Lawrence's
suggested cover (drawn in Taos) for his "other"
Australian novel, The Boy in the Bush, written
jointly with West Australian amateur author, Mollie Skinner,
who had been his landlady at "Leithdale" in
the hills outside Perth. (Was the image of Somers bowing
down before "Kangaroo" still on his mind?)
AN OPPORTUNITY
to visit Perth to follow up some of these leads came
in 1994, when I was sent over to Western Australia to
take charge of a small stable of mining publications.
Sandra and I spent more than six months there, and she
in particular made some important discoveries.
First, we retraced, as best we could, Lawrence's movements
in the fortnight he was in Western Australia.
We travelled out to Darlington to see "Leithdale",
Mollie Skinner's spacious bungalow in the Darling Range
outside Perth. (It had its own ballroom!)
We saw where Lawrence must have had (and described in
Kangaroo) his walk in the West Australian bush
in a night "raving with moonlight", when he
was frightened by the tall gums standing "like
naked pale aborigines", and where he encountered
what he called "the horrid thing in the bush"
that he decided was "the spirit of the place".
Most
of our research, however, was carried out in the admirable
Battye Library (the West Australian State Library) in
Perth which had, among other documents, the original letters
that Lawrence had written to Mollie Skinner.
(We counselled the manuscript librarian that she should
not allow general access to the originals - which they
were doing - because they were very valuable, and in peril
of being stolen or damaged.)
We saw the original text of another Mollie Skinner novel
that Lawrence had edited (Eve in the Land of Nod),
but which is unpublished, because Mollie rejected Lawrence's
suggested changes.
She had been highly critical of his considerable efforts
to improve The Boy in the Bush (which partially-written
text she had originally called The House of Ellis),
because she thought that his contributions had unduly
"sensationalised" the narrative (believe me,
it needed some sensationalising).
It is indicative, I think, that while in Perth Lawrence
was thinking of what might be his next literary project
(perhaps a collaboration, perhaps something else)...a
thought he apparently took with him on the boat to Sydney.
