The New Studies of English Language & Literature 59 (2014): 125-142. This paper examines the assumption that Lawrence’s revulsion at the Cambridge-Bloomsbury circle was chiefly prompted by their homosexuality rather than by their intellectual climate. Quentin Bell and Rosenbaum argue that Lawrence’s reaction to the Keynes set was derived from his shock at the homosexuality rampant among the circle rather than from his view of their intellectual outlook. Hence they hold that the view of Keynes and Leavis of the conflict between Lawrence and the circle as intellectual and ideological discrepancy is misleading. Yet a closer look into Lawrence’s letters and works dealing with the figures of the circle reveals that his initial aversion to the Keynes’s group was triggered by the particular combination of the predatory and corrupt sense of homosexuality and smug rationalism. He saw in them complacent bourgeois rationalism and self-indulgent individualism. There are essential incongruities between the two sides in social and educational background, sensibility, and approach to life and culture. As a member of the younger generation of the Bloomsbury Group, Bell probably wanted to save the legacy of the group by mainly focusing on the question of personal and sexual rather than on intellectual and ideological aspects. On the other hand, by viewing the encounter exclusively from an intellectual and social angle, Leavis might have wanted to avoid scandal for both Lawrence and the Cambridge people although probably he knew about the sexual origin of the conflict.