However, New York was not all America. There was the great clean west. So the Melvilles went west, with Peter, but without the things. They tried living the simple life, in the mountains. But doing their own chores became almost a nightmare. “Things” are all very well to look at, but it’s awful handling them, even when they’re beautiful. To be the slave of hideous things, to keep a stove going, cook meals, wash dishes, carry water and clean floors: pure horror of sordid anti-life!
In the cabin on the mountains, Valerie dreamed of Florence, the lost apartment, and her Bologna cupboard and Louis Quinze chairs, above all, her “Chartres” curtains, stored in New York—and costing fifty dollars a month.
A millionaire friend came to the rescue, offering them a cottage on the Californian coast.—California! Where the new soul is to be born in man. With joy the idealists moved a little further west, catching at new vine-props of hope.
And finding them straws!—The millionaire cottage was perfectly equipped. It was perhaps as labour-savingly perfect as is possible: electric heating and cooking, a white-and-pearl enamelled kitchen, nothing to make dirt except the human being himself. In an hour or so the idealists had got through their chores. They were “free”—free to hear the great Pacific pounding the coast, and to feel a new soul filling their bodies.
Alas! the Pacific pounded the coast with hideous brutality, brute force itself! And the new soul, instead of sweetly stealing into their bodies, seemed only meanly to gnaw the old soul out of their bodies. To feel you are under the fist of the most blind and crunching brute force: to feel that your cherished idealist’s soul is being gnawed out of you, and only irritation left in place of it: well, it isn’t good enough.
After about nine months, the idealists departed from the Californian west. It had been a great experience, they were glad to have had it. But, in the long run, the west was not the place for them, and they knew it. No, the people who wanted new souls had better get them. They, Valerie and Erasmus Melville, would like to develop the old soul a little further. Anyway, they had not felt any influx of new soul, on the Californian coast. On the contrary.
So, with a slight hole in their material capital, they returned to Massachusetts, and paid a visit to Valerie’s parents, taking the boy along. The grand-parents welcomed the child—poor expatriated boy—and were rather cold to Valerie, but really cold to Erasmus. Valerie’s mother definitely said to Valerie, one day, that Erasmus ought to take a job, so that Valerie could live decently. Valerie haughtily reminded her mother of the beautiful apartment on the Arno, and the “wonderful” things in store in New York, and of the “marvellous and satisfying life” she and Erasmus had led. Valerie’s mother said that she didn’t think her daughter’s life looked so very marvellous at present: homeless, with a husband idle at the age of forty, a child to educate, and a dwindling capital: looked the reverse of marvellous, to her. Let Erasmus take some post in one of the universities—
“What post? what university?” interrupted Valerie.
“That could be found, considering your father’s connections and Erasmus’ qualifications,” replied Valerie’s mother. “And you could get all your valuable things out of store, and have a really lovely home, which everybody in America would be proud to visit. As it is, your furniture is eating up your income, and you are living like rats in a hole, with nowhere to go to.”
This was very true. Valerie was beginning to pine for a home, with her “things.” Of course she could have sold her furniture for a substantial sum. But nothing would have induced her. Whatever else passed away, religions, cultures, continents, and hopes, Valerie would never part from the “things” which she and Erasmus had collected with such passion. To these she was nailed.
But she and Erasmus still would not give up that freedom, that full and beautiful life they had so believed in. Erasmus cursed America. He did not want to earn a living. He panted for Europe.
Leaving the boy in charge of Valerie’s parents, the two idealists once more set off for Europe. In New York, they paid two dollars and looked for a brief, bitter hour at their “things.” They sailed “student class”—that is, third. Their income now was less than two thousand dollars, instead of three. And they made straight for Paris—cheap Paris.
They found Europe, this time, a complete failure. “We have returned like dogs to our vomit,” said Erasmus; “but the vomit has staled in the meantime.” He found he couldn’t stand Europe. It irritated every nerve in his body. He hated America too. But America at least was a darn sight better than this miserable dirt-eating continent; which was by no means cheap any more either.
Valerie, with her heart on her things—she had really burned to get them out of that warehouse, where they had stood now for three years, eating up two thousand dollars—wrote to her mother she thought Erasmus would come back if he could get some suitable work in America. Erasmus, in a state of frustration bordering on rage and insanity, just went round Italy in a poverty-stricken fashion, his coat-cuffs frayed, hating everything with intensity. And when a post was found for him in Cleveland university, to teach French, Italian and Spanish literature, his eyes grew more beady, and his long, queer face grew sharper and more rat-like, with utter baffled fury. He was forty, and the job was upon him.
“I think you’d better accept, dear. You don’t care for Europe any longer. As you say, it’s dead and finished. They offer us a house on the college lot, and mother says there’s room in it for all our things. I think we’d better cable ‘accept.’ ” He glowered at her like a cornered rat. One almost expected to see rat’s whiskers twitching at the sides of the sharp nose.
“Shall I send the cablegram?” she asked.
“Send it!” he blurted.
And she went out and sent it.
He was a changed man, quieter, much less irritable. A load was off him. He was inside the cage.
But when he looked at the furnaces of Cleveland, vast and like the greatest of black forests, with red and white-hot cascades of gushing metal, and tiny gnomes of men, and terrific noises, gigantic, he said to Valerie:
“Say what you like, Valerie, this is the biggest thing the modern world has to show.”
And when they were in their up-to-date little house on the college lot of Cleveland University, and that woebegone débris of Europe, Bologna cupboard, Venice book-shelves, Ravenna bishop’s chair, Louis Quinze side-tables, “Chartres” curtains, Siena bronze lamps, all were arrayed, and all looked perfectly out of keeping, and therefore very impressive; and when the idealists had had a bunch of gaping people in, and Erasmus had showed off his best European manner, but still quite cordial and American; and Valerie had been most ladylike, but for all that, “we prefer America;” then Erasmus said, looking at her with queer sharp eyes of a rat:
“Europe’s the mayonnaise all right, but America supplies the good old lobster—what?”
“Every time!” she said, with satisfaction.
And he peered at her. He was in the cage: but it was safe inside. And she, evidently, was her real self at last. She had got the goods.—Yet round his nose was a queer, evil scholastic look, of pure scepticism. But he liked lobster.
Chronology
1885 11 September: David Herbert Lawrence born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, third son of Arthur John, (coalminer) and Lydia Lawrence.
1898–1901 Attends Nottingham High School.
1901 October–December: Clerk at Nottingham factory of J. H. Haywood; falls ill.
1902–5 Pupil-teacher in Eastwood and Ilkeston; meets Chambers family, including Jessie, in 1902.
1905–6 Uncertificated teacher in Eastwood; starts to write poetry, shows it to Jessie.
1906–8 Studies for teaching certificate at University College, Nottingham; begins first novel The White Peacock in 1906.
1907 Writes first short stories; first published story, ‘A Prelude’, appears in the Nottinghamshire Guardian (under Jessie’s name).
1908–11 Elementary teacher at Davidson Road School, Croyd
on.
1909 Jessie sends selection of Lawrence’s poems to the English Review; Ford Madox Hueffer (editor) accepts five and recommends The White Peacock to a publisher. Writes ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ (–1911) and first play, A Collier’s Friday Night.
1910 Engaged to Louie Burrows; death of his mother. First drafts of The Trespasser and ‘Paul Morel’ (later Sons and Lovers).
1911 The White Peacock published. Second draft of ‘Paul Morel’; writes and revises short stories. ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ published. Third draft of ‘Paul Morel’ (-1912). Falls seriously ill with pneumonia (November–December).
1912 Recuperates in Bournemouth; in February, breaks off engagement, returns to Eastwood and resigns teaching post. Meets Frieda Weekley (née von Richthofen), the wife of a professor at Nottingham University, and in May goes with her to Germany and then to Italy for the winter. The Trespasser published. Revises ‘Paul Morel’ into Sons and Lovers.
1913 Drafts Italian essays and starts to write ‘The Sisters’ (which will become The Rainbow and Women in Love). Love Poems published. April–June in Germany; writes ‘The Prussian Officer’ and other stories. Sons and Lovers published (May). Spends the summer in England with Frieda, then they return to Italy. Works on ‘The Sisters’.
1914 The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (play) published (USA). Finishes ‘The Wedding Ring’ (latest version of ‘The Sisters’) and returns to England with Frieda; her divorce finalised, they marry on 13 July. At the outbreak of war (August), Methuen & Co. withdraw from their agreement to publish ‘The Wedding Ring’. War prevents return to Italy; lives in Buckinghamshire and Sussex. Rewrites ‘The Wedding Ring’ as The Rainbow (–1915).
1915 Writes ‘England, My England’; works on essays for Twilight in Italy. Moves to London in August. The Rainbow is published in September but withdrawn in October, and prosecuted as obscene and banned a month later. Hopes to travel to USA with Frieda but at the end of December they settle in Cornwall (–October 1917).
1916 Rewrites the other half of ‘The Sisters’ material as Women in Love; it is finished by November but refused by several publishers (-1917). Reading American literature. Twilight in Italy and Amores (poems) published.
1917 Begins work on Studies in Classic American Literature (hereafter Studies). Revises Women in Love. Expelled from Cornwall with Frieda in October under Defence of the Realm Act; they return to London. Begins the novel Aaron’s Rod. Look! We Have Come Through! (poems) published.
1918 Lives mostly in Berkshire and Derbyshire (–mid 1919). New Poems published; first versions of eight Studies essays published in periodical form (-1919). War ends (November). Writes The Fox.
1919 Revises Studies essays in intermediate versions. Revises Women in Love for Thomas Seltzer (USA). In November leaves for Italy.
1920 Moves to Sicily (February) and settles at Taormina. Publication of Women in Love in USA, Touch and Go (play), Bay (poems) and The Lost Girl in England.
1921 Visits Sardinia with Frieda and writes Sea and Sardinia. Movements in European History (textbook) and Women in Love published in England; Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Sea and Sardinia published in USA. Travels to Italy, Germany and Austria (April–September) and then returns to Taormina. Finishes Aaron’s Rod, writes The Captain’s Doll and The Ladybird, revises The Fox.
1922 February–September: Travels with Frieda to Ceylon, Australia and USA. Aaron’s Rod published; writes Kangaroo in Australia. Arrives in Taos, New Mexico, in September; rewrites Studies (final version). Fantasia of the Unconscious and England My England and Other Stories published. Moves to Del Monte Ranch, near Taos, in December.
1923 The Ladybird (with The Fox and The Captain’s Doll) published. Travels to Mexico with Frieda. Studies published in August (USA). Writes ‘Quetzalcoatl’ (early version of The Plumed Serpent). Kangaroo and Birds, Beasts and Flowers (poems) published. Rewrites The Boy in the Bush from Mollie Skinner’s manuscript. Frieda returns to England in August; Lawrence follows in December.
1924 In France and Germany, then to Kiowa Ranch, near Taos. The Boy in the Bush published; writes ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’, St. Mawr and ‘The Princess’. Death of his father. Goes to Mexico with Frieda.
1925 Finishes The Plumed Serpent in Oaxaca; falls ill, nearly dies and is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Returns to Mexico City and then to Kiowa Ranch. St. Mawr Together with The Princess published. Travels via London to Italy. Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine (essays) published; writes The Virgin and the Gipsy (–January 1926).
1926 The Plumed Serpent and David (play) published. Visits England for the last time; returns to Italy and writes first version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, then second version (–1927).
1927 Tours Etruscan sites with Earl Brewster; writes Sketches of Etruscan Places; writes first part of The Escaped Cock (second part in 1928). Suffers series of bronchial haemorrhages. Mornings in Mexico (essays) published. Starts third version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
1928 The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories published. Finishes, revises and privately publishes third version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in limited edition (late June); distributes it through network of friends but many copies confiscated by authorities in USA and England. Travels to Switzerland for health, and then to Bandol in the south of France. The Collected Poems of D. H. Lawrence published; writes many of the poems for Pansies.
1929 Organises cheap Paris edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover to counter piracies. Typescript of Pansies seized by police in London. Travels to Spain, Italy and Germany; increasingly ill. Police raid exhibition of his paintings in London (July). Expurgated (July) and unexpurgated (August) editions of Pansies published; The Escaped Cock published. Returns to Bandol. Writes biblical commentary Apocalypse (– January 1930).
1930 2 March: Dies of tuberculosis at Vence, Alpes Maritimes, France, and is buried there. Nettles (poems), Assorted Articles, The Virgin and the Gipsy and Love Among the Haystacks & Other Pieces published.
1931 Apocalypse published.
1932 Sketches of Etruscan Places published (as Etruscan Places). Last Poems published.
1933–4 Story collections The Lovely Lady (1933) and A Modern Lover (1934) published.
1935 Frieda has Lawrence exhumed and cremated, and his ashes taken to Kiowa Ranch.
1936 Phoenix (compilation) published.
1956 Death of Frieda.
1960 Penguin Books publish the first unexpurgated English edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, following the famous obscenity trial.
Further Reading
CRITICAL STUDIES OF LAWRENCE’S WORK
The following is a selection of some of the best Lawrence criticism published since 1985.
Michael Bell, D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Philosophically-based analysis of Lawrence’s work.
Michael Black, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Fiction (Macmillan, 1986). Very close analytical approach to Lawrence’s fiction up to and including Sons and Lovers.
James C. Cowan, D. H. Lawrence: Self and Sexuality (Ohio State University Press, 2002). Sensitive and intelligent psychoanalytical study.
Keith Cushman and Earl G. Ingersoll, eds., D. H. Lawrence: New Worlds (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003). Gathers essays about Lawrence and America.
Paul Eggert and John Worthen, eds., Lawrence and Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 1996). Collects essays concerning Lawrence’s uses of satire and comedy.
David Ellis, ed., Casebook on ‘Women in Love’ (Oxford University Press, 2006). Essays of modern criticism.
David Ellis and Howard Mills, D. H. Lawrence’s Non-Fiction: Art, Thought and Genre (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Collection which examines in particular Lawrence’s writing of the 1920s.
Anne Fernihough, D. H. Lawrence: Aesthetics and Ideology (Oxford University Press, 1993). Wide-ranging enquiry into the intellectual context of Lawrence’s writing.
Anne Fernihough, ed., The Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence (C
ambridge University Press, 2001). Usefully wide-ranging collection.
Louis K. Greiff, D. H. Lawrence: Fifty Years on Film (Southern Illinois University Press, 2001). Detailed account and analysis of screen adaptations.
G. M. Hyde, D. H. Lawrence (Palgrave Macmillan, 1990). Brief but provocative account of all Lawrence’s writing.
Earl G. Ingersoll, D. H. Lawrence, Desire and Narrative (University Press of Florida, 2001). Postmodern approach to the major fiction.
Paul Poplawski, ed., Writing the Body in D. H. Lawrence: Essays on Language, Representation, and Sexuality (Greenwood Press, 2001). Gathers modern essays.
N. H. Reeve, Reading Late Lawrence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Especially finely written account of Lawrence’s late fiction.
Neil Roberts, D. H. Lawrence, Travel and Cultural Difference (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Valuable post-colonial study of Lawrence’s travel-related writings 1921–5.
Carol Siegel, Lawrence Among the Women: Wavering Boundaries in Women’s Literary Traditions (University Press of Virginia, 1991). Important and wide-ranging feminist reassessment of Lawrence.
Jack Stewart, The Vital Art of D. H. Lawrence (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). Insightful study of Lawrence and the visual arts.
Peter Widdowson, ed., D. H. Lawrence (Longman, 1992). Useful collection surveying contemporary theoretical approaches to Lawrence.
Linda Ruth Williams, Sex in the Head: Visions of Femininity and Film in D. H. Lawrence (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). Feminist approach to selected works of Lawrence.
John Worthen and Andrew Harrison, eds., Casebook on ‘Sons and Lovers’ (Oxford University Press, 2005). Essays of modern criticism.
REFERENCE, EDITIONS, LETTERS AND BIOGRAPHY
The standard bibliography of Lawrence’s work is A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence, 3rd edn., ed. Warren Roberts and Paul Poplawski (Cambridge University Press, 2001). A useful reference work is Paul Poplawski’s D. H. Lawrence: A Reference Companion (Greenwood Press, 1996) which gathers material up to 1994 and includes comprehensive bibliographies for most of Lawrence’s works; Poplawski’s ‘Guide to further reading’ in the Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence goes up to 2000.
Selected Stories Page 37