MONDAY 26/6/12

Today he starts writing chapter xi, "Willie Struthers and Kangaroo" (session #20: MS pp 337-348 - about 4400 words, covering the entire meeting with "Jock" Garden, and ending with his departure from Trades Hall). This is (not unexpectedly) the start of an intensive writing period, as he now has plenty of material at his disposal (and can give his "daemon" - which soon begins to make its appearance in the text - free rein). Over the next four days - Monday to Thursday - he writes about 19,000 words, comprising three chapters: "Willie Struthers and Kangaroo", "The Nightmare" and "'Revenge!' Timotheus Cries". He averages almost 5000 words session, mostly in small, dense handwriting, writing about 240 words a page (where the "breaks" in the text are again difficult to discern).

TUESDAY 27/6/12

Lawrence writes over 5500 words this morning: section #21, MS pp c348-c376 - from Somers's departure from the Trades Hall, to the end of chapter xi and stumbling out of Cooley's chambers, thus completing his report of the events of the pervious Saturday, up to booking into the Carlton Hotel. He will make two uses of some of this material, both his meeting with Garden (in chapter xi and later in chapter xvi, "A Row in Town") and what happened afterwards. In particular, he will give a longer account of what he did after leaving the Trades Hall and went to the Domain with Hum (initially in chapter xi he merely takes a hansom cab to "the aviaries") [..."Jaz," he said, "I want to drive round the Botanical Gardens and round the spit there--and I want to look at the peacocks and cockatoos." ...] but embellishes it considerably in "A Row in Town" [...With mid-day came the sun and the clear sky: a wonderful clear sky and a hot, hot sun. Richard bought sandwiches and a piece of apple turnover, and went into the Palace Gardens to eat them...] At this point, however - only three days after the confrontation with Rosenthal - the memory of that scarifying experience is very fresh in his mind, and he wants no doubt to add it to his narrative.

WEDNESDAY 28/6/22

Today, in session #22, he writes over 5000 tightly-scripted words (MS pp c376-c410?), starting with the beginning of "The Nightmare" chapter, recalling the persecution he and Frieda suffered during the war. His mind goes back to other times of fear in his life [...He had known such different deep fears. In Sicily, a sudden fear, in the night of some single murderer, some single thing hovering as it were out of the violent past, with the intent of murder...] Interestingly, at the end of this long and famous chapter, he asks himself why it has suddenly all come out. [...It was like a volcanic eruption in his consciousness. For some weeks he had felt the great uneasiness in his unconscious. For some time he had known spasms of that same fear that he had known during the war: the fear of the base and malignant power of the mob-like authorities…it had come back in spasms: the dread, almost the horror, of democratic society, the mob…Why? Why, in this free Australia? Why? Why should they both have been feeling this same terror and pressure that they had known during the war, why should it have come on again in Mullumbimby? Perhaps in Mullumbimby they were suspect again, two strangers, so much alone. Perhaps the secret service was making investigations about them...] He still has little or no idea what he has come across in Australia. However, he does at least suspect that it has something to do with his encounters with Rosenthal and "Jock" Garden. [...perhaps it was this contact with Kangaroo and Willie Struthers, contact with the accumulating forces of social violence…] Critics have long been puzzled about why Lawrence injected this vivid account of his time in Cornwall during the First World War into Kangaroo, for it seemed out of place - and time - in a novel about Australia. This conclusion to "The Nightmare" chapter [...perhaps it was this contact…] provides the answer. However, it is worth noting that Lawrence had not used his experiences in Cornwall, substantively, in any work of fiction prior to Kangaroo. It was "locked away" in his consciousness, yet to come out. It is also worth noting, as Richard Rees did in Brave Men, that Kangaroo is the last novel in which Lawrence - an intensely autobiographical author - portrays himself as a "fictional" character. Perhaps, with "The Nightmare", he used up all his previous autobiographical material.