IN 1991 I
HAD the chance to travel to Sri Lanka and do some additional
research there. A few months later, returning from London
to Sydney, Sandra and I followed up this initial research
further. We made some useful discoveries and gained
some valuable insights.
Using our still-operational journalistic skills, we
tracked down "Ardnaree", the bungalow where
Lawrence and Frieda had stayed in at Kandy [see my Secret
Army Research notes entry 3/11/91]. We visited Nuwara
Eylia, the hill-station above Kandy where Lawrence had
encountered Judge Ennis, whose name he "borrowed"
for the military leader of the Maggies in Kangaroo.
(In real life, the chief of the military side of the
Diggers - the Maggies - was Brigadier-General George
Macarthur-Onslow, who had been a general in the Australian
Light Horse in WW1.)
In a library in Colombo we perused the various local
newspapers of the time, which, as well as recording
the Lawrences' arrival and departure, confirmed that
the temperature during their stay had been uncomfortably
(and for Lawrence, unbearably) hot.
We read the local reports of the contemporary visit
of the Prince of Wales to Ceylon and Kandy and of the
"Raja" Pera-hera [Buddhist festival] that
was held in his honour in Kandy, which Lawrence had
witnessed and describes - evocatively - in his poem
"Elephant".
It seemed
clear, from his Ceylon letters, that Lawrence - disenchanted
with hot, steamy Ceylon (where the "insect-machines"
went "all the live-long night") - decided
to quit Kandy and take up Mrs Jenkins' invitation-cum-suggestion
to come on to Perth.
From "Ardnaree" he wrote to her telling her
that he was coming (though he left on the Orsova
before she had time to send a reply). He told other
correspondents that he planned to either stay in Perth
for a while, or else travel on to Sydney and depart
for America from there.
Given that his only-known Sydney contact was the DG
Hum whose name and address he had also noted in his
address-book - and whose name was also on the Osterley
Naples-Colombo passenger-list - it seemed likely that
Lawrence sent a similar letter to Hum in Sydney, telling
him of his decision to continue on to Australia, before
ultimately departing from Sydney for Taos.
It is, I believe, significant that the first reply he
could have received from Hum to such a letter would
have been waiting for him in Perth with Mrs Jenkins,
whose "Strawberry Hills" home he was giving
to his various correspondents as his first mailing-address
in Australia.
