SUNDAY 2/7/22

Jack Scott comes down from Sydney late on Saturday, probably staying overnight with the Friend family at their "compound" on the outskirts of Thirroul. (This is the first day Scott could get away from Sydney, after Lawrence failed to show up at 112 Wycombe Road the previous Saturday...and after Rosenthal informed his deputy that his new mate Lawrence has been "nosing around" the Trades Hall and talking to "Jock" Garden - the "bête rouge" of the King and Empire Alliance.) Scott, no doubt on the instructions of Rosenthal, wants to find out what Lawrence is up to, and just how much of a danger he poses to their secret organisation. The meeting is to bring home to Lawrence - perhaps for the first time - the dangerous game he is playing. [...Jack trotted over to Coo-ee on the Sunday afternoon...] There are several versions of what follows (perhaps three, for there is evidence that Lawrence cut out a number of pages from the holograph when writing "Jack Slaps Back"). The version in the holograph - which is probably not the most accurate - is not as stark as the final version, which was written, interlinear, over the subsequent typed text several months later in the comparative safety of Taos. Interestingly, as Lawrence rewrites the text he tends to revert - as if released from constraint - towards what is apparent actuality...ie, as he revises, he gets more factual. In the ultimate, published, version of "Jack Slaps Back" Jack Callcott - ie, Jack Scott - oozes suppressed violence and dire threat. [...his face looked different...His eyes were dark and inchoate...] Lawrence quickly gathers the purpose of his visit. [...{He} had come like a spy to take soundings...Some of the fear he had felt for Kangaroo he now felt for Jack. Jack was really very malevolent…] Jack Scott gets to the point. […"You've found out all you wanted to know, I suppose?" said Jack…] (There is a curious, almost amusing, irony in all this. Lawrence doesn't really know what Scott and Rosenthal are doing - organising a secret army - and Scott doesn't know what Lawrence is doing - writing a book about them and their organisation. One cannot but wonder what would have happened if either realised what the other is actually up to.) The confrontation quickly turns hostile, and Scott begins making threats. [...we want some sort of security that you'll keep quiet, before we let you leave Australia …] We do not know, but Rosenthal's earlier threat might have come back to Lawrence at this moment. [..."I could have you killed"…] Lawrence apparently tries to reassure Scott that their secrets are safe with him. […"You need not be afraid," he said. "You've made it all too repulsive to me now, for me ever to want to open my mouth about it all. You can be quite assured: nothing will ever come out through me." …] (How could Lawrence, with a straight face, have said that - assuming he did say it with a straight face - with 13 chapters of Kangaroo in the next room waiting to be added to?) Scott, however, is not satisfied. […Jack looked up with a faint, sneering smile. "And you think we shall be satisfied with your bare word?" he said uglily…] The confrontation ends, fictionally, with Harriett emerging from the house and asking what the two men are arguing about. [..."It was about time you came to throw cold water over us," smiled Jack…] Then, apparently, he takes his leave. […"Ah, well!" said Jack. "Cheery-o! We aren't such fools as we seem. The milk's spilt, we won't sulk over it."…] We can only assume that Scott and Rosenthal eventually decided that Lawrence posed no serious threat to them and their organisation, at least partly reassured by his assurance that he is about to leave for America. Despite what the later text says, this is the last time Lawrence has any contact with Scott, Rosenthal and the King and Empire Alliance. Lawrence, however, is yet (as of noon Saturday) to finish "Bits", and start his next chapter. The likelihood is that he uses the Sunday morning before Scott arrives to write the remaining 820 words of "Bits" (session #25 - MS pp 447-450, including the text cut out), consisting of a very discursive exegesis, initiated by another Bulletin "Bits" item about the herd instincts of cattle, and in which Lawrence imagines himself, like a bullock trapped in a muddy waterhole, struggling to get out of the pot of spikenard (ointment) he has got himself into. He also makes a reference to what he calls […this gramophone of a novel…], perhaps echoing the diary nature of the work he mentioned earlier to Catherine Carswell and Mollie Skinner. This, however, is Lawrence at his most discursive, or frivolous (and annoying). He ends the chapter on a note of "blood consciousness" and self-sacrifice […to the dark God, and to the men in whom the dark God is manifest…] - ie, himself.