The mining village of Eastwood lies on the borders of two English counties, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Towards the end of the 19th century, Eastwood was one of the many, many haphazard communities brought recklessly into hideous reality by the Industrial Revolution. Yet Eastwood was not so bad. Its coal-field was small and comparatively new. Mechanical uniformity had not quite tamed the people or the place. In the 1870’s there came to Eastwood a coal miner named John Arthur Lawrence, and Lydia Beardsall (ex-school teacher) who had been married two days after Christmas of 1875 at Sneiton Church, Nottingham.
They were a disharmonious couple in many ways, John Arthur Lawrence was a spontaneous pleasure loving person and belonged to the last generation of Englishmen who escaped compulsory state ‘education’. He started to work in the coal pit at the age of 10. He could barely sign his own name. His whole life was entirely physical, made of hard work at the coal pit, tinkering with innumerable little jobs at home, drinking and talking and sometimes going on long walks with his mates. Although he had his being centered in the coal-pit he was very far from being an industrialized robot. He loved his morning walks and liked and understood animals and could tell vivid stories about them. He worked when his mates worked, struck when they struck, without caring about the issues. His nature was purely sensuous, he lived out his life as fully as he could, taking the enjoyment and refusing to go sour over life’s ills.
Both by temperament and upbringing, his wife, Lydia Beardsall was a very different person. She believed herself to be ‘of a good old burgher family.’ Her father had been an engineer foreman at Sheerness Dockyard who got her educated at a private school, where later she became an assistant-teacher.
She was small and slight in figure with brown hair and clear blue eyes that always looked fearless and unfaltering. She had tremendous confidence in herself and read a good deal and also wrote poetry. She loved ideas and was considered very intellectual. She enjoyed argument on religion or philosophy or politics with some educated man. Inspite of being oppressed by endless household work, she found time to read ‘piles of books’ from the local library.
Lydia met Arthur at a party in Nottingham. They instantly had for each other all the attraction of the unfamiliar. She was to the miner that thing of mystery and fascination, ‘a lady’ and "she thought him rather wonderful, never having met anyone like him." And very soon she married him, knowing nothing of a coal miner’s ways and habits, nothing of the life conditions of a miner’s wife, and apparently being deceived into thinking he was better off than he really was.
It was this man and woman, who nearly 10 years later on September 11, 1885 became the parents of DH Lawrence.
Environment In Which The Great Writer Was Born
In spite of constant bickering and quarrels, this ill-matched couple produced five children : George Arthur, William Ernest, Emily, David Herbert and Ada, David being the second last. These children as they grew, sometimes wondered why two people apparently so unsuited to one another had ever married. It was actually impossible for the illiterate miner to understand his wife’s intellectual interests and for his robust hedonism to confirm to her narrow pretentious idealism.
For years, this unhappy and sordid state went on. The quarrels had immense influence on Lawrence’s later life. The family faced bitter poverty and was pinched especially when the father spent most of the money on drinking.
John suffered a good many mine accidents. The family enjoyed these quiet periods, which seemed to be less poverty-stricken than when the miner was at work. The children secretly looked forward to such intervals.
Lawrence’s Home
Home was home to them and they loved it with passion, whatever the suffering be. But they felt that there was something that was different about their house. It was the existence of something quite impalpable, a psychological environment, which was instantly apparent to a sensitive visitor. It had a curious atmosphere and there was a tightness in the air as if something unusual might happen at any minute. This peculiar tension was a constant quality. The Lawrence children felt that they were ‘very select’, they had a strong sense of importance and superiority, even that, they were unique and had an equally strong wish to impress others.
The Lawrences had to create their own happiness as they had little to spend on amusements. Gifts that the children received were pathetically meager – "a couple of postcards for one of the girls", and for David "a small tube of paints or some thick paper". Lydia never hid her money worries from her children. She made them aware of their financial condition and never concealed the fact that she had not enough money to clothe and feed them adequately as she wished. Lydia almost hated her husband and never forgave him. Such was the immediate environment, with its conflicts, stresses, passions, prejudices and compensations, into which D H Lawrence was born and in which he grew up.
Lydia was a domestic tyrant. She used immense power on her sons, especially with David to draw the love of these passionate children to herself, withdrawing them from their father.
As A Child
David was not strong as a child. He had been ill with bronchitis when he was two weeks old. His mother reported that, as a baby, there had been a ‘peculiar knitting’ of his brows, a ‘peculiar heaviness of eyes, as if he was trying to understand something that was pain’. At about four, he was ‘delicate and quiet’ who trotted after his mother like her shadow. Usually, he would be ‘active and interested’ and then suddenly for no reason he would be found crying on the sofa and quite unable to explain the reason why he cried and was quite unable to stop.
When he had these fits of crying his father would say, "If he doesn’t stop, I’ll smack him till he does."
These two young unhappy memories came from his mother who wanted him to feel that he had been forlorn, miserable and weak and she alone had understood and protected him.
Quarrel Over the Question of Career
Later, as the children grew older, the domestic fights shifted on the question of what occupation the children were to follow. Holding to tradition, John thundered that the boys were ‘to go down the pit’ and the girls work as kitchen maids. Given her sense of superiority, Lydia had very different ideas, wherein she was entirely supported by the teachers in the state-paid national schools. Lydia was determined not to let her children earn their livings by manual labor. Her ambition was to turn them into so-called white collared workers. She hoped that one or all of the boys might get on and become a master man in business. The children, having their own ambitions as well as their share of her superiority, quite agreed with her.
His Schooling
David was sent to Beauvale Board School and at once got into trouble for scoring his Biblical name of David. The headmaster always contrasted him with his materially successful brother Ernest.
Earlier, he had also received French and German lessons from the Congregationalist minister, his godfather. When he was 12, he won a scholarship to the Nottingham High School.
At first he hated school, its discipline and routine. Not only this, he also associated the real beginning of his lung disease and delicate health to the strain caused while journeying to and from the Nottingham High School.
At Games
As a child he preferred girls to boys as his playmates and at school he intensely disliked cricket and football.
His dislike for conventional organized games did not mean that he had no sense of fun. Actually, he loved to dominate his companions and enjoyed the greater mental activity of creating games instead of following an accepted routine of competitive sport. He was a genius for inventing games, especially indoor ones.
Even as a little boy he had strong observation skills and he took great interest in noticing everything around him.
Adolescence
From about the age of 15 to early 20s, the most important person in David’s life after his mother was Jessie Chambers.
The Chambers family lived at the Haggs in 1900. The teenagers met each other when Lydia brought her son to the farm for tea. The growing friendship and intimacy were for sometime interrupted by other events in Lawrence’s life.
The bitter irony lies in the fact that Lydia, who was instrumental in getting them together, later hated Jessie with blind jealousy and fought ruthlessly to retain David’s total attention.
Life At The Farm
Lawrence’s impulse to write was chiefly fostered by his intimacy with the Chambers family, above all with Jessie, whom he called Muriel. As soon as Lawrence was well he went to the farm. Later, he went there so often that he aroused his mother’s jealousy. He would propose to do household jobs for Mrs Chambers, who thought it as very considerate.
"No task seemed dull or monotonous to him," said Jessie Chamber. "He brought such vitality to the doing that he transformed it into something creative," she added. In happy mood to celebrate his return of life and vigor, he captivated the Chambers with his warmth and vitality and the magic of his personality.
It was strange and a little frightening, even to these people whom he loved and who loved him to realize that he possessed not only an intense appreciation of the passing moment but an uncanny awareness of things and people around him. Above all the habit of making intuitive guesses about the secret lives and thoughts of others. He looked at the girl less as a lover than as an artist who cannot be deceived. He saw the early celandines as 'scalloped splashes of gold' an image so vivid to the girl that 'the celandines ever after drew her with a little spell'. Intensely appreciative of his strange, subtle gifts, perhaps almost too sensitively emotional, the girl was deeply moved, and the love between them came to live in this atmosphere of subtle intimacy.
Visit To Skeqness
His month-long visit to his aunt at Skeqness interrupted this intimacy again. This visit seemed to have started him on his painting career. He painted or very often copied paintings throughout his life, but he seemed to have been particularly attracted to painting during the age of 15 to 20. Much of his writing was inspired by the delight of the eyes and the plastic sense.
Yet, he never attained virtuosity or craftsmanship as a painter. At the High School, the mechanical copying of plaster casts had repelled him, and beyond that he seemed to have received only one lesson on that from a pottery designer. He taught himself to decorate screens and to paint flowers and to copy reproductions of pictures. And in those days it seemed to be his ambition to be a painter rather than a writer.
First Job
His elder brother was earning fairly well in London and had better prospects ahead. Driven by the demon of getting on, Lydia forced David to follow his brother’s footsteps. With no strength to resist, David went through the agony of looking for a job. The process was a torture for this over-sensitive, self-centered boy. The killing routine would have maimed, perhaps killed, the artist he carried unawares within him. Glaring through the job advertisement columns he felt that he was already a prisoner of industrialization. At 16, with the help of his brother William Ernest, the successful and patronizing London clerk, David entered the service of Messrs Hayward of Nottingham, makers of surgical implements. He was taken as an office boy.
William’s Death And His Own Health
He had been there only a few weeks when the family was struck by a disaster. William Ernest, pushed on by his mother’s and his own ambition, wearied and weakened his health by overwork and frustration from an unhappy love affair. He developed Pneumonia complicated by Erysipelas and died before his mother’s eyes. It was a big blow to Lydia who held her ambitions as the indirect cause of her son’s death.
She withdrew herself from all, even from her favorite, David, who pined for her attention. Then suddenly she was roused from the stupor of her grief by the threat of yet another loss.
David caught pneumonia. It was then that she realized that the younger son meant more to her. David’s illness saved her sanity as much as did her devotion to nurse his health back.
There was no question of sending him back to job. This was not the first time David had Pneumonia, and no doubt this time his parents were warned of his tubercular condition. Poor as they were, his parents obeyed the medical warning and gave him six months freedom from work or school.
His Return Home
As soon as he returned, Lawrence’s life once more centered around the farm and his friends. He liked to do any work on the farm for which he had the strength and was pleased when he learned how to milk a cow. Young Lawrence was adventuring into more intellectual experiences where Jessie alone cared and was able to accompany him.
Freed from schoolwork, he began to explore the world of books with the avidity of a born writer.
Lawrence could never release himself from the dark mystery and fascination of the mine. School, which he hated, and the brief disastrous experience in ‘business’, had increased rather than diminished this spell of mysterious mine.
But his unconscious struggle against the mine on which his life was founded was symbolized by his escape to the farm, where he found love and was drawn away from his mother. Instantly, his mother became aware. She began to dislike the Chambers’ influence on her child. At the farm, Lawrence was fed with the love for adventure, the first thrill of 'life on one’s own'. Inspite of his delicate health and his mother’s overpowering nature, Lawrence always possessed the love for exploration and adventure. He never took the world and his feeling about it for granted. He scarcely cycled to and from The Haggs, (Jessie’s home) without seeing something that delighted him.
Lawrence As A Pupil–Teacher
Lawrence was aware that his mother never valued his art but only his achievements, the material rewards his art brought him. Unprofitable genius was of no interest to her. In 1902, with consent from their mother, Lawrence and his sister Ada joined as pupil–teachers to the British-School in Eastwood. A year later, they were transferred to Ilkeston Pupil–Teacher Center, where Jessie also joined later. This transfer was rather important for him. It was here that he first began to realize his gifts, partly from his exceptional success as a pupil and partly from the encouragement of his headmaster. Both in work and play, his personality set him apart from others and there was from adolescence, something about him extraordinarily appealing to women of deep and subtle sensibility. At times, he was perplexed by his own gifts. Jessie was appointed as the keeper of his artistic conscience and it was Lawrence’s influence that rescued her from the kitchen to be able to come to school and get trained as a teacher.
Music In His Life
For music and singing, which he also loved, Lawrence went to his sister Ada. Lawrence once decided he would learn to play the piano himself. He had begun to write and to paint without any conscious study of methods or lessons. But unfortunately he could not do the same with music and hence developed a dislike for it and got influenced by folk songs as they did not need any musical training.
In December 1904, Lawrence gave the nationwide King’s Scholarship Examination and ranked among the toppers. Later, he appeared for London University matriculation, which he passed successfully three months before his 20th birthday. His intuition prompted him to protect his originality as an artist, not his material advantage. In his final exam he won six distinctions, including French and botany, but not English. In 1908, he accepted an offer as junior assistant–master at Davidson Road School, Croydon.
Bitterness Between The Two Ladies He Loved
At home, the battle between his mother and Jessie went on, with Lawrence playing a very equivocal part. The cold hostility of Lawrence’s mother and his unbreakable ties with her were a strain for Jessie. He blamed Jessie bitterly for making him choose between his mother and her. At that time he wanted to live with his mother and paint, and pick up a mistress when he felt he needed one. He could not give up Jessie or seeing her because he could not write without a woman at his back and at that time no other woman was available. The moods of hostility and harshness that he inflicted upon Jessie were usually the result of some prompting or nagging from his mother.
His mother was threatened by Jessie’s presence in Lawrence’s life. The story of Lawrence’s first love ended as he termed the "slaughter of the foetus in the womb". He had promised his mother that he would leave Jessie, to show her that they could not be lovers.
His love for his mother was extravagant. He wanted to prove his mother right. To be possessed by a mission of such importance and convictions that he never could be in the wrong, formed a grievous destiny for a frail penniless young man with nothing but a pen to support him.
He visited places with his mother but he soon lost patience with her as she was old and could not keep pace with him. His tie with her was so strong that he could not think of giving himself to other girls. He wanted Jessie as his muse, the keeper of his literary conscience, but he did not want her as a wife or even as a mistress. He wanted ‘a woman to keep him, but not in her pocket’.
Leaving Eastwood
Just after his 23rd birthday, Lawrence left Eastwood to teach at the Davidson Road School, Croydon, an outer suburb of London.
Though London thrilled Lawrence, he never really liked big towns. He yearned for Eastwood, the wood-meadow, and the tiny brooks – all which had a grip on his deepest feelings.
It is difficult to imagine what Lawrence looked like in those early days at Croydon when he was totally unknown, his vocation as a writer quite uncertain, his love all astray and his heart a chaos bound to his mother. He inherited brilliant lively blue eyes from his mother, which strikingly contrasted with his thick reddish hair. He was slight in build, with a weak narrow chest and shoulders and had a fairly good height and made light graceful movements.
In The Realm Of Literature
Here, he wrote some very interesting poems revolving around his school-master life and his experiences. It was through some of these early poems and during his period of employment as an assistant-master in Croydon that Lawrence made his modest entrance into the world of letters through the pages of The English Review.
At Croydon, he had varying impulses and emotions. At one time, as he felt that life was opening before him and he dreamed of lucrative literary success, he seemed a happy, intensely vital young man irresistible to sensitive women. Like his father, he could not help insulting anyone who could harm him and like his mother, he would arrogantly assert every passing whim that came to him. He admitted that he was 'two men inside one skin'.
The launching of Lawrence was not quite easy. Some of his articles, he sent to The Daily News Author were returned. Nearly a year later, he and Jessie began to read The English Review and then Jessie persuaded him to send in some of his works. Not having the guts to risk another refusal, Lawrence left it to Jessie to do whatever she wanted. She copied some poems Discipline, Dreams, Old and Nascent, and Baby Movements and also enclosed a letter to the editor explaining Lawrence’s situation as a school master. She also requested to publish the poems under the pseudonym of Richard Greasley. In 1909, The English Review published five poems of D H Lawrence. The editor admired Lawrence’s work and announced him as ‘a big genius’. Hueffer’s (the editor of The English Review) account of Lawrence’s first visit is amusing. According to him, Lawrence was so swept off his feet by this encouragement that he instantly swung from an extremity of pessimism to one of optimism and imagined that he was already a writer of much importance.
So, at his visit, he was not as the beginner hoping nervously for approval but as the successful author wondering if The English Review was good enough to be the means of launching him on the world.
Hueffer influenced Lawrence both by precept and example. In due course of time Lawrence handed him his first novel, The White Peacock. Later, Hueffer gave him a letter of introduction to William Heinemanno, another publisher to whom he submitted the novel
Religion In His Life
Religion had even more important influence on Lawrence’s childhood than State Education. Religion was imposed on him. As a child, Laurence was intelligent and over sensitive who surrendered to this powerful, religious emotions of his family.
"It is not religious to be religious," he said later.
Christianity, metaphysics or psychology, whatever he studied could not convince the artist within him. His mind thought in symbols, not in ideas, dwelt on emotions and impressions and rejected obstructions and definitions. His lack of interest in religion and his restlessness was very clear. Having allowed the religious-belief of his fathers to slip from him, Lawrence could not rest waiting patiently upon the unknown. In a letter to his sister Ada, he writes, "I am sorry more than I can tell to find you going through the torment of religious unbelief. There still remains a God, but not a personal God; a vast, shimmering impulse which waves onward toward some end, I don’t know what – taking no regard of the little individual, but taking regard of humanity, when we die, like rain-drops falling back into the sea, we fall back into the big shimmering sea of unorganized life which we call God… Whatever name one gives Him in worship we all strive towards the same God, so we be generous-hearted."
With Lawrence, religion and philosophy were a state of mind, not a conviction of absolute truth, and it changed as he changed.
Lawrence’s Views And His Mother’s Passing Away
Lawrence was the literary enfant terrible of his generation, saying everything that came to his mind irrespective of effects and the feelings of the audience. To an indeterminate extent the change in the public attitude to sex was due to his influence. For Lawrence, it was a torture to keep away his life from the knowledge of his mother, especially his sexual life. To reach a state of sanity, Lawrence had to go through bitter struggles and wild uncertainties. It took him a long time to find out that it was really 'some sort of perversity' in people and their attitude towards sex, which made them actually 'not want, get away from the very thing they want'.
With Jessie also he could never make a clean-cut decision. On one hand he struggled to get away from the girl, on the other he was irresistibly swept back to her, leaving her completely bewildered.
In the midst of his loves, and his school mastering, and his being launched as a writer, death struck his deepest and most cherished love. His mother suffered from cancer and it had reached the critical stage by the time she confessed it to her son. She was to die. The shock took over Lawrence at once. Certainly, no other event in his life made him grieve as this. He was trying to express an almost unendurable grief and despair. The key of his life changed abruptly from a jaunty, rather brassy assertiveness to tragic lamentation. For a quarter of a century his life had been one with her, they had lived in one another, and no other woman had been able to take her place. So, the inevitable parting was the cruelest of disasters to him. He could not face her dying of a disease, so implacable, so cruel and so slow. His publisher sent him a specially bound advance copy of his first novel. He put it into his mother's hands, but it meant little to her. All that mattered was the love she had for him, for which she desperately clung to this painful life.
The Author Unveiled
The death of his mother left Lawrence shattered. Only a few weeks after the death of his mother in January 1911, his first novel, The White Peacock, was published. For Lawrence, the writing of a novel was an adventure of the mind, an exploration of his unconscious self, with his strange chaos of emotions and almost uniquely retentive memory. He did not, as his critics thought he should, set out to tell a plotted story with carefully worked-out 'characters', approved 'construction' and much painful attention to his prose.
His second novel, The Trespasser was written in a fury of creative energy within the space of few weeks. The following months passed miserably due to the tragic loss of mother, his estrangement from Jessie and with his time divided between routine school-work and work on the new book. Just a year after, he was smitten with tubercular pneumonia affecting both lungs. He came very near to death when he was nursed by a friend, Helen Corke and later by Ada, his sister. One curious fact about Lawrence was his vitality and longing for life which often amazed his friends. This illness made a vital break between Lawrence and his past. He had to leave his post due to the illness and this sudden deprivation of his only livelihood depressed him more. The doctor sent him for a wintry convalescence to Bournemouth and advised him to live outdoors. Surprisingly, Bournemouth recruited his strength and he set to work on what was now his profession, with utmost zeal and industry. Lawrence worked with extreme concentration and energy, he possessed miraculous power of abstracting himself from his surroundings. He was able to work almost anywhere inspite of interruptions.
The most obvious change was from a sedentary routine under all kinds of moral precepts to the adventurous life of the wandering writer. The will to live that triumphed in him set him on the road to freedom. He wrote The Trespasser where he described sex quite openly. For him sex was a flowering of the mysterious life force, an unknown God who must be brought into the consciousness. For generations, sex in English literature had been represented by a faded symbolism. So, he was severely criticized for his open views.
Meeting Frieda
In 1912, Lawrence moved to Germany and tried hard to find a job as an English lecturer. He was even hopeful to get German lectureship through Professor Ernest Weekly, at Nottingham University. It was here that he met Frieda, the professor’s wife. Frieda von Richthofen was a Silesian aristocrat, a military man’s daughter. Lawrence fell passionately in love with her and eloped with the married woman, who was several years older to him and a mother to 3 children. Only a woman such as Frieda, with her health, strength, good looks, vitality and self-confidence could have endured life with a 'genius'. After his mother, the only person who had any control over Lawrence was Frieda and her influence may be seen in almost all his writing after 1912.
During this time there came a sudden flash of recognition to Lawrence with the publication of Sons and Lovers and they moved to England.
Lawrence was seldom good at titles. He did not plan books or stories or even a poem, but allowed them to flow through his mind as 'life experiences, thought–adventures'.
His Marriage
Lawrence and Frieda were legally married at a London Registry office on July 13, 1914. The law cost of Frieda’s divorce pushed Lawrence to bankruptcy. In 1915, they rented and furnished a small flat in Byren Villas, Hempstead, a northern suburb of London. Lawrence’s peculiar personality seemed designed to make enemies. He offended people by his sharp tongue, his arrogance, his perverse contradictions. He had an unhappy faculty of attracting people greatly by his charm and then wantonly repelling or even insulting them into dislike and resentment. He sold his house and moved to Cornwall.
Frieda and Lawrence fought over the issue of her children whom she needed to see, but wasn’t supposed to officially. This made Lawrence jealous.
His Arrest And Leaving Cornwall
It is a most extraordinary fact that Lawrence, who knew nothing about military and naval matters, was arrested by the Germans as an English spy and then suspected by the English of being a German spy. This was a miserable time for both of them, with poverty, failure and suspicion seething all round them and the seemingly everlasting misery of war. Their cottage was searched in their absence and they were forced to leave Cornwall.
Before leaving, Lawrence set ablaze all of his old manuscripts. What was lost we shall never know but this destruction and the evacuation order depressed Lawrence.
As for Lawrence, he sat in the train "feeling that he had been killed perfectly still and pale, in a kind of after death. He had always believed so in everything – society, love, friends. This was one of his serious deaths in belief." They had far too little money to afford hotels so they took refuge at an English friend’s place for sometime. At first Lawrence greatly disliked London, finding it a city of mere 'factors, really ghastly, like lemures, evil spirits of the dead'. Fortunately, he was soothed by the fact that he had admirers and friends ready to help him, but the spy hunt could not be stopped anyway. He disliked military. He was far too important to himself to realize that to the military he was just a routine case. They later moved to a bungalow in Derbyshire, offered rent-free by his sister Ada. While the war lasted, there was little hope for his work and they existed chiefly by borrowing. They had been reduced to utter poverty by the war.
Another blow awaited him. He was called to report for medical examination where they marked him 'fit for non-military service', a grade which would make him do manual work at camps. They again moved out, only to return due to his severe illness in 1918-1919. They applied for passports and he sold his belongings to buy tickets to Italy. So they once again moved out. Fortunately, this happened a few weeks before the end of the war. In 1918-1919, he was again ill, so an alarmed Frieda took him to his sister’s house, where he was warmer and more comfortable and could be better nursed. Then, after applying for passports and selling his books and everything else he had to buy his ticket, he started for Italy.
They landed in Florence untouched by war, which provided a stimulus of beauty after depression and ugliness of war. Lack of money sent them further south to Picinisco, which was too primitive and too cold, which made them move again to Naples and later to Capri, which Lawrence found to be one of the most wonderful places for its natural beauty. They again left for Palermo, along the north coast to Mount Etna and Taormina. On the lower and eastern slope of the mountain, outside the town, they rented an old farmhouse called Fontana Vecchia, which became their headquarters for two years. He wrote many novels, short stories and poems during his Italian stay. Not all of them were up to his best level, but they were comparatively better drafted then what had been produced during the unhappy war years. Meanwhile, Lawrences received a telegram saying that Freida’s mother was ill, hence Frieda had to leave, much to his agony. When Frieda rejoined Lawrence they returned to Sicily. Sicily, he wrote, was "Like a land in side an aquarium – all water – and people like crabs creeping to the bottom." Here, he concentrated on painting. He began to feel imprisoned and wanted to move away but could not make up his mind for a destination. Then suddenly, the rain ceased and Sicily was pleasant again. A year or so later, he was in Ceylon. Later, they went to Austria where they stayed at Zell-am-See, Frieda was too happy and carefree with her German friends over there which made Lawrence chauvinistically jealous and they left the place.
They once again moved to Florence, then to Capri and finally reached Fontana in September 1921. During this period, his book Women in Love was severely criticized and he lost many friends.
Death Of His Father
Lawrence lost his father on September 10, 1024. He died of Bronchopenumonia and heart failure. Arthur Lawrence was never a great influence on Lawrence's life, and reflecting this fact, Lawrence showed relatively little reaction to the death of his father. The over-sensitive heart that cried so desperately and helplessly at the time of his motehr's passing away, was almost unmoved at the time of his father's death.
Proposal From Mabel Luhan
Just then there arrived a letter with a proposal that fitted well with Lawrence’s projects of leaving Europe. A wealthy American woman, Mabel Dodge Sterne (Luhan), invited him to come to a remote town Taos, in New Mexico, and write about it. She also offered him a place to live. At once he wrote to her in his enthusiastic vein – almost accepting her offer but no sooner did he post it he changed his mind and took a ship to Australia. On their way, they reached Colombo in the middle of March and left for Fremantle before the end of April for Perth.
He had often said he longed for beautiful, untouched country, where he could have lived at lower cost and without interruption from the outside world in his discourse with primeval nature. After two weeks, he had enough of it and traveled 3,000 miles more to Sydney. They settled in a coal-mining town called Thirroul. Thirroul proved a very good place to live and he loved Australia and its delicate beauty. In spite of all this, Lawrence pined for Europe. They moved to San Francisco bidding farewell to Australia. Mabel Luhan had arranged everything. As they reached Taos, Lawrence whirled off on a five-day motor trip over bumpy desert trails to see an Apache fiesta. On his return, Lawrence proposed to write a novel based on the life and adventures of Mabel Luhan which made him spend more time with her and Frieda began to feel jealous.
From there Lawrence left for New Mexico. Mexico was the last of Lawrence’s ‘thought–adventures’ in travel, the last inspiration for the large-scale book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. After Mexico he drifted back to Western Europe, chiefly Italy, which was more congenial to him, where he produced much of his best work.
In between, Lawrence and Frieda had a dreadful fight and she left to see her children in Hampstead. Two months of her absence made him realize the loss of her emotional and spiritual support and he proceeded to bring her back.
They left together for Paris and Baden–Baden. But he had to leave immediately for New York as he had to meet his publisher for royalty of his books.
Series Of Calamities Began
They again moved to South Mexico – Oaxaca. Lawrence went down with a bad attack of malaria, diarrhea and dysentery and soon extended to his tubercular lungs. As if this was not enough, earthquake crashed the town. This ended his life as a globetrotter, and set limits to all his physical abilities and activities.
He wanted to go back to England. Frieda was heart-broken to see him in this state. It had not been easy for them to travel. Stopping by at Mexico, the doctors revealed that Lawrence had tuberculosis. The news that his days are numbered shocked Frieda. They moved to a ranch where Lawrence defied the doctor’s predictions.
The Lawrences were stopped from entering the US, but with the intervention of the US Embassy at Mexico they could get through. As he gradually recovered strength and energy, the terror and wretchedness of those last weeks in Mexico gradually faded. Once more he began to enjoy the sensation of living with his own peculiar intensity.
He loved the ranch but he had to leave the ranch in the autumn of 1925. He never returned there because in his state of health re-entry to the US was impossible, and they sailed off to Southampton. Lawrence had cheerful plans and enjoyed to the full. All the plans were doomed to frustration with the winter setting in. He had sore chest and his lung condition was aggravated.
Another bitter quarrel occurred between him and Frieda as her children came to live with them. He also quarreled with her children and later his sister, Ada, and a friend. Situation worsened and he went off to a friend’s place. Later, he and Frieda reconciled.
Last Home
They found a large house at Scandicci, a hamlet lying among the beautiful hills of pine and olive, about seven miles from Florence. This remained their headquarters until the end of 1928. He finally relaxed, and in 1926 avoided overwork. He loved seeing enough acquaintances to keep him from loneliness (but not so many as to disturb him), amusing himself with his painting and the tasks he enjoyed, and above all ‘not tearing himself to pieces’ with the strain and effort of some large-scale piece of creative writing. But as of Lawrence’s nature, they journeyed again to Schwiegermutter in Baden-Baden, then to London where Frieda stayed with her children while Lawrence visited friends in Invernesshire and then accompanied his sisters to the Lincolnshire coast.
The Brewsters and the Huxleys were probably the closest friends during his last years, partly because they were financially respectable, but also because they did not impose their views on him, but enjoyed his moods of gaiety and wit and overlooked his serious faults.
In March 1927, Frieda departed for Germany and Lawrence chose to spend time with the Brewsters. Nothing could now stop him from overwork, which was taxing mentally and physically. Frieda rushed back to nurse him from severe cold and malaria. He lied in critical condition for quite some time, but his vitality triumphed.
He intended to leave Villa Mirenda in April but due to Frieda’s wish, he stayed on for six more months.
His Health Declined
The year 1928 was one of public storm and stress for him. In July, they rented a small chalet at Gsteig-bei-Gstaad where Lawrence busied himself with painting and also started his successful career as a freelance journalist. Meanwhile, the news that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was suppressed in England and rumors of its ban in America reached Lawrence, who was troubled by the news. As a result he suffered another hemorrhage of the lungs.
The Lawrences moved to Baden-Baden. The cold weather did not suit him and he grew weaker. For two months, they rented a remote and beautiful place called Vigie of Port–Cros island. But Lawrence was too ill to enjoy this place. He caught cold and this ended up in yet another hemorrhage, but as the doctor could not come to such a remote place and hence Lawrence was again shifted to mainland at Toulon.
The winters were spent in Bandon, close to Toulon, where he wrote articles for newspapers. His notoriety brought back correspondence from long forgotten P R Stephenson, the Australian printer, who had founded the Fanfrolico press. He came to Lawrence, explaining his intention to start a new press called, The Mandrake and to start a volume containing reproductions of the Lawrence paintings.
Later, an exhibition of his paintings opened at the Warren Galleries, London, to coincide with the publication of Stephenson’s volume of colored reproductions. The exhibition was a unique success for a one-man show who had never exhibited before. The undeniable success annoyed Lawrence’s enemies. The government removed 13 of Lawrence’s paintings and four copies of reproductions, which followed a court proceeding. Lawrence’s inability to secure copyright resulted in pirated editions of his work. In Paris, he suffered from flu.
Shifted To A Sanatorium
In September 1929, Frieda and Lawrence’s friends realized that he was dying. Brewster used to massage him with olive oil. Frieda was not allowed in his room at night. When Ada arrived it was a difficult meeting. She could not hide her distress on seeing her brother dying. Friends begged him to see and follow the advice of Dr Morland, a young English physician who was a specialist in treating tuberculosis. After examining Lawrence, he recommended to move him to a sanatorium called Ad Astra in Vence. At first Lawrence did not want to go, but finally gave in as he was too weary to resist and perhaps because he wanted to spare Frieda further trouble. Lawrence was miserable at the sanatorium as he saw the suffering of other patients. In spite of this, he stayed there for a month and then unable to endure it any longer begged to be taken away. On March 1, Frieda moved him to a villa closeby.
Even the short taxi journey to his villa exhausted him. The next day, he took a little food and Frieda read him from the Life of Columbus. He kept saying: "Don’t leave me. Don’t go away". At about 5 pm, he was in great pain and asked for morphia. When the injection was given, he relaxed saying : "I am better now". Frieda sat by the bed holding his ankle to soothe him. She unconsciously answered his last prayer :
"Give me the moon at my feet,
But my feet upon the crescent, like a Lord !
O let my ankles be bathed in moonlight, that I may go
Sure and moon–shod, cool, and bright footed towards my goal."
That night at 10’O clock, he died. He was buried in Vence. A year later, his body was taken for re-burial to Taos, where it lies in a memorial chapel on the slope of the Rockies just behind his ranch and almost shadowed by the great pine tree.
D H Lawrence, as he is more popularly known as, emerged as one of the greatest English literary writers of the 20th century. He excelled as a novelist, critic, poet and painter.
Lawrence was a democrat among aristocrats, an aristocrat among democrats. He was himself a leader of humanity, with inferiors but no superiors. At one moment he would boast about himself, in uncouth dialect, a collier’s son and the very next moment would proclaim himself a mouthpiece of gods, equal to gods, himself a god. He inherited a strange mixture of his mother’s Bade-street Victorian morality and intellectualized emancipation. The sexual habits and behavior of everyone else were wrong and he was alone right, according to him. Having run away with a married woman he gravely dogmatised on the irrevocable sanctity of marriage.
But on the whole he was ready to enjoy the taste of his many literary labors and to enjoy, instead of fretting over, one of those inevitable periods of lying shallow which come to every artist.
Lawrence was never able to reveal himself at his best except to those who were able to feel and to respect this "something different" in him.
It would be a mistake to approach Lawrence simply as an English novelist. He used loose novel forms as he used loose poetic form to hold his life experiences.
September 11, 1885
D H Lawrence born in Eastwood.
September 1898 – July 1901
Lawrence attended Nottingham High School.
October 11, 1901
Death of brother, William Earnest.
March 1904
Joined as part-time attendant at Pupil-teacher Centre, Ilkeston.
October 1906 – June 1908
Student at University College, Nottingham.
1909
Published first poems.
December 9, 1910
Mother, Lydia’s death.
April – May 1912
Met Frieda and instantly fell in love with her. Both eloped to America.
July 13, 1914
Married Frieda in England.
1917
Both were ordered to leave Cornwall as suspected spies.
November 1919
Left England with Frieda for Italy.
1922
Traveled to Ceylon, Australia and Mexico.
1923
Followed Frieda to England in winter.
1924
His father’s death
1925
Fell ill with tuberculosis, a constant health problem to him, in Mexico, Returned to England.
1926
Wrote and painted in Florentine wood.
1928
Traveled to Switzerland and France.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover caused journalistic furor, piracy and controversies.
1929
His exhibited paintings seized in London.
March 4, 1930
Died of tuberculosis at Vence, France.
Books by D H Lawrence
1911 The White Peacock (Novel)
Ever since he entered the university in 1906 he had been working on and off on the drafts of a novel which eventually became The White Peacock. The story is based on the relationships of Leslie, Lettie, George and Meg. He wrote that book four times and it runs to 1,50,000 words, which gives some indication of the energy and tenacity of will he put into it.
1912 The Trespasser (Novel)
It’s an erotic novel. Its theme is the brief love affair of a girl and a married man in that British Baiae, the isle of weight. Siegmund (Lawrence) the hero, commits suicide at the end. Most of the novel is plain autobiography. Here for the first time, he evokes sex as the basic, essential and laudable in relationship between a man and a woman.
1913 Love Poems & Others
Sons and Lovers (Novel)
The novel presents the account of young man's coming to terms with life. This quasi-autobiographical work concentrates on the unusual mother-son relationship and Paul Morrell's, the protagonist's, struggle against the force of his mother's influence, his struggle to reach out to other women and his failure to do so.
The novel depicts the innermost feelings of Lawrence and his radical views on sex and marriage. The novel created ripples in the literary world and became controversial. Today, it holds a unique position as a document to know Lawrence's life more closely.
1914 The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (Play)
The Prussian Officer and Other Stories
1915 The Rainbow (Novel)
This novel, again, presents Lawrence's characteristic radical ideas about sex. The novel goes a step further and discusses lesbianism. The story of Brangwen family, and particularly of two sisters Ursula and Gudrun, marked the historical shift of Edwardian English society to modern free world. Both the sisters again featured in Lawrence's another novel, Women in Love.
The book, especially its one chapter called Shame created much trouble for the author and publisher. It was labeled obscene and immoral. The legal system and English morality were shaken by their roots. The public apology of the publisher Algernon Metheun could save the book from being banned. But the book became the medium of liberating female sexuality from being a taboo.
1916 Twilight in Italy (Travel)
Amores (Poems)
1917 Look We Have Come Through (Poems)
1918 New Poems
1919 Ray (Poems)
1920 Touch and Go (Play)
Women in Love (Novel)
One of the themes was the destruction of the better part of man by industrialization. It was his best and his favorite book which contained the quintessence of this message to mankind.
The Lost Girl (Novel)
This novel deals with one of Lawrence’s favorite subjects – a girl marries a man of much lower social status, against the advice of friends and finds compensation in his superior warmth and understanding. He dropped the novel for some years and rewrote the story in an old Sicilian farmhouse near Taormina in 1920.
1921 Psychoanalysis and The Unconscious (Essays)
Movements in European History
Tortoises (Poems)
Sea and Sardinia (Travel)
1922 Aaron’s Rod (Novel)
Fantasia of The Unconscious (Essays)
England, My England (Stories)
1923 The Ladybird (Stories)
Studies in Classic American Literature.
Kangaroo (Novel)
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Poems)
1924 The Boy in The Bush (Novel)
It was in Perth that Lawrence met Molly Skinner with whom he collaborated to write this novel. Lawrence had never gone far enough into western Australia or New South Wales to catch a glimpse of real wild bush. But with his uncannily quick intuition he instantly perceived 'the strange and empty and pre-primeval' quality of Australia.
1925 St. Mawr : Together With The Princess (Stories)
Reflections on the Death of A Porcupine (Essays)
1926 The Plumed Serpent (Novel)
David (Play)
Sun (Story)
Glad Ghosts (Story)
1927 Mornings in Mexico (Travel)
John Thomas and Lady Jane
1928 Collected Poems of D H Lawrence.
The Woman who Rode Away (Stories)
Rawdon’s Roof (Story)
Sun (unexpurgated edition)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (novel)
It was first published privately in Florence. It is a tale of the love affair between a wealthy, married woman, and a man who works on her husband’s estate. The book was banned for sometime, both in the UK and the US, as pornographic. Constancy Chatterley is married to Sir Clifford, a mine owner in Derbyshire. A war wound has left him impotent and paralyzed. Constancy has a brief affair with a young playwright and then enters into a passionate relationship with Sir Clifford’s gamekeeper, Oliver Milloers. She becomes pregnant. Sir Clifford refuses to give a divorce and the lovers wait for a better time to be united.
It is characteristic of Lawrence that the core of that book, which gradually unfolded into one of the most discussed erotic novels of the century, was based on an excursion which revived in full fury his passionate hatred of the ugliness and manners of Industrialization.
In this novel, he imagined a world where 'a new phallic tenderness' between man and woman would render sudden mutilating and desolation impossible.
It was written less for delight in a passionate love affair and joy of a woman’s body, than as a kind of erotic lesson, a sermon on sex.
1929 Pansies (Poems)
The Escaped Cock (Short Novel, now called The Man who Died)
The Paintings of D H Lawrence
My Skirmish with Jolly Roger (Essay)
Pornography and Obscenity (Essay)
1930Nettles (Poems)
Assorted Articles
The Virgin and The Gypsy (Novel)
A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Essay)
The Triumph of the Machine (Poem)
Love among the Haystacks (Stories)
1931 Apocalypse
The Man Who Died
1932 Etruscan Places (Travel)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Abridged Edition)
The letters of D H Lawrence
Last Poems
1933 The Lovely Lady and Other Stories
Birds, Beasts and Homers
We Need One Another (Essay)
1934 A colliers Friday Night (Play)
A Modern Lover (Stories)
1935 The Spirit of Place
1936 Phoenix (Essays
)
1940 Fire and Other Poems
1944 The First Lady Chatterley
1948 D H Lawrence’s Letters to Bertrand Russell
1949 A Prelude (Story)
He wrote some interesting poems dealing with his life as a school-teacher :
Poetry as a Teacher Man and Bat
The Best of School The Mosquito
Last Lesson of the Afternoon People
School on the Outskirts Piano
Discipline Red Geranium and Godly Mignonette
The Punisher Relativity
Manifesto The Revolutionary
Almond Blossom Self-Pity
Bat The Ship of Death
Bavarian Gentians Snake
Beautiful Old Age Stand Up !
The Blue Jay Swan
The Bride Tease
Cruelty and Love Tortoise Gallantry
The Enkindled Spring Tortoise Shout
Figs Wages
Gloire de Dijon Whales Weep Not !
Good Husbands Make Unhappy Wives When I Read Shakespeare
The Grudge of the Old The Wild Common
Last Words to Miriam Worm Either Way
Love on the Farm A Youth Mowing
Lui et Elle
On Instincts and Intuition
"When it comes to living, we live through our instincts and intuitions. Instinct makes me run from little over-earnest ladies; instinct makes me sniff the lime blossom and reach for the darkest cherry. But it is intuition, which makes me feel the uncanny glossiness of the lake this afternoon, the sulliness of the mountains, the vividness of near green in thunder-sun…"
On The Vice of Love
"If a woman’s husband gets on her nerves, she should fly at him… Always let fly tooth and nail and never repent, no matter what sort of figure you make. We have a vice of love, of softness and sweetness and smarminess and untimely and promiscuous bindness and all that sort of things."
On his Father
"He was usually rather rude to his little immediate bosses at the pit… he was always saying tiresome and foolish things about the men just above him… He offended them all, almost on purpose so how could he expect them to favor him ? Yet he grumbled when they didn’t."
On Sleep
"Sleep is still most perfect, inspite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing."
On Writing a Book
"I think a man puts everything he is into a book, a real book."
On Writing a Novel
"The usual method of constructing a novel was to take two couples and to workout their relationships."
On Being Rejected by the Daily News Author
"I’ve tried and been turned down and I shall try no more. And I don’t care if I have a line published."
On Living
"What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his unison, not his own isolate salvation of his ‘soul’. Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost… he is in flesh and potent... Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh."
"I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation.
On Religion
"It’s not religious to be religious; I reckon a crow is religious when it sails across the sky."
On God
"I don’t believe God knows such a lot about himself. God doesn’t know things, He is things. And I’m sure He’s not soulful."
On Sex
"I’shall go from woman to woman until I am satisfied. It doesn’t matter who one marries."
On Individual Liberty
"I do esteem individual liberty above everything. What is a nation for, but to secure the maximum of liberty to every individual."
