From Garry Shead's Kangaroo series

 

YET WHEN Lawrence came to re-use Rosenthal, he was, curiously, less vindictive - even though it had been Rosenthal who had made the deadlier threat to his person.

In fact, Rosenthal's portrait as Major Charles Eastwood in The Virgin and the Gipsy is quite benign. Yet the borrowing from real life is just as obvious, once you take into account Lawrence's transposition habits.

The novella, also published posthumously, was written in 1926, and is in some ways a precursor to Lady Chatterley.

The name shift [Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal=Major Charles Eastwood] is minimal - though the name "Eastwood" might be an echo of where the village of Rosenthal is in Germany (see re the "Black Forest trifle" below).

There is also an echo of Rosenthal's pseudo-Jewishness - also see below - in the portrayal. Eastwood's wife is "a little Jewess".

In The Virgin and the Gipsy Charles Eastwood, like Charles Rosenthal, had been- tellingly- an artillery officer in the war. Both had distinguished war careers.

Eastwood is a "big, blond man...athletic...a magnificent figure, an athletic, prominent chest...powerful athletic white arms".

Rosenthal was renowned for his robust figure (he used to take on tug-o'-war teams single-handed) and protruding frontal region (which is why Callcott calls him Kangaroo..."looks like one").

However, what seals the parallel is the fact that Eastwood in The Virgin and the Gipsy is of Danish stock, as was Rosenthal. That cannot be coincidence.

(Lawrence couldn't help himself - he had to tap into the memories he had stored up in his transposition locker.)