My
1981 book, wherein I mistakenly said that Rosenthal was
Jewish
WE ALL make mistakes, and I should be the first to admit
mine.
When my DH Lawrence in Australia was published
in 1981, it contained a serious inaccuracy. I said that
Rosenthal was Jewish (one of my errors Dr Steele picked
up in his Kangaroo Introduction).
A journalistic colleague in London, Leo Chapman, pointed
this mistake out to me in 1982, after reading my book
and a biography of Sir John Monash (who was Jewish).
I checked, and Rosenthal was a Methodist, and resolutely
protestant. (His ancestry was Danish, as I mention above.)
This was a blunder, but perhaps an understandable one,
for Rosenthal is a common Jewish name, and in several
parts of Kangaroo Lawrence calls Cooley Jewish:
| Kangaroo
was really ugly: his pendulous Jewish face, his forward
shoulders, his round stomach in its expensively tailored
waistcoat and dark grey, striped trousers, his very
big thighs. |
Indeed, he quotes Cooley calling himself Jewish:
| "Oh,
Lovatt... Don't harden your heart. Don't stiffen your
neck before your old Jewish Kangaroo." |
Yet, initially, there is some uncertainty about Cooley's
Jewishness:
| Kangaroo
smiled slowly. And when he smiled like that, there
came an exceedingly sweet charm into his face, for
a moment his face was like a flower. Yet he was quite
ugly. And surely, thought Somers, it is Jewish blood.
|
Twice
more Lawrence repeats the word "surely":
| The
man had surely Jewish blood. |
And
again:
Somers
thought that surely he had Jewish blood in him.
...as if there were some doubt about the matter. |
In "real life" Rosenthal was often mistaken
for being Jewish. Even Australia's WW1 official historian,
CEW Bean, made the mistake, lumping Monash and Rosenthal
together as two of Australia's "Jewish generals".
When Rosenthal was later appointed Administrator [Governor]
of Norfolk Island, The Bulletin felt constrained
to point out that he was not Jewish: "Contrary to
fairly general acceptance, the Rosenthal blood is Danish,
not Jewish."
The fact that in Kangaroo there is some doubt in
Lawrence's mind about the Jewishness of Cooley points
directly at Rosenthal.
