THE MAIN physical monument toDH Lawrence in Sydney is aroundel set in the pathway thatskirts the shore of Circular Quay, inwhat is called “Writers Walk” (itcom-memorates the visit to Sydneyof other famous writers, includingMark Twain, Robert LouisStevenson and Joseph Conrad).Charles Dickens is notcommemorated there, for he nevercame to Sydney. But now there is astatue of him in Sydney’sCentennial Park, and our DHLawrence Society of Australia wasinvited to attend its unveiling a fewweeks ago.

It was a most impressive literaryoccasion. All the other Sydneyliterary societies had been invited tosend representatives to be present,and our party comprised ourpresident, John Lacey, secretarySandra Jobson-Darroch, and vice-president Robert Darroch. (theinvitation was a fruit of the recentformation of the Sydney LiterarySocieties group.)

The statue itself had been

DHLA President John Lacey and Secretary Sandra Darroch at the base of the newly-unveiled Dickens statue

originally commission by SirHenry Parkes in the1880s anderected on Dickens Drive inthe park. (Parkes was a greatfan of Dickens, andbefriended his two sons whoemigrated to Australia.) Laterthe statue was vandalised, anddis-appeared for manydecades – until it wasrediscovered in the BlueMountains and restored bythe NSW State Government(it had lost its head).

The NSW Governor, MarieBashir (also a great Dickensfan), unveiled the life-sizestatue – almost in its pristinecondition – and gave a lovelyspeech describing herchildhood readings ofDickens, and the fact that shestill reads him today (she alsomentioned the Dickenscharacters who had“Australian connections”,including Micawber andMagwitch).

Alas, Lawrence was not agreat fan of Dickens (thoughhe had some regard for DavidCopperfield). "There issomething fundamental abouthim that I dislike," he wrotein 1913. "He is mid-Victorian,he is so governessy towardslife, as if it were a naughtychild...Curse him."

The Journal of the DH Lawrence Societyof Australia

ISSN No: 1039-9658 www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au

Vol 18. No 1. February 2011

Pages 2-3 Rosie Rings a Bell

Page 4 Our Annual Spring Picnic

Page 5 Our Chinese Member's Success

International Lawrence Conference in Sydney Future Eventrs

BOZ IS BACK IN OZ DHLA members attend unveiling of statue

of Charles Dickens in Sydney

The shrouded statue awaits unveiling

Photos: John Lacey

The Governor unveils the statue

Members of Lit Soc Syd at the statue

What are these monks

doing?

See page 4

What arethese

monksdoing?

See Page4

February 2011

Page 2

ROSIE RINGS A BELL Talk delivered by Robert Darroch to the Marickville Historical Society

Ring a ring a rosie A pocketful of posies a-tishoo!, a-tishoo!

We all fall down.

Today I am here to talk about SirCharles Rosenthal, known for most ofhis life as "Rosie".

The nursery-room poem I began withhas sinister overtones. "Rosie" isthought by some to refer to a red rashthat victims of the plague first evinced.Posies were the Middle-Age's onlyprotection against infection. The plaguebrought on sneezing. And, inevitably,they fell down, dead.

Rosenthal - Rosie - also has somesinister undertones to his life story. ButI will return to that aspect of my topicin a moment.

Meanwhile, you would be perfectlyjustified in asking why I am talking toyou today. What brought me here?

I have scant connections withMarrickville. When I was a youngreporter I was sent out to cover ameeting of Marrickville Council. Iturned up at Marrickville Town Hall,only to find the council met inPetersham Town Hall.

My mother used to come to dances atMarrickville Town Hall (and I think theMarrickville Strutters, who used to puton these occasions, only recently gaveup their strutting).

I once played school Old Boys tennis atthe excellent lawn tennis courts atMarrickville Tennis Club.

Our DH Lawrence Society holds itsAGM at Minhs, further up Marrickville

father and Swedish mother, he was articled to aMelbourne architect, and got his first job in Perth asa draughtsman. He

later worked in Coolgardie where he also pursuedhis interest in music, and particularly lieder. He hada fine bass voice, which went well with his manly,robust figure.

Though he had an entrepreneurial streak, he did not,apparently, have much of a head for figures, and hisfirst bankruptcy led him to quit WA in 1898.Remarkably, he returned overland to Melbourne bybicycle, alone, across the Nullarbor plain (withouttyres!). His physical abilities and bravery -foolhardiness even - became a byword in his laterlife.

Very early on he became interested in militarymatters, and was an artillery officer in the militiawell before the First World War. He was alsointerested in aviation, especially how it might beused for artillery "spotting" in war. Around 1901 hemoved to Sydney with his wife and three sons,working in partnership with another architect, beforestriking out with his own practice. He also pursuedhis military and musical interests in Sydney.However, it was the war that made his reputation asa military leader and later in politics.

Today, this is averred to in his entry in the ADB(which, I might add, I did not write).

continued on page 3

Road in Dulwich Hill (and a very goodVietnamese restaurant it is, too).

I helped found the Glebe Society, and Iknow when I see - as I do around metoday - a suburb, like Glebe, that iscoming up in the world.

And I am very familiar with the yumcha restaurant next door to this HerbGreedy Hall, and I hope that some ofyou will join us there after this talk.

Yet my knowledge of Rosenthal's linkswith Marrickville is also limited. Iknow he was connected with the nearbyHoly Trinity church in Dulwich Hill,which, although he may not havedesigned it (his entry in the AustralianDictionary of Biography is apparentlywrong in this regard) is where he oftenofficiated as choirmaster and organist.

He had a strong association with churcharchitecture, and for some years he wasresponsible for that aspect of Anglicanchurch activity in northern NSW. Hewas also closely associated witharchitectural work in the BlueMountains, and built war-memorialarches at Lawson and Blackheath,where he also laid the foundation stonefor the Blackheath Golf Club. Hedesigned some fine residentialbuildings in Sydney, including theoutstanding Darnley Hall in ElizabethBay.

Originally born in Berrima in 1875, theson of a Danish

Robert Darroch signing a copy of his book, DH Lawrence in Australia

I quote its second-last paragraph: "Rosenthal mayhave been a part-model for the authoritarian ex-soldiers' leader Benjamin Cooley in DH Lawrence'snovel, Kangaroo (London 1923). Rosenthal hadbeen the founding secretary in 1921 and laterpresident of the King and Empire Alliance, withwhich Lawrence had been in contact, probablythrough WJR Scott."

February2011

Page3

ROSIE RINGS A BELL con't from page 2

And indeed he was, no ifs or buts about it.

I used above the word "awful". This needsexplanation. So let me now read you what Lawrencehad to say about the eponymous subject of his eighthmajor novel, written in Thirroul in June-July 1922(Kangaroo is Cooley/Rosenthal, and Somers theLawrence figure). You can judge for yourself:

...Kangaroo's face had gone like an angry waxmask...an angry wax mask of mortification,haughty...with two little near-set holes for eyes,behind glass pince-nez...He had become hideous,with a long yellowish face and black eyes closetogether, and a cold, mindless, dangerous hulk of hisshoulders. For a moment, Somers was afraid of him,as of some great ugly idol that might strike. He feltthe intense hatred of the man coming at him in coldwaves. He stood up in a kind of horror in front of thegreat, close-eyed, horrible thing that was nowKangaroo. Yes, a thing, not a whole man. A greatThing, a horror.

Collaroy. Lawrence was inneed of cheap accommodation.This fellow-passenger invitedhim up to Collaroy to viewpossible holiday houses. Therewas an afternoon tea-party. Atthe party was someone whoknew of a cheap, holiday housethat had just become vacant inThirroul. Next day this persontook Lawrence and Friedadown to Thirroul and installedthem there.

But this man also knew somefigures in the secret army.These figures may have beenlooking for someone tocontribute to the journal oftheir "cover" organisation, apatriotic body called the Kingand Empire Alliance (called inthe novel "The Diggers"), ofwhich Major MJR Scott wasthe treasurer, and Rosenthal thesecretary. Lawrence wasintroduced to Scott, whointroduced him to Rosenthal.The rest is literary history.

How did I run across all this?The sheerest accident. My wifeSandra wrote a biography of afamous English literaryhostess, Lady Ottoline Morrell.We did the research in AustinTexas in 1972. The head of thelibrary there was Lawrence'sbibliographer. He suggestedthat after we returned toAustralia we look intoLawrence's time there, asnothing had been done on that.We returned in 1975 andstarted the research. Wequickly came across a lot ofparallels between the novel andwhat was happening in Sydney

Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal (note his

eyes - "two little near-set holes for eyes")

Not a description of oneself that anyone would liketo have preserved forever, like a fly trapped in amber,in a major work of "fiction" in the upper echelons ofthe canon of western literature.

And, yet, it happened, it happened..

...for when Lawrence arrived in Sydney at the end ofMay 1922, on his way from Europe to America, heran across a real, not fictional, secret army, which hethen portrayed - in a full-length portrait - in hisAustralian novel, Kangaroo (called by one critic "themost important book ever written about Australia").

Its leader was indeed Rosenthal, and he is the mainAustralian character in the novel - Benjamin Cooley,nicknamed "Kangaroo", the head of the secret armyof "Maggies", which is plotting to take over Australiain a fascist coup.

In fact, the novel Kangaroo turns out to be a thinly-fictionalised diary of what happened to Lawrence inthe few short weeks he had in Sydney and Thirroul inmid-1922. (How can it be otherwise? Lawrencecould not have made up, in a matter of weeks, theaccurate picture he draws of what it is now generally

at the time.

At an Australia Day party inJanuary 1976 I was sitting nextto someone who had written anarticle about Lawrence inThirroul some yearspreviously. I told him that Iwas beginning to suspect thatthere could have been a realsecret army in Sydney in 1922."Strange you should say that,"he responded. "I interviewedEric Campbell before he died.He asked me if I knew why his1930-32 civilian para-militaryorganisation had been calledThe New Guard. Then headded: 'Because there was anOld Guard.'"

I discovered that the "OldGuard" had been the namegiven - somewhat derisorily -to the organisation thatRosenthal and Scott hadfounded in 1920, and whichLawrence describes inKangaroo so accurately, and soextensively, that the novelremains the best description wehave of secret army activity inAustralia between the wars.

Interestingly, Kangaroo is notthe only novel in whichLawrence portrayed Rosenthaland Scott. (Lawrence wasalmost incapable of invention,and used real people and placesover and over again throughouthis literary works.) Heportrayed Scott - the creepyJack Callcott in Kangaroo - inthe second version of LadyChatterley's Lover as theimpotent secret armyaficionado Jack Strangeways(Scott, who indeed had somevery strange ways, wasimpotent, due to wartimetrauma).

Rosenthal he portrayed againin The Virgin and the Gipsy asthe powerfully-built Danishartillery officer, Major CharlesEastwood, whose face is "like a

agreed by historians to be an actual secret army,formed in Sydney in July 1920 - not 1921 - as aresponse to the election of a radical left-wing Laborgovernment a few months previously.)

How did Lawrence run across this momentoussecret? By the sheerest accident. He met someone ona boat to Sydney who had a holiday house at

mask". (The surname is atypical Lawrentian literary pun- Rosenthal is a village in themiddle of the Black Forest inGermany, east of the Rhine,near where Lawrence stayed in1912 - it was "an east wood".)

(Neither of these novels werepublished in Lawrence'slifetime, and when Lawrencere-wrote the second version ofLady Chatterley into the thirdversion that was banned for solong, and which he knewwould be published, hedowngraded Strangeways intoa minor character, removing allreference to his fascism andimpotence.)

This week, however, happensto be national architectureweek. And it is this aspect ofthe life and work of Sir CharlesRosenthal that we are heretoday to note, and with itMarrickville's connection to aprominent Australian soldier-architect.

Rosie left his mark here - andthat is nothing to sneeze at.

- Robert Darroch

February 2011

Page4

Our Annual DHLA Spring Picnic WHAT were those monks doing? Well, they were doing much the same as theDH Lawrence Society of Australia was doing on that balmy Spring morning onSaturday 20th November, 2010 - they were relaxing in spring sunshine atJubilee Park, Glebe.

We watched them walking by as we sat under the shade of a tree by the water'sedge of Rozelle Bay. Almost above us was the glorious span of the AnzacBridge, and across the Bay, as our President, John Lacey, pointed out, weresome historic vessels moored, including the 1902 steam tug, Waratah, the oldSydney ferry, Kanangra, and a 1927 Brisbane River pilot steamer, the JohnOxley (see photo below).

Robin Archer and Evie Harrison brought delicious picnic food, as did ourPresident John Lacey and Vice-President Rob Darroch. Greg Baran brought hisdog, Bella, who enjoyed her day out. But, sadly, it was one of her lastexcursions, because she died of leukemia on Boxing Day, leaving Greg and hisfamily devastated.

Kerie and Roger Hooke came a little later and added their contribution to thefeast. Alex and Peter Lansdown sent their aplogieis - they were in the middle ofselling their house.

The conversation drifted leisurely around topics such as the history of Glebeand we had a laugh about the decision by the Union, University & SchoolsClub to ban philosophy speakers giving talks to the Club if they refused to weara tie. (I arranged these talks, which are now being transferred to the BlackhethPhilosophy Forum.)

Other matters discussed were the annual Harbour cruise on the steam yacht,Lady Hopetoun, planned for later in 2011, and the 12th International DHLawrence Conference to be held in Sydney late June-early July (see moredetails page 5).

Meanwhile, the water swirled peacefully by. A perfect DH Lawrence SocietySpring picnic.

- Sandra Jobson

Photos: John Lacey

The Buddhist monks

Leisurely conversation in the shade

Greg Baran with Bella

We sat by the water's edge at Rozelle Bay

Historic vessels (see details in main stor)

Two Sydney bridges viewed from Jubilee Park: the Anzac Bridge (foreground) and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance

February2011

Page 5

12TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL LAWRENCE

CONFERENCE TO BE HELD IN SYDNEY

THE biggest and most prestigious literaryconference ever held in Australia will takeplace in late June in Sydney this year.

Organised by the DH Lawrence Society ofNorth America, it will attract leadingLawrence scholars from around the world.

The goal of the Conference, say itsorganisers,

is to " bring together scholars interested inall aspects of D. H. Lawrence’s writingwith those interested in its reception bymodernist, post-modernist, and post-colonial writers. When Lawrence arrivedin Sydney in 1922, two decades afterFederation, Australia was consciouslyredefining its relation to its colonial pastand imagining new nationalist futures, asLawrence recognised in Kangaroo."

Our Secretary, Sandra (Jobson) Darroch,will be presenting a paper. Sandra willspeak about her literary discoverydemonstrating that Lawrence basedmuch of the character of AlvinaHoughton in his novelThe Lost Girl onthe New Zealand writer KatherineMansfield.

Our President, John Lacey, has beenasked to help guide delegates to placesLawrence travelled to while in Sydneyin 1922, including a ferry trip to Manly.

For more details, see the Conferencewebsite:http://dhlsna.com/australiacon.html

OUR CHINESE MEMBER'S LATEST SUCCESS

Bi Bingbin is one of several overseas members of the DH Lawrence Society ofAustralia. He is a Chinese literary scholar and has translated into Chinese anumber of DH Lawrence novels, including Kangaroo. (See some selected coversof his translations above - his Kangaroo edition is second from the left.) Biregrets he will not be able to make it to Sydney for the DHL Conference in June,but he sends his greetings and best wishes for the event. He hopes he can obtainsome of the papers given at the conference. We will certainly keep him posted,via Rananim, on what happens. – RD

FORTCHOMING EVENTS

We are planning our annual Harbour cruise on the steam yacht Lady Hopetoun. This has beendelayed because the Lady H has been in dry dock, undergoing repairs. We will have a date for avoyage soon. Please check our website for this and we will also email as many people aspossible. (Please send us your email address if you think we haven't got it already) To email us,click HERE.

future events