A snapshot in the Taylor family album - from left: Harriett Rosenthal; Major Charles Rosenthal; Mrs McLeod (with cup); Florence Taylor; Major McLeod (obscured); and "George" [Augustine Taylor] - taking tea in the garden of "Billabong", the "end-house" in Ocean Road, Narrabeen, around 1908

THERE IS EVEN a possibility that Taylor makes a brief "appearance" in Kangaroo as part of its dramatis personae.

In chapter 5, when Callcott is suggesting to Somers that they could become "mates", Lawrence writes:

"Could we ever be QUITE mates?" Somers asked gently. "Perhaps not as me and Fred Wilmot was…" [replies Callcott]

 

Who was Fred Wilmot? More to the point, who might Jack Scott's "mate" have been?

It is at least possible - indeed, I think probable - that he was George Augustine Taylor.

We know where the name "Fred Wilmot" came from. The West Australian (socialist) writer Katharine Susannah Prichard, who then professed to be an admirer of Lawrence (she later changed her mind - see her "yards of fatuous dribble" quote below), sent him some books from Perth soon after he arrived in Sydney.

One of them was Eyes of Vigilance, a book of verse by local poet Frank Wilmot (whose real name was Furnley Maurice).

Lawrence wrote back to Prichard on August 6 saying that he was keeping Eyes of Vigilance. (The title is a quote from Thomas Jefferson, often misquoted as "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance". Note also, in this context, the title of Joan Jensen's 1968 book on the American Protective League, The Price of Vigilance, cited above.)