"Chic", one of Sidney Nolan's 1982 "Kangaroo"
series (depicting Lawrence
and Frieda on the beach in Thirroul)
MEANWHILE,
word of what I was doing had got back to Dr Warren Roberts
in Texas. (We had kept the Humanities Research Centre
in Austin informed of the progress of our research.)
Dr Roberts had recently taken on the role of general editor
of a proposed complete edition of Lawrence's works, to
be published by the Cambridge University Press (which
undertaking may well have led to his suggestion, back
in Austin in 1972, that we look into Lawrence's time in
Australia).
Early on in my research - in 1975, before we returned
to Sydney - I had been approached by CUP publisher Michael
Black (no doubt at the suggestion of Dr Roberts) and invited
to submit a proposal to edit Kangaroo for the edition.
At that stage the world of Lawrence scholarship was very
interested in what our research might turn up. Dr Roberts
in particular had been most supportive.
To assist me with my proposal, the CUP arranged for film
of the holograph manuscript and the subsequent typescripts
of Kangaroo to be sent to me in Sydney from the
HRC in Austin and the Berg Collection at the New York
Public Library.
Although I had never edited a literary work before - and
had no post-graduate university background - I (somewhat
naively) went ahead, and, after considerable effort, produced
a proposal. I sent it off to the CUP in mid-1978.
It was understandably rejected, for I had no experience
or expertise in the academic area of textual analysis.
(A lowly journalist editing a major Lawrence novel? Unthinkable.)
Nonetheless, in the end, I did have something to contribute
to the "definitive" text of Kangaroo,
and we will come to that.
In the end, the CUP's chosen editor was Dr Bruce Steele,
of Monash University in Melbourne, and his "definitive"
edition of Kangaroo was published in 1994.
By then, however, the world of Lawrence scholarship had
turned its back on what become known as "the Darroch
Thesis", and in his CUP Introduction Dr Steele dismissed
any possibility that the secret-army plot of Kangaroo
had been based on fact...a position subsequently adopted
by other Lawrence scholars and biographers.
Yet the proposal-exercise proved invaluable for my research,
for it provided me with the vital original texts of the
novel...
...which, to my considerable surprise and dismay, did
not show any evidence of Lawrence "going back"
and changing the text - "disguising things"
- in the light of what he was progressively discovering
from Scott and Rosenthal...
...at the time, a considerable setback to my research.
(However, the "breaks" in the holograph text
- ie, his daily writing-sessions - later enabled me to
construct of chronology of what Lawrence did, day-by-day,
during the writing of the novel - see Section 4 "Looking
Over Lawrence's Shoulder" below.)
