MONDAY 19/6/22

Today Lawrence writes to Mabel Dodge in Taos telling her […I am stuck in my novel…]. Nevertheless, today and tomorrow he still manages to scrape up about 2100 words, starting chapter viii "Volcanic Evidence" (sections #15-16?, MS pp 289?-299?). He may also have rewritten seven earlier pages (c1200 words, interlinear). However, "Volcanic Evidence" is plainly padding, and contains a long extract from the Sydney Daily Telegraph about volcanoes in Eastern Australia, borrowed from a May 8 issue of the paper (which was probably stored in, or under, the cottage, for kindling purposes). He also writes several letters, which he will post tomorrow. He remarks in the text that "today" is their first day of winter weather […This was the first wintery day they had really had…] (the midday temperature in Sydney fell to a chilly 51 degrees).

TUESDAY 20/6/22

Today and tomorrow Lawrence is still struggling to conjure up something to write about. (He may have written something he was unhappy with, as there is evidence that around this time he excises a number of pages from the MS…maybe as much as a complete session, perhaps his original chapter ix, or around 3000 words). Whatever he did write we can take as his session #17, perhaps MS pp 300-324?. Yet we cannot be sure of its length nor, of course, its content. (Here the "breaks" in the MS - indicating writing sessions - are inconclusive or indistinct.) The chapter he writes after the "weak" chapter viii, "Volcanic Evidence", is even weaker - chapter ix, "Harriett and Somers at Sea in Marriage". This is Lawrence at his most discursive and flippant. It is even possible that he went up to Sydney again to Cooks to pick up his mail, for either today or tomorrow he receives 14 letters, which he will reply to tomorrow. (On the other hand, and more probably, he might have had his mail redirected, and received those 14 letters in a parcel on Wednesday morning at "Wyewurk".) Meanwhile he ends "Volcanic Evidence" wondering when events will provide him with […a leg up into affairs …] - ie, further ingredients for his stalled plot.

WEDNESDAY 21/6/22

The letters Lawrence writes today - which may have taken him some time to write (it seems that he usually wrote his letters in the evening) - give a useful insight into his state of mind as he tries to find a way forward, now that Scott and Rosenthal have cut him off from any information about their organisation (which is itself, since the defeat of the Labor Government in a recent election, pondering its future). He tells William Siebenhaar in Perth that he's trying to write a novel, and that he and Frieda […make excursions around…]. He tells his U.S. agent Mountsier that he's done more than half of Kangaroo, but is now […slightly stuck…]. Meanwhile Frieda, writing herself to Mabel Dodge in Taos, says that Lawrence [… has written a novel, gone it full tilt at page 305, but has come to a stop and kicks…]. (It appears that Lawrence numbered each page of the manuscript as he went along - hence the two "page 9s in chapter i, and the crucial missing p466 in the endings sequence - see below.) He tells his American publisher Thomas Seltzer - who is keen to see his new novel - that he has done more than half of Kangaroo. [… the Lord alone knows what anybody will think of it: no love at all, and attempt at revolution…] But he admits he is having problems with it. […I 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…] However, he adds, he has hopes of completing it. […I think I see my way…] This optimism might merely have been bravado, or he may have decided to give affairs "a leg up" by also writing to Rosenthal, seeking another meeting. Lawrence might have written some text today, but we cannot deduce what it may have comprised.

THURSDAY 22/6/22

If Lawrence is to advance his stalled narrative, he has to find something more substantive than causal plagiarism or flippant comment about his relationship with Frieda (though the latter did probably reflect some "real-life" domestic conflict in "Wyewurk" - overheard and later recorded via a passing "messenger-boy"). What he does decide to do (pending a trip up to Sydney to see Scott and Rosenthal again) is "rewrite" part of an earlier chapter, "Coo-ee", which related the meeting with Scott on the beach below "Wyewurk", and the details Scott divulged then about "the garage". This information is the very nub of the plot, and the foundation of the novel's narrative; so, today and tomorrow, he reprises it for chapter x, "Diggers" - ie, sections #18-19 MS pp 310-336 or about 5200 words (we cannot be sure when he wrote what, for the breaks in the handwriting are again inconclusive).