriett & Cooley in the novel are probably between F & Scott (cf Cooley’s “haughty lady” reference – probably Scott’s wife Marguerite).

17/3/80 Sydney:  [In March 1980, now working again for the Bulletin from London, I made a trip out to Sydney, during which I apparently tried to contact the Friends, for my (non-DHL) diary has an entry:  “Rang Friends. To Collaroy.  No luck”.*]

[As I realised later – see note 23/1/94 – this was in fact the visit made to Walter Friend mentioned above.  So I did note the interview in my diary, however it was  the “wrong” diary. (also see 32/1/94 for an explanation for this)]

19/10/80 ditto:  Nearly a year since my last entry, on this, substantive side of the page.  [I was tending to keep the right-hand side of the diary for the more important entries.]  Yet, although I have made no dramatic discoveries, the pace of progress has been brisk.  In having to write a book, D.H. Lawrence in Australia [commissioned by Macmillan Australia in June 1980 to coincide with the coming out of copyright – on 31/12/80 - of Lawrence’s works] I have been forced to bring together all my facts & discoveries & stretch them over the topic.  For the most part they cover pretty well, & the process has added greatly to my knowledge & understanding, especially of the chronology of what L did in Australia, & also of the techniques [he used] to make characters & events do double duty.  I can now say, with some confidence, that I know roughly what he did in NSW & how he came to write K.  Not insubstantial claims (& how far we have come!).

[I was also talking to various people, around this time, about co-operating on a film of Kangaroo, a project that eventually I was frozen out of.]

21/12/80 KPR:  Interesting that the Melbourne ex-Digger who wrote to me in 1976 [after my first article was published, telling me of Digger unrest in 1918-19-20] referred to “a much-hated ex-military jack”.

 

29/7/81 ditto:  In a letter to Catherine Carswell (22/6/22) L, remarking on her book Camomile, sd:  “Myself, I like that diary-letter form.” – a form, diary-wise at least, which was very much in his mind at this time!

5/8/81 ditto:  Fairly condemnatory first review of DHL in A from, of all people, Tom Fitzgerald in last Sat’s SMH.  Does not augur well.

 [I was about to depart for Australia for the official launch of the book.]

6/8/81 ditto:  Re numbers in K.  In ch 10, “Diggers”, L says squads number ”1400”.  What is the significance of this figure?  28x50?  70x20?  In June 1922, according to the K&E, the KEA had 34 branches.  But we are talking about the Maggie squads here.  Perhaps L is mixing up the Diggers & the Maggies (ie, branches & squads).  Also, note the figure 20 that Callcott cites in the “Cooee” chapter.  In K&E p 4 28/8/22 it is mentioned that 20 people my form a KEA branch.  Same issue has ad for WS Friend & Co, architects & builders.  (Owen Friend director of CBC, Scott’s father’s bank, and the KEA’s bankers.)

15/8/81 TG915 to Bangkok:  It is worth noting, partly for the exotic dateline, partly to refute T Fitz’s casting scorn on my placing Scott and L together in Mosman, that it could only be Murdoch Street, Mosman, for the view (Harbour, Lighthouse, etc) fits nowhere else in Syd.

 21/8/81 Burran Avenue (Mosman, Paul Delprat’s studio):  L movements were:  on arrival, booked into hotel [guest house] in Macq[uarie] St, visited Botanic Gardens, Cooks in Martin Place, wandered the streets, next day went to Manly & Narrabeen [Collaroy] where they learned that there was a cottage in Thirroul.  On the Monday they checked out & caught a cab to Central Railway [station].  They went on the 1-2pm train to T with Scott (at least) & probably a woman who may have been a Scrivener or a Friend.  The woman – Victoria – was the main contact there, going for the key to Mrs Callcott, organising deliveries, etc.  She probably went on a visit next day to relatives (at the Friends’ place near T?).  Next day they cleaned & cooked – this is the meal (roast pork, etc) described in ch 2.  They walked along beach, saw the plane that had come down.  It seems possible that on this day – Tuesday, May 31 – that Scott took L down the beach & gave him a hint, or even the full story, of the Diggers secret army.  In any case, it is probable that on this day L obtained from Scott the germs of K.  Next morning Scott probably had to return to Sydney.  Next day L himself returned to Sydney to pick up their trunks.  The decision to write K must have been taken on Thurs or Fri. 

10/9/81 Burran Avenue:  Found another helper.  He (John Ruffels) knows someone – whom he won’t say – who knew Scott.  [That person] describes [Scott] as “a bit of a womaniser” and also confirms his pent-up energy.  Also No 1 helper [Andrew Moore] says [his contact in Newcastle] Cohen confirms Callcott rings true of Scott, whom he knew.  [I suspect both helpers had the same contact – Cohen]  And speaking of Cohens, according to Andrew, Eustace Cohen in WA was in military intelligence in WW1. 

[John Ruffels, whom I first met on this trip, after being put in contact via the Mitchell Library, and then having coffee with him at Bondi, proved to be a very remarkable researcher, and has been of considerable help in my quest.  A postman by profession, he has the ability to track down leads and tips that few others would have the patience or ability to do.  His help to me was selfless, and he assisted others equally selflessly, including Joe Davis.]

11/9/81  TG982 Syd-Bangkok:  Yesty, while examining the 1923 State roll [at the NSW State Library] for Mosman West, I made a disturbing discovery.  According to the roll, living at “Canberra” in Murdoch Street was Bert Frank Toy, journalist.  Surely this is none other than Mr Toy of The Bulletin, to whom L had a letter of introduction from someone in WA [almost certainly Mrs Jenkins], a letter which F said he did not present.  And surely “Canberra” is the Canberra Flats at 51 Murdoch Street – the address L uses in K.  What does this mean?

[It meant a lot, but not as much as I expected, the crucial point being the date of the electoral roll, or rather when it was compiled – see 6/8/93 below.] 

2/1/82 Westbourne Park Road (our new home in London):  In the “Jack Slaps Back” chapter, Somers says:  “Another gulf opened in front of him.”  What was the previous gulf?  The final “showdown” that night in Cooley’s chambers?

6/1/82 WPR:  Andrew [Moore] sends me a [1922] report to the U.S. State Dept from the U.S. Consul-General in Sydney [c. July 1922] saying that an organisation of leading Australians was making preparations to combat disloyalty, etc.  The C-C, Norton, was present at the inaugural meeting of the KEA at the Town Hall, no doubt at the invitation of Australia’s former Trade Commissioner to the U.S., Sir Henry Braddon, who presided over that KEA meeting. 

16/1/82 ditto:  Ruffels has also come good (see his letter 2/11/81).  He has discovered that RF Scrivener, whose father worked for the CBC bank, went to Sydney Grammar, aged 10, in Jan 1901 – the same month that Scott, aged 12, also started there (and whose father also was with the CBC). 

20/1/82 ditto:  The plot thickens.  Ruffels has sent me a copy of Syd Gmr junior exam in 1903 in which “Scott i” (Scott was 15 in 1903) is listed with a Kaeppel.  Now, Peter Oatley’s mother (nee Kaeppel) had a bother, who would also been a Kaeppel.  So it seems that Scott may have gone to school with the brother of his second wife.  That gives Scott another good reason to have been at Hinemoa that first Sunday.  I will check further with Peter Oatley.

21/1/82 ditto:  Some important developments on the Scrivener front.  R[uffels] says CR Scrivener surveyed Canberra.  In K Victoria says her father was a surveyor.  “Then he gave it up and started this farm down south.”  In 1922 Sands CR Scrivener is listed as a saw-miller at Mt Irvine [in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney].  I will follow this up, for it is beginning to look as if Scott was attached in some way to a female Scrivener. 

[alas, further down the wrong track]

10/4/82 ditto:  [A long entry where I speculated on L’s intentions in Australia – ie, whether writing K was the product of a deliberate decision to stay and write a novel, or whether it was largely the result of accident, being obliged to stay until money arrived, and having little else to do.]  …of course, he cd have bn converted [to stay & write] by the realisation that he hd come across in Scott the germs of a novel (tho you wd have thought that if that were so he wd have tried to stay closer to him in Sydney).  But then there was the cost…[of Sydney accommodation]

20/12/82 QF002 London-Sydney (on one of our annual trips back to Sydney):  Just before leaving, Leo Chapman [a journalist colleague], who had read my book & also a bio of [General Sir John] Monash, sd I was wrong about Rosenthal being Jewish!  And sure enough, on re-reading Perry’s monograph [he wrote a short biography of Rosenthal] on R it turns out he was a Methodist, and an active one (his parents were Danish & Swedish, I think).  Something of a blunder.  And yet, it may be even better that he was not Jewish.  For L does not say [initially at least] that he was Jewish:  merely that he looks Jewish (long, pendulous face, thick lips) & remarks “…surely he had Jewish blood in him…the man surely had Jewish blood…”.  Now, L wd nt have gone on like this unless he knew or hd bn told that R was not Jewish.  …having R-Cooley look Jewish & not be Jewish wd fit better than my clumsy mistake mistaking him for a Jew…

1/2/85 WPR:  Three years [just over two, actually] since my last entry!  However, there has been a trickle of information, mainly in Ruffels’ letters (see separately).  But here it is worth recording what I learned on my [recent] trip to Cambridge to see Jack Lindsay [literary son of Norman Lindsay] (who was last in Australia in 1926!).  He had mentioned in his autobiographical The Roaring Twenties that he had just missed [meeting] L in 1922 in Dymocks [bookshop in Sydney]. I wanted to test his memory further.  He reiterated that he went to Dymocks one day in 1922 & saw his friend Frank Johnson, who was some sort of under-manager, who told him (words to the effect): “Guess who was just in here…D.H Lawrence…”.  Lindsay, now 85 but mentally OK, knew, read & admired L’s works, so the incident was significant for him.  He sd that he recalled that later, after K was published in Aust, literary circles in Sydney wondered how L hd got his information (they also marveled at how L “covered his tracks” & had “kept to himself”).  [there was speculation that he might have based Cooley on a Sydney left-wing lawyer – see 3/2/86 below]  One might speculate what L was up to in Dymocks.  Was he simply up in Sydney on one of his regular trips & had some time on his hands & just wandered into Dymocks (in George Street, not far from Martin Place, where he picked up his mail [wrong – he picked up his mail from Cooks in Martin Place]) for a gentle browse?  Or was he looking for books about Australia [Dymocks had both a lending library and a second-hand section]?  I think we can dismiss any idea that he was looking for literary company.  Incidentally, Lindsay remembers nothing about the 1919 Red Flag riots, though he was in Brisbane at the time.

[Although there had been nothing to note in the diary for that two-year period, the research effort had not been inactive.  In particular John Ruffels had been beavering away back in Sydney trying to track down Scriveners, school friends of Scott and, in particular, members of the Harbour Lights Guild, and tracing a network of social, business and political links among members of the Sydney Anglican elite, including a growing number of members of the Friend clan.  Andrew Moore had also been very busy and sent many items of interest about secret army activity in NSW between the wars.  These items and insights came in their regular letters to me in London.]

2/8/85 le Canal du Midi (on a junket):  Trying to make the last big [research] push on K…New film in the offing [the film version of Kangaroo], 100^th anniversary [of L’s birth], Wyewurk preserved [a preservation order had at last been placed on Wyewurk, this time by my former Bulletin colleague, now NSW Minister for Planning, Bob Carr], academic interest burgeoning, etc.  Have gone over all my notes & JR’s letters, & going through K once again.  The major thing R has turned up is the records of the HLG [Harbour Lights Guild, the women’s auxiliary of the (Anglican-run) Mission to Seamen in Sydney], including its 1922 membership!  Mrs Kaeppel, AA [Andree Adelaide Oatley] mother, apparently a member, along with a Miss Kaeppel, both of the North Sydney branch.  So Scott cd have gone to a Harbour Lights concert, perhaps in North Syd.  There is little doubt from the names [Ruffels supplied] that Scott was part of a close network of Anglican-type people that dominated Sydney society…Scriveners, Knoxes, Friends, Streets, etc.  Any access by L via someone he met (a Scrivener, for example) would inject him into this milieu & so into the orbit of Scott.  So we do not have to prove anything dramatic here.  And L’s decision to go to Thirroul cd have been sparked by meeting any one of a list of such people – Scriveners, Friends, etc.  The secret army side is virtually settled now:  the correlation between L’s descriptions of the Diggers-Maggies in K with the KEA-fronted real secret army is as convincing as we could want (tho utter confirmation wd be nice).  The only two big remaining mysteries are:  who is Victoria?  Who is Trewhella?, & how do the others (Scott & Rosenthal) fit in?  That, & the final unravelling of the tangled skein of plots & sub-plots of K.

6/8/85 WPR:  R[uffels] has come up with a small point or two worth noting.  He shows (see his letter July ’85) that the only person on the Malwa that fits [Frieda’s] description of “a young Army Captain” who recalled the rain on the roofs is Captain Scrivener, the others being eliminated by age or nationality.  He has also turned up the Meston Volcanic Evidence reference in the DT of May 11, 1922.  This shows that L was reading [old] newspapers at least back to that date, possibly at Wyewurk [which maintained a stock of old newspapers for fire-making purposes].  Incidentally, Bob Carr has put a preservation order on Wyewurk following my representations to him last March.  Also:  re the lack of an Irish-Catholic element in K (raised by R in his letter 7/85), this cd be a case of the dog in the night [which did not bark], & makes it more likely that Struthers is Garden (who was protestant and Scottish), as most NSW Labor figures in the 1920s were Irish-Catholic, Garden being the conspicuous exception. 

 3/12/85 ditto:  Today I met (at last, in person) Ernest Whiting.  He had written to me following my first L article (May 1976) intimating he had information that indicated L had met [while in Australia] someone connected with secret armies, etc.  Today, visiting London and looking me up, he cd only recall, initially, that he wrote to me saying that he believed that L had learned of the secret army from someone he met on a boat.  I tried to question him more closely [and I’m pretty good at that].  He revealed that his family background was certainly of the officer-professional-protestant-conservative milieu from which Australia’s secret armies sprang.  He recalled Ned Herring [a WW1 officer and later judge] and Fred Knight [unknown] touring the road from Frankston [an affluent Melbourne suburb] where people like the local chemist had their units ready for inspection (in the 1930s).  His mother came from Sydney and was related to Banjo Patterson [a major Australian poet] (Lumsdane?).  [Patterson covered the Boer War for a Sydney newspaper]   In 1919 she married his [Whiting’s] father, a WW1 Officer, and they moved to Melbourne.  They lived off Toorak Road [Melbourne’s poshest area].  She was a salionaire [ran a salon] and literary/musical.  In about 1938 he recalled that he was present [at one of her salon occasions] when Lawrence and Kangaroo were discussed.  The q was raised:  how cd L had known?  Someone present – and EW thinks it cd have been a chap called McEwan who was head of Burns Philp [then one of Australia’s biggest companies] – sd:  “Look at who L traveled to Sydney with.”  Of course, it wd be dangerous to place too much importance on this, as retrospective input is always a possibility.  The most, probably, that can be sd is that it probably shows in the 30s some realisation that L hd touched on some reflection of secret army reality.

25/1/86 ditto:  [having returned from our annual trip to Sydney] Carlton Hotel [where L apparently stayed a night, probably before experiencing “The Nightmare”] was 12 shillings a night.  Also:  L bought “a double suitcase” in Rome (a trunk?).  Going through the material R gave me in Sydney…the Esch letters are of some interest.  Esch got negs [of snaps of L&F at Wyewurk] from Forrester (who wrote to him, out of the blue, after his SMH article was published) and sent them to Nehls, who had them printed then returned them.  Nehls was very impressed with [Esch’s] Forrester interview [for Nehls’s Composite Biography] and sd: “…it helps disprove the established theory that L met, knew and saw no one…while living at Wyewurk” [!] and mentioning that “it is almost certain that F and Marchbanks must be prototypes for some of the men in K”.  [well, you would draw that conclusion, wouldn’t you]  Also:  from R’s cuts [a journalistic term for Press clippings] on the May 1921 flag-burning incident in the Domain (and other info)  there can now be little doubt where L got his vivid description of the Row in Town.  Apart from [his version] being set inside, it cd well be a description of any number of [similar] events from the 1919 Moore Park fracas to the assaults on the Australia First meetings in the 1940s (see Hasluck photocopy) [describing a meeting of the proto-fascist Australia First movement in Sydney being disrupted and Inky Stephensen being assaulted].  The only mystery [now] is did L see something himself, or did he read about it or was told about it?  (The July 4 meeting [of Labor and union officials at the Sydney Trades Hall] wasn’t bloody enough to be the sole basis).

[It was now, around this date, that the anniversary occurred which marked a decade since this research diary started (with that Australia Day party at Evan Williams’ on 26/1/76 – see note thereof above).  That decade had seen a lot of progress, and many discoveries and insights, but also some degree of stalling or stagnation, particularly since 1979.  We knew that Lawrence had portrayed a real secret army in Kangaroo, and based it on meetings with Scott and Rosenthal (though outsiders might not go along with this).  We knew roughly what Kangaroo was about.  But how all this happened - who met whom where and when – remained an unknown.  We lacked proof.  In the offing were Bruce Steele’s CUP edition of Kangaroo, and the “authorised”, or rather intended-to-be “definitive”, biographies of Lawrence’s life and career, also under the imprimatur of the CUP.  As a new year of research yawned open in front of me, I had little inkling of what lay ahead.  To imagine that, for example, I would still be doing research into the next century – 14 years hence - and making significant discoveries, was totally beyond my ken, as were the fight for Wyewurk, the founding of  the DHL Society of Australia, the various Lawrence conferences, the problem of the endings, Rananim, the period in Perth and WA, and taking up residence at Collaroy.  It would have been a salutary, not to say daunting, prospect to be aware that I was yet to reach the half-way stage in my research.]

29/1/86 WPR:  It seems that the Friend connection shld be chased up.  Joe Davis ([in his] 1978 [letter]) says Mrs Smith sd Wyewurrie [next to Wyewurk] was owned by WS Friend.  What wd make sense is that it was a Friend who, possibly that day at Hinemoa - Jaz? – told L that Wyewurk was empty.  Only this degree of info wd surely have allowed L to go to Thirroul on Monday.  Will chase up. 

[a prophetic insight, as it turned out]

30/1/86 ditto:  [Keith] Sagar [prominent British-based Lawrence scholar], in a letter to me, makes the point that Torestin [where, in Kangaroo, Somers goes after arriving in Sydney] was probably L paraphrasing Wyewurk (and Wyewurrie).  Possible.  More likely he [Lawrence] saw it [the name] in Australia.

3/2/86 ditto:  I suppose it shld be noted that N. Robinovitz, who was Jack Lindsay’s tip for Cooley, wrote in Forum [a Sydney literary journal] (see R’s enclosure) in June 1922 an article about democracy.  He also reviewed AR [Aaron’s Rod].

4/2/86 ditto:  The list of mourners at DAH Scott’s funeral [Scott’s father] is of interest [list supplied by JR].  His bro-in-laws included the [NSW] Chief Justice, Boissier, and [the American Consul] JA Norton.  CBC heavily represented, also United Insurance (AG Friend a director?) and the Wallace Tug Company.  [there is something wrong here, for his brother-in-law should have been a Street, who was indeed a NSW Chief Justice]

10/2/86 ditto:  In, again, going back over everything, I have come to the belief - perhaps it is just a feeling – that the Scrivener original-contact scenario, on which a lot of my assumptions have been based, does not adequately explain how L so quickly stumbled into that Scott-Kaeppel-Friend milieu immediately after his arrival in Sydney.  That HLG concert reference is simply not enough.  What we really need is an [earlier] contact with someone like one of the Friends.  For, after all, L within 48 hours or so of his arrival went to two places where the Friends had homes – Narrabeen & Thirroul.  [I had previously discovered that Walter Friend, whom I had interviewed in 1979, had moved to Beach Road, Collaroy, from a house in Pittwater Road, between Narrabeen & Collaroy, where he had lived since the early 1920s]  It would be much more likely that it was through a Friend that L met Scott.  Also I am haunted by what Ernest Whiting told me, that if one seeks the answer to how L found out [about the secret army], look in the passenger list of the ships in which L came to Australia.  Again, the Scriveners don’t fully satisfy this.  So I looked back over the three lists, having come to a provisional theory that L may have met someone on the Osterley [between Naples & Ceylon], as he did Mrs Jenkins, & this was the person who told him about Sydney (for he booked through to Sydney in Colombo), & that this was his contact [in Sydney].  If I could find a name I recognised, then this would explain a lot.  So I looked, and, sure enough, as I had predicted, there was a name I recognised.  Moreover it was a Friend! – Mrs MK Friend.  But there is now a problem.  She joined the Osterley at Colombo [while Lawrence disembarked there].  However, there must be, I think, some explanation for this, & some scenario that will put us into the final stretch.  It may involve Mrs Ennis [wife of Mr Justice Ennis, with whom the Lawrences stayed the night before they left Ceylon], whom L asked Secker to send a [copy of] W in L [Women in Love] to.  I hope to have some answers from JR and my own research at Collindale [where I was still ploughing through the Sydney newspapers of the time].  It looks too good not to have some truth in it.

9/4/86 ditto:  R[uffels] has come up with some points of interest.  From a chap at Duntroon who is editing [the] CUP edition of The B[oy] in the B[ush] [the chap proved to be Paul Eggert] he has learned that it was Mollie Skinner’s brother Jack who coughed up the bullet [mentioned in Kangaroo, where Jack Callcott did the coughing up].  This implies strongly that L may have based some aspects of his early characterisations on WA models.  Eustace Cohen, for example, could have bn Jazish – and his young wife Maudie a bit of Victoria [that was a good guess – see below].  So some research has to be done there.  Also R has discovered the provenance of that reference to L’s essay on Democracy (see R’s letter of 31/3/86).  Apparently it was published in a newspaper in the Hague (1919) and it may have been run by a nest of spies, or at least pacifists.   Thus [William] Siebenhaar [the Dutch-born poet and public servant who befriended Lawrence in Perth] in particular could have read it, & so he might have provided some of Cooley.  Or Willie (”William”) Struthers.  The other point is more subtle.  Apparently L&F stayed in a hotel their first night in Perth.  This is what L did in Sydney, too, & raises the possibility that L followed in Sydney the same [known] pattern he did in Perth.  This in turn implies that there was some Mrs Jenkins figure in Sydney, someone who teed up a hotel for him & also helped him look for more permanent accommodation, someone he met on the Osterley or the Orsova [between Colombo & Perth].  Investigation proceeds apace.  (But Whiting looks more & more right.)

[A few months later Sandra and I went over to New York to take over the North American office of Australian Consolidated Press, Kerry Packer’s publishing group (we had already been running the London office since 1983).  We remained there until May 1987, when we returned briefly to London before returning more or less permanently to Sydney, where we had acquired a flat at Bondi.  My permanent journalistic career also ended with this move, as there had been a change of editorial direction at ACP.  From now on we would concentrate on our own, first publishing, then Internet, business.]

14/5/87 PA100 US-UK:  A year since my last entry, & this [one] on the last page of this notebook.  I should use it well.  Going home to Sydney soon, hopefully to the final denouement (in the wake of the [Kangaroo] film and the various flattering mentions of my work).  [that was about to change]  It now seems that (see my last l[etter] [to] Ruffels) that we have a possible final explanation, ie, that L met someone, either on the Osterley or in Ceylon, who was his initial contact with the Friends.  Ruffels is getting a genealogy of the Friends and that should be the start of the last push.  My article on “The Man Who was Kangaroo” [on Rosenthal] was rejected by both the Bulletin and the SMH, but it might be printed elsewhere [it was, in Quadrant].  Then I’ll do a Friend article and hopefully [a] book.  One extra tidbit:  according to AM [Andrew Moore] (via JR) he has found a lady [Mrs Jeffery], a radical, whose father was a doctor in Killara [an affluent suburb on Sydney’s leafy North Shore] whose habit was to play cards with Scott.  And they used to tease him about him being portrayed in a book.  I wonder which one…

[One remarkable aspect of this research project was that, time & time again, casual or unexpected contacts & acquaintances had information, or could otherwise help, which advanced the cause, and without whose help the project might have stalled or stopped entirely.  The fact that we played tennis in Turramurra with a school friend of Sandra’s who just happened to be related to Jack Scott is but one example of this quite curious phenomenon.  Another example, germane here, is that working in our Sydney office in 1987 was Fiona Friend, not only one of the powerful & extensive Friend clan, on whom my research was increasingly focusing, but who provided me [via John Ruffels] with a complete family tree of the Friends, and whose supplementary information helped greatly in what was to follow.]

SECOND NOTEBOOK

18/5/87 WPR:  Back from NY last Friday, & back also to DHL.  Am starting this new book in the hope that it will be the final stretch.  My intention is to concentrate research on the likely leads – Ceylon, Friends, etc – so there will, necessarily, be a lot of extraneous material and false leads [which I have edited herewith for relevance].  First, Ceylon. …He [Lawrence] fancies [he says to Mrs Jenkins] the apply-growing regions south of Perth.  But by then – March 28 – he is already thinking of going on to Sydney.  Now, he must have made inquiries about this.  (He is still in Kandy.)  So the probability is that he’s already met someone, either before he arrived (on the Osterley) or since he arrived.  By April 3 he is already thinking of going in three weeks (exactly when he did leave).  So he has probably picked out the ship already.  …The impression he gives is that he has the possibility of [going to] Sydney in mind, but [it’s] not definite. 

2/6/87 ditto:  In l[etter] 2481 (3/4/22) [CUP edition] L says to M[ountsier, his US agent] [words to the effect] “I may be in Perth or Sydney (when I cable you for money).  If Perth, write to Mrs Jenkins.  If Syd[ney], to c/- T. Cook.”   So his mind is not made up whether he will be in Perth or Sydney.  But Sydney was a possibility.  Perhaps he was writing for confirmation of arrangements there? 

[We came back to Sydney in August 1987.  The next diary entry is undated, but presumably (from its ink and position in the notebook) around June or July 1987 (ie, just before we returned to Sydney).  It merely records the fact that on 16/4/22 Mountsier cabled Lawrence $US1000 to Ceylon and that when Lawrence got to Perth, he had about 150 pounds remaining.  (So money was beginning to get short, and he would have needed more money from Mountsier to book onward passage to America.)  The next diary entry is dated 8/1/88 – almost six months later - and refers to a note in a file I had recently started. (By then I had many files on people like Scott and Rosenthal and on other matters, such as Thirroul and Wyewurk.  These files, along with all my other Lawrence materials – books, manuscripts, etc – were sent separately to Sydney, and arrived a few weeks after we did.)  This particular file was on a man called Gerald Hum.  I think it was John Ruffels who first focussed attention on him, though I would have seen his name on the Osterley passenger list, along with Mrs Jenkins and Mrs MK Friend.  What, however, brought him to the very forefront of our research was the fact that his name was also in one of Lawrence’s address books, which implied that Lawrence had not only run across him, almost certainly on the Osterley, but that he may have had ongoing contact with him.  The significance of this was that Hum was the only Sydney name in Lawrence’s address book (a photocopy of which I had just acquired).]

8/1/88 Brougham Street (then our Sydney office):  It is beginning to look as if we – myself and Ruffels – might be quite close to solving the last remaining substantial mystery of Kangaroo.  I suppose up till now there have been two major lines of investigation, aimed at finding how L came across Scott &, more broadly, what were the circumstances of the composition of the novel.  One line was the Friend connection.  The second was trying to trace the set of events that brought L to Sydney & sent him down to Thirroul, presumably in Scott’s company.  It is, apparently, in the course of tracing this second line that, perhaps, the final, vital clues have begun to emerge.  [We know that] L left Naples intending to go to Ceylon to stay with the Brewsters before going on to Taos.  On the Osterley his mind turned to going to the U.S. via Australia.  He struck up a friendship with Mrs Jenkins & received an invitation [from her] to go to Perth.  He also, apparently, met D[avid] G[erald] Hum of Sydney, & noted his address [in his address book].  Probably he knew he [would eventually] go on to Sydney from Perth & needed information & a contact there.  In Ceylon he decided, probably very early, to go to Perth.  He wrote to Mrs Jenkins, teeing up accommodation.  He almost certainly would have also written to Hum in similar terms.  In any case, Hum wd apparently have replied helpfully, probably to Perth (check mails).  Probably L wrote [again] from Perth giving details of his arrival on the Malwa (this explains L’s short stay in Perth).  So the likelihood is, given that L was allegedly [alleged by Whiting] met on the wharf [on arrival in Sydney], that it was Hum who was waiting to greet & help him [when he did reach] Sydney.  He probably put him in a cab for the short trip up Macquarie Street to Mrs Scott’s [no kin] guest house.  But L needed cheap accommodation.  The house-hunting trip to Collaroy the next day was fixed.  Hum may have met them at the ferry at Manly [he lived on the north side at Chatswood] & taken them up to Narrabeen by tram.  They had to wait to go to Hinemoa on the invitation of the Friends, who had also asked Scott along.  All this is feasible and something like it hd to have occurred.  But have we any proof?  Hum must now be the prime suspect.  Is Jaz Hum?  It is starting to look like it.  (Where does this leave the HLG and Mrs Scrivener?)

[The possible, even probable, identification of Hum as Jaz was reinforced by another coincidence.  My closest friend, the artist Paul Delprat, who had gone down with us to Thirroul in 1975, was a member of the renowned Ashton family in Sydney.  I think it was Ruffels who discovered that Paul’s grandfather, the artist and journalist Howard Ashton, knew Hum.  Not only that, but Hum was a relative of the Ashtons.  Paul’s mother could actually recall Hum and his cousin Howard Ashton sitting in their Mosman home every Sunday listening to music and discussing art and politics.  The description Mrs Delprat, Paul’s mother, gave of Hum fitted Lawrence’s description of Jaz down to the last detail (“stuggy”, etc).  But the clincher, to use an Americanism, was the fact that she could remember her father Howard remarking that Hum was “a typical Cornishman”.  Hum is, of course, portrayed in Kangaroo as a Cornishman.]

25/1/88 Brougham Street:  Yesty JR mentioned that he had spoken to Hum’s son, who lives up the North Coast, who told him that his father used to go to a rented holiday cottage at Fisherman’s Beach on Sydney’s north-side.  He described Fisherman’s Beach as being just behind Long Reef [ie, Collaroy, or, more accurately, Collaroy Basin].  Which is where, of course, Hinemoa is. Hummmm….

[This revelation was extremely important, for it placed Hum, at least in holiday mode, in the same, small area – Collaroy Basin comprised only a few blocks between the beach and Pittwater Road – that we were pretty sure Lawrence visited on his first weekend in Sydney, and made it very likely that it was indeed Hum who took him to Hinemoa.  A few months after the discovery of the importance of Collaroy Basin to the research, I sooled* a bright young “office boy” called Geoffrey King on to the task of identifying, from Land Titles Office records, the 1922 owners of every house and property in the Basin. This he did, with gratifying results, placing in the area a number of names linked to Jack Scott and his family and milieu.]

[*I have been advised that I should explain that the word “sool” is an Australianism that some non-Australians might not know.  To “sool” is to incite or order/encourage.  Someone would sool a dog on to someone, which means encouraging the dog to attack that person.]

31/1/88 Bondi:  Last night spoke to Mrs Delprat (Rosalind Ashton, Howard’s daughter) re Gerald Hum, whom she remembers quite well.  The main point is that she does indeed recall her father saying of Hum that he was “a typical Cornishman”.  She was in no doubt about this.  She also described him and there is little question that he could fit [Lawrence’s portrait] of Trewhella.  His wife was “a bright little creature”.  They had a daughter and two sons.  She thinks that one of Julian’s sisters [Julian Ashton, Howard’s father, founded the Julian Ashton Art School, and was one of Australia’s greatest painters] married a Hum, possibly in Cornwall.  (Julian had Cornish blood and lived in Cornwall for a time.)  Gerald Hum was probably the son of that marriage.  Hum’s daughter went to Abbotsleigh [Sydney’s premier Anglican girl’s school, where Sandra and Sally Rothwell also went], so they would have moved in the same social circles as Scott, the Friends, etc.  Exciting news, for we should be able to trace a line from Hum to Scott.

1/3/88 ditto:  On Sunday last I had lunch at Sally and John Rothwell’s at Gordon to meet Carl Oatley, her brother or step-brother (I’m not sure which, and I didn’t feel it right to ask).  He’s an [Air Force?] intelligence officer & ex-Duntroon [Australia’s military college, where Paul Eggert also lectured] lecturer, about 30.  Somewhat skeptical of my thesis, but co-operative.  I think he slowly came round to believe that his grandmother, Andree Adelaide [Kaeppel], might have known the great secret.  He brought a photo album that had shots of AAK, possibly at Hinemoa around 1922.  Has more, apparently.  She was vivacious, literary, & very loyal to her first husband, Dudley Oatley, whom she chased to London & Egypt with three kids in tow.  The family picture of Scott, her second husband, is of a poor soldier, rather scatty & incapable of much plotting.  The gun incident [when he threatened to shoot himself] confirmed.  Some Friend or Street connection vaguely recalled.  Quite knowledgeable about Carl Kaeppel, the family wastrel [AAK’s brother].  Some hint that Scott may have been chasing AAK before she married Dudley Oatley.  The surviving daughter  [sister to Carl and John Oatley] lives at Moree, & Carl promised to contact her.  AAK went to Japan with Scott in the 1930s.  She may have bn the first female BA at Sydney University (so If Scott had Lawrence in tow, it would have impressed her). 

c.1/3/88 ditto:  Hum [according to JR] holidayed at Collaroy Basin & [no doubt] knew that cheap places at winter rates were available there, the sort of thing L was looking for.  But why Hinemoa?  What is the connection with Thirroul?  (and the Friends?)  Hum is probably Trewhella, & Lillian, Rose, & the Hum daughter is Gladys[the Trewhellas’ daughter in Kangaroo] possibly.  If so, that leaves only Victoria.  Is she AAK?  Or a Friend girlfriend of Scott’s?  Or even Mrs Hum?

[as it turned out, she was none of these]

2/5/88 ditto:  Yesty spoke to [journalist] Tom Fitzgerald [see above] re Scott, Old Guard, etc.  He sd he once had a neighbour who revealed that he had been in the Old Guard, around 1930.  The chap told him he had been recruited because he had a car [Hum owned a car] and was a sterling, upright fellow.  Only once was he called upon to do anything, and that was to turn up one day in his car at Victoria Barracks [the military depot in Paddington, Sydney].  There he found a good number of other chaps, also in their cars.  This is of interest because it provides a possible link between Hum (car owner) and Scott (“garage proprietor”) in 1921-22.

[I believe the neighbour was Colonel Alex Sheppard, see 27/1/77 above]

 4/5/88 ditto:  Why [do I believe it was] Hum [who led Lawrence to Scott]?  On the face of things he seems [according to his surviving family] an unlikely cohort of Scott & his secret army plotting.  Yet he has qualifications.  First, appearance (stuggy, etc).  Second, he fits the Whiting ship stricture – & he was the only Sydney person L put in his address book, before or after Sydney.  He cd also, in concert with Whiting’s “tip” [in EW’s early letters to me], be the someone who “met Lawrence on the wharf and took him to stay on the North Shore for three days”.  (It now makes more sense that it was Hum who drove L&F back to his Chatswood home & perhaps it was Hum who took L to Mosman Bay to meet Scott.)  Hum had a big Nash [car], so he wd have been a useful section [squad] head.  And his non-involvement in the AIF [Australia’s WW1 military force], when he was conspicuously eligible for active service, may have obliged him to be active on the home front.  His wife may have been in the [Anglican-run] HLG.  (Their daughter went to [Anglican-run] Abbotsleigh.)  And they holidayed at Collaroy, where the Friends, & Scott, also holidayed. 

24/4/89 ditto:  Almost a year since my last entry.  But I think I might have discovered something.  (I have also this week sooled Geoffrey King on to the task of finding all he can about Hum & a possible link with Scott.)  The clue is in L’s Berkley [University of California at Berkley] address book.  This solitary Sydney address [in Lawrence’s handwriting] contains two gross errors.  “Carita” instead of the correct “Casita” and “Chatsford” instead of “Chatswood”.   The normally meticulous L wd hardly have made these mistakes – esp where something as important as a vital contact’s correct address is concerned – unless there was an excuse or explanation.  I think I can deduce a reason.  They are the result of L misreading [the address on] a letter.  I bet Hum’s handwriting was poor, & L failed to properly decypher Casita & Chatswood.  The significance of this?  It implies that L was in correspondence with Hum, & that the invitation, or details thereof, were conveyed [and no doubt taken up] by letter between L & Hum.

25/4/89 ditto:  Given the above, it might be useful now to speculate what might have happened.  [Lawrence was planning to travel to Ceylon to stay with the Brewsters before going to Taos]…on the boat [the Osterley, en route to Colombo] he met some Australians who, apparently, encouraged him to go [on] to the U.S. via Perth and Sydney.  We know one of these Australians was Mrs Jenkins [from Perth].  The near-certainty is that the other was Hum [from Sydney].  He took both their addresses, in case he wanted to follow up their invitations.  But he did nt at this stage put them into his address book.  He probably just kept their cards, which in Hum’s case would have had his business, nt his personal, address.  In Ceylon he makes the decision to go to [the U.S. via] Australia.  He writes to both Mrs Jenkins in Perth and Hum in Sydney taking up their invitations.  Mrs Jenkins replies to Ceylon but Hum (and this is a guess [it proved to be a good one]) to Perth at Mrs Jenkin’s address.  When L arrived in Perth a letter from Hum was waiting, encouraging him to come to Sydney.  In this letter Hum gave his home address, which L then copied (incorrectly) into his address book.  (Here’s a thought – in K somewhere Somers refers to “Cooley’s difficult hand”.  I bet that was Hum’s handwriting L was referring to.  [Rosenthal had an almost-perfect copperplate].)

5/5/89 ditto:  Yesty I believe I cd have come up with the possible link between Scott and Hum.  Hum, of course, must be Trewhella, & the man who met L at the wharf.  But what was the connection [with Scott]?  The novel (as always) has the answer, but it has to unscrambled.  In the book the link between Trewhella & Callcott is via a relative.  L is more than a bit confused about this (see back pages [of this notebook] re this [where I analysed the family relationships in Kangaroo]), but it seems that Victoria [Callcott] is Trewhella’s sister.  Now, this does not mean that Hum’s sister is married to or connected with Scott.  But when we do find [the connection] I will be very mistaken if it does not involve a brother or sister link somewhere.  The real problem is to discover who Victoria is based on.  (AAK looks the best bet, though a Friend would fit in better.) 

[I was getting warm]

8/5/89 ditto:  Just as an exercise, I’ll put down what I think [could have] happened.  [there will be a lot of these “provisional” reconstructions, as I develop and test various hypotheses]  L was met at the wharf by Hum.  Hum hd arranged temporary accommodation at Mrs Scott’s [in Macquarie Street].  But the urgent need for cheaper accommodation was uppermost in L’s mind.  He went to Cooks to pick up his mail.  Hum’s family was either staying [on holiday] at Collaroy, or hd an invitation to go there that weekend.  L was nt invited to lunch, so perhaps the Hums hd an invitation they hd to go elsewhere at lunchtime.  So L was invited to tea, but at Hinemoa, nt at the Hums’ place.  Maybe there was someone there that Hum wanted L to meet.  It might have been as simple as:  Hum:  “We have to go to Collaroy for tea on Sunday.  There are some holiday houses up there.  My wife wants to meet you, too.  So why not come to tea?  Our friends are literary & would love to see you.  Also you could go to Narrabeen & see places there.  I’ll pick you up in my car at the tram terminus at 4pm, or whatever.”  At Hinemoa L met Scott & Mrs Oatley.  Later Hum drove L & perhaps Scott back to Neutral Bay & the ferry.  (So is there any need for another person? - a Friend?  Could nt Mrs Oatley be Victoria?)

[The next entry mentions a number of things that had happened, or were about to happen, and will need some background or explanation.  Soon after we returned to Sydney we learned that the new owner of Wyewurk, a South Coast estate agent named Michael Morath, who had acquired Wyewurk in a secret deal from the family of the late Mrs Southwell, had asked the Heritage Commission, who administered the interim Preservation Order on the historic bungalow, for permission to add a second storey and make other changes that would have all-but-destroyed Lawrence’s ”cottage by the sea”.  We formed an Emergency Save Wyewurk Committee that eventually obliged the State Government to order an inquiry into the application.  We pulled every string we knew of, and made a number of submissions opposing the proposed changes (including personal submissions by Joe Davis and Bruce Steele, the recently-anointed editor of the forthcoming CUP edition of Kangaroo).  But the inquiry found largely in favour of Mr Morath.  However, severe conditions were put on his application, and in the event he found these too restrictive, though that was not known for some time.  We, however, decided later to turn the Save Wyewurk Committee into the D.H. Lawrence Society of Australia.  Also, around 1989, Sandra and I, using a family bequest, bought a small bungalow in Anzac Avenue, Collaroy, in the heart of “the Basin” and only a block or so from Hinemoa.  We used this as a weekender (as it was designed for) and got to know both the area and its residents (some of whom had been there, or had had cottages there, since the early 1920s).  We were now in an ideal position to thoroughly investigate the area where we believed Lawrence came to tea in 1922 and where he learned of, or made initial contact with, Jack Scott’s secret army, and also of the availability of Wyewurk in Thirroul.  Meanwhile, Bruce Steele, a lecturer in English at Monash University (Victoria), and a CUP editor, had delivered a lecture at Duntroon and later published in an Australian journal Meridian an article severely criticising my account of how Kangaroo came to be written (“…not a shred of evidence has been found of a secret army…all are speculations.)  This counterblast turned the (hitherto largely favourable) tide, both here and overseas, against what Andrew Moore (in a riposte to Steele) came to call “The  Darroch Thesis”.  This counterblast was given extra impetus when Joe Davis converted into a book his PhD thesis, gained under the supervision of Wollongong University Professor Ray Southall, who, despite this, became the first President of the D.H. Lawrence Society of Australia, and who wrote an introduction to Davis’s book (DH Lawrence at Thirroul).  Davis in his research was assisted by my collaborator John Ruffels, who was himself beginning to entertain doubts about the Darroch Thesis, doubts that others, including Bruce Steele, gratefully picked up on.  Needless to say, Ruffels was too good a researcher not to later come to realise that these waverings were temporary, and he has since assisted me materially, and is a stalwart of our DHL Society, down to this day. As the counterblast gathered strength it began to be taken up by other academics and reviewers, such as in a SMH review of Davis’s book by Professor A.P. Riemer who went so far as to ask the Friend family, whom he knew, if there was any truth in assertions that their forebears were involved, or could have been involved, with Lawrence or secret armies, an allegation that they categorically denied (and thus lied through their teeth).]

2/1/90 ditto:  A new decade, and still going.  Wyewurk lost, Steele contemptuous, J. Davis abusive, Southall ditto, Professor Riemer ditto, ditto, ditto.  The dogs of doubt are baying at my heels.  Such is the life of one who holds heretical ideas.  Anyway, it is certainly time for a new entry, & justified I think.  A lot of small stuff not worth recording (the Vernon papers [see below], research at Collaroy [where we now had our holiday cottage], etc), but it was Sandra who came up with, or rather crystallised, something significant re Hum.  Why did L not correct the two mistakes he made in Hum’s address?  Of course, he cd have dealt with Hum in Sydney via his office address in Carrington Street [city], but there is another possibility.  Maybe Hum was not living at his “Chatsford” address when L arrived.  Perhaps he was on holiday at Collaroy!  (That wd be a far better reason why L&F went up there that first Sunday.)  By the way, I have had some disturbing news from Hum’s relatives overseas [they had sent me their “family tree”].  He was not a Cornishman!  Yet Rosalind [nee Ashton] was adamant that her father Howard called him “a typical Cornishman”.  Why?  Was this some sort of twisted joke on Howard’s part, & a reference, rather, to Hum’s portrayal in Kangaroo?  Worrying.

27/1/90 ditto:  It is difficult, 15 years after this odyssey started, to write what follows.  But I am beginning to think there is something serious & fundamentally wrong with my hypothesis about L and Australia.  I don’t want, on the other hand, to overstate the matter.  So I had best put it down as it seems to me now.  I suppose some of this comes from the doubts raised in Joe Davis’s book.  Not that his criticisms or speculations are valid:  they are not.  But it led me to go over and reassess everything again, & this in turn began to raise doubts, & also some new ideas.  For there are still too many gaps & uncertainties.  The Hum business [him not being a Cornishman] brought these closer.  Victoria is still a mystery, as is why L went down to Thirroul.  Also how L met Scott & Rosenthal.  And why they blabbed.  And why L wrote K knowing that he wd nt only be betraying Scott & Rosenthal, but also those [such as Hum] who hd befriended him [in Sydney].  (And he cd be running a risk, too [of retribution from Scott’s organisation].)  Then there is Frieda’s ignorance, & the subsequent silence on both [their] sides.  [And I could have added here - the lack of subsequent public or historical knowledge of such a sensational story.]  None of this [have I] satisfactorily explained.  Not that the basic premise is incorrect.  Far from it.  I’m more convinced than ever that L met Scott & that K is an accurate representation of this – the whole secret army revelation is intact.  But how & why it happened has not fallen to the most intensive research, not only by myself & Sandra, but by AM & Ruffels (& Joe Davis, for that matter).  Therefore this reappraisal is not surprising.  So where does my new and very tentative scenario/speculation come from?  I suppose the first inkling came from Ruffel’s recent note about Lovatt Rutledge, who was Rosenthal’s partner in his architects’ practice [from the outset, L called his hero Richard Lovatt Somers].  Then [there was] the fact that Rosenthal’s wife was called Harriett (2 tt’s?).  This implied that it was possible that L hd met Rosenthal before he started chapter 1.  Next came the realisation that the Mosman Bay [where Callcott takes Somers down to meet and be questioned by “Trewhella”] quizzing rings more true of Scott than anyone else [fictionally, why would Trewhella need to interrogate Somers?]  Also what L says of Cooley (married to a haughty lady, etc) rings more true of Scott than Rosenthal.  Surely the probability now is that L went to Mosman Bay to meet Scott for the first time.  [alternatively, whoever took L to Hinemoa that first Sunday was now taking him to meet Scott again, and to be questioned by Scott out of female company]  Also came the idea that there is someone missing in all this, possibly a Friend.  Is Callcott mark 1 a Friend? Is Victoria also a Friend?  Did they know about the cottage at Thirroul?  This might go some way to explaining the change in Callcott [from being a simple motor mechanic to a professional man], & perhaps much else.  It’s all theory [speculation] now, but I’m recording it preparatory to further investigation. 

[but I was getting warmer]

30/1/90 ditto:  Given what I wrote on the previous page, what follows is a step still further.  It is beginning to seem to be that, rather than K being a good guide to what really happened to L in Australia, it is false in most of its major respects.  In other words, don’t look to K to find out what really happened, substantively.  It is disguised – heavily.  L didn’t need to go back & change things, because he injected a heavy layer of camouflage as he went along.  On the other hand, the novel can be a guide, but only by looking at the incidental detail, for L did nt see a need to change this [ie, it wasn’t sensitive].  There is still a lot of [swapping reality around], but the clues are there, if you look closely.  For example, I now do not think that it was Scott who took the Lawrences down to Thirroul.  I think it was someone else.  But Scott did go down the following weekend.  The clue to this is in “Cooee”, chapter 6.  For when Victoria & Jack go down, the sea is thunderously rough.  But it was calm the previous Monday, when L first went down to Thirroul, & for the next few days.  But a cyclone hit the coast on Friday.  That also confirms my belief that someone else went down to Thirroul with L&F.  It also helps explain the two incarnations of Callcott, who starts as one person, then switches to Scott.  L would have thought this disguise aplenty.  The outward shell of one person mixed with the reality of another.  It would also explain why L was nt worried about Scott’s possible reaction.  It wasn’t until later (cf his letter to Mountsier asking if the Diggers might be concerned about the novel) that he began to have pangs of doubt.  So now the problem is to unravel the plot still further.  The truth is there still, but not quite at the level I thought it was.

[From now on, the entries in the notebook get longer.  This is due to the fact that I was reserving the notebook for substantial matters, and putting more casual, or “running” ones in a separate “extra notes” notebook.  I have also taken the liberty, as some entries become more discursive, to occasionally use a more appropriate word or turn of phrase, to improve the readability of what is becoming a narrative.]

 

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