The cover of Joe Davis's book on Lawrence in Thirroul - the cover illustration is one of Dennis Forrester's snapshots, taken on an excursion to Lodden Falls, above Bulli Pass and Thirroul, in July 1922 (note, centre, Mrs Forrester's hat - see below)

 

ANOTHER Australian who was looking into Lawrence's time in Australia was a young resident of Thirroul, Joseph Davis, who was to go on to do a PhD thesis on Lawrence's time in Thirroul, and to write a book about it, DH Lawrence at Thirroul [Collins Imprint, Sydney 1989].

Joe Davis did some valuable research locally, and to him must go credit for identifying a Sydney family - the Friends - who had considerable interests in Thirroul, and who were to play a role in the ultimate conclusion to my Quest for Cooley.

Here, too, it would be timely to mention another major factor in what became the 35-year-long saga of the research into Lawrence's time in Australia, which had its low points, as well as its high ones.

I refer to the "red-herrings" that wasted so much of my and John Ruffels' research time throughout the 1980s.

The biggest red-herring, which led us badly astray for almost a decade, stemmed from an item in The Bulletin published in early June 1922. (The Bulletin - the news/literary magazine for which I worked from 1977 to 1992 - was, in Lawrence's time, Australia's most widely-read weekly publication.)

Lawrence in Kangaroo quotes almost verbatim from at least two of its June 1922 issues, and one chapter, "Bits", is largely made up of items filched - shamelessly - from its famous "Aboriginalities" page.

In early June 1922 it reported that a Captain Bertie Scrivener and his wife had arrived in Sydney aboard the Malwa - the same boat as Lawrence - and that he was greeted by his mother, Mrs Arthur Scrivener, who was President of a local Anglican seamen's charity called "the Harbour Lights Guild".

When I first ran across this item, reading back-issues of The Bulletin in my then office in Sydney, my eyes lit up.

Another chapter in Kangaroo is called "Larboard-Watch Ahoy!" because in it Jack Callcott sings a song of that name which, according to the text, he had sung at a "Harbour Lights concert". (Jack Scott was noted for his fine tenor voice, and often sang at Army-unit reunions.)

The fact that Captain Bertie Scrivener and Lawrence had both been on the Malwa immediately raised the possibility that he could have been the "contact" who had introduced Lawrence to the secret army...especially as in Kangaroo Callcott says that Cooley had already heard about Somers from

"...a chap on the Naldera. That's the boat you came by, isn't it?"

Ruffels' research in Anglican-church records revealed that, not only was the Harbour Lights Guild a charity favoured by the upper echelons of Sydney society, but that it regularly held "Harbour Lights concerts" at the Rawson Seamen's Institute in Sydney.