Behold a new Gilbert. Once the old skies have shrivelled, useless to try and retain their ancient, withered significance. Useless to try and have the old values. They have gone.
So it is with man, gende reader. There are worlds within worlds within worlds of unknown life and joy inside him. But every time, it needs a sort of cataclysm to get out of the old world into the new. It needs a very painful shedding of an old skin. It needs a fight with the matrix of the old era, a bitter struggle to the death with the old, warm, well-known mother of our days. Fight the old, enclosing mother of our days — fight her to the death — and defeat her — and then we shall burst out into a new heaven and a new earth, delicious. But it won’t come out of lovey-doveyness. It will come out of the sheer, pure, consummated fight, where the soul fights blindly for air, for life, a new space. The matrix of the old mother-days and mother-idea is hell beyond hell at last: that which nourished us and our race becomes the intolerable dry prison of our death. Which is the history of man.
And once it has become an intolerable prison, it is no use presuming what is outside. We don’t know what is outside — we can never know till we get out. We have therefore got to fight and fight and fight ourselves sick, to get out. Hence the Germans really made a right move, when they made the war. Death to the old enshrouding body politic, the old womb-idea of our era!
Master Gilbert could never have known what lay outside his rather dry, restless life-mode. From his Emmies and so on he could never have deduced it. If he had married some really nice woman: for of course, gentle reader, we have decided long ago that none of my heroines are really nice women; then he would never have broken out of the dry integument that enclosed him. He would have withered with the really nice woman inside the enclosure. For the act of birth, dear reader, really is not and cannot be a really nice business. It is a bloody and horrid and gruesome affair. And that is what we must face.
Whatever Master Gilbert had set himself to postulate, as the new world he was seeking, he would never have been able to hit upon this new, profound bliss in a dawning sensual soul. He would not have conceived, as you cannot conceive, gentle reader, that a man should possibly have a sensual soul. A sensual soul. Are not the two words just contradictory?
Ah no, gentle reader, once your ideal sky has withered and shown you a much vaster universe, a much wider world, a wonderful, unbreathed firmament. When that has happened you will realise that the ideal sky of our day is a horrible low ceiling under which we stifle to death. To you it is the sky, the infinite, the all-beautiful, the ne plus ultra. To Master Gilbert, after his sudden seeing-forth, it was a painted ceiling of the most detestable stifling plaster-and-distemper stuff. To be sure the painted ceiling of the old ideal doesn’t fall all in one smash. It first gives a little crack, yielding to pressure. And through that little crack one has one’s first glimpse, as Gilbert had his first sudden newness of experience and life- comprehension in Riva. Afterwards one loses the crack, and sits just as tight under the painted ceiling. Even one chants the praise of the ideal, the infinite, the spiritual. But one will come to the crack again, and madly fight to get a further glimpse, madly and frenziedly struggle with the dear old infinite. And thus rip just a little wider gap in it, just a little wider: after tearing oneself considerably.
Do not imagine, ungentle reader, that by just chasing women you will ever get anywhere. Gilbert might have had a thousand Emmies, and even a thousand really nice women, and yet never have cracked the womb. It needed the incalculable fight such as he fought, unconscious and willy-nilly, with his German Johanna: and such as I fight with you, oh gentle but rather cowardly and imbecile reader: for such, really, I find you.
For the time, in Riva, he was not only happy but he was a new creature in a new world. And at such times, as usual, nice things happened. The first was that one morning, again before they were up, a knock and the maid with a large hat- box for the Signora: addressed to Frau Johanna Noon, from Vienna. Johanna was nowadays Mrs Noon by name if not by nature.
“My sister Lotte!” cried Johanna in excitement, leaping out of bed to undo the hat-box.
Behold then — an enormous black hat of chiffon velvet and black plumes — huge: a smaller hat of silky woven straw, very soft: a complicated Paquin dress of frail, dark-blue, stone- blue silky velvet and purplish heavy embroidery, for evening wear: a complicated whitey-blue petticoat of very soft silk: a voluminous dressing-gown wrap of thin silk and endless lace:
a chemise of more lace than linen: two pairs of high laced shoes, of greeny grey thin kid with black patent golosh
The manuscript ends here
AARON’S ROD
This novel was started in 1917 and published in 1922. The protagonist is Aaron Sisson, who is a union official in the coal mines of the English Midlands, trapped in a stale marriage. He is also an amateur, but talented, flautist. At the start of the story he walks out on his wife and two children and decides on impulse to visit Italy. His dream is to become recognised as a professional musician. During his travels he encounters and befriends Rawdon Lilly, a Lawrence-like writer who nurses Aaron back to health when he is taken ill in post-war London. Having recovered his health, Aaron arrives in Florence. Here he moves in intellectual and artistic circles, argues about politics, leadership and submission, and has an affair with an aristocratic lady. The novel ends with an anarchist or fascist explosion that destroys Aaron’s instrument. Many incidents in the novel have direct parallels with events in Lawrence’s own life.
The biblical title refers to the rod of Aaron in the Old Testament, Moses’ brother who built the Golden Calf in the desert for the worship of the Israelites. The rod, his divine symbol of authority and independence, finds its echo in the flute of Aaron Sissons.
Lawrence at the time of publication
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE BLUE BALL
CHAPTER II. ROYAL OAK
CHAPTER III. “THE LIGHTED TREE”
CHAPTER IV. “THE PILLAR OF SALT”
CHAPTER V. AT THE OPERA
CHAPTER VI. TALK
CHAPTER VII. THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
CHAPTER VIII. A PUNCH IN THE WIND
CHAPTER IX. LOW-WATER MARK
CHAPTER X. THE WAR AGAIN
CHAPTER XI. MORE PILLAR OF SALT
CHAPTER XII. NOVARA
CHAPTER XIII. WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT
CHAPTER XIV. XX SETTEMBRE
CHAPTER XV. A RAILWAY JOURNEY
CHAPTER XVI. FLORENCE
CHAPTER XVII. HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE
CHAPTER XVIII. THE MARCHESA
CHAPTER XIX. CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY
CHAPTER XX. THE BROKEN ROD
CHAPTER XXI. WORDS
CHAPTER I. THE BLUE BALL
There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace. A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank that evening.
Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line climbing the hill home from work. He was late because he had attended a meeting of the men on the bank. He was secretary to the Miners Union for his colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that left him nettled.
He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and was in the long road of colliers’ dwellings. Just across was his own house: he had built it himself. He went through the little gate, up past the side of the house to the back. There he hung a moment, glancing down the dark, wintry garden.
“My father — my father’s come!” cried a child’s excited voice, and two little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs.
“Father, shall you set the Christmas Tree?” they cried. “We’ve got one!”
“Afore I have my dinner?” he answered amiably.
“Set it now. S
et it now. — We got it through Fred Alton.”
“Where is it?”
The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of the passage into the light of the kitchen door.
“It’s a beauty!” exclaimed Millicent.
“Yes, it is,” said Marjory.
“I should think so,” he replied, striding over the dark bough. He went to the back kitchen to take off his coat.
“Set it now, Father. Set it now,” clamoured the girls.
“You might as well. You’ve left your dinner so long, you might as well do it now before you have it,” came a woman’s plangent voice, out of the brilliant light of the middle room.
Aaron Sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap. He stood bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree.
“What am I to put it in?” he queried. He picked up the tree, and held it erect by the topmost twig. He felt the cold as he stood in the yard coatless, and he twitched his shoulders.
“Isn’t it a beauty!” repeated Millicent.
“Ay! — lop-sided though.”
“Put something on, you two!” came the woman’s high imperative voice, from the kitchen.
“We aren’t cold,” protested the girls from the yard.
“Come and put something on,” insisted the voice. The man started off down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. The sky was clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under air.
Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a spade and a box that was suitable. Then he came out to his neat, bare, wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay on the frozen earth. The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.
“Hold it up straight,” he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the roots.
When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The girls were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow and stooped to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face — the boughs pricked him.
“Is it very heavy?” asked Millicent.
“Ay!” he replied, with a little grunt. Then the procession set off — the trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited little girls. They arrived at the door. Down went the legs of the wheel-barrow on the yard. The man looked at the box.
“Where are you going to have it?” he called.
“Put it in the back kitchen,” cried his wife.
“You’d better have it where it’s going to stop. I don’t want to hawk it about.”
“Put it on the floor against the dresser, Father. Put it there,” urged Millicent.
“You come and put some paper down, then,” called the mother hastily.
The two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold, shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly. The open inner door showed a bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on which stood an aspidistra.
Again with a wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box. The tree pricked and stung. His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his face averted.
“Mind where you make a lot of dirt,” she said.
He lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper on the floor. Soil scattered.
“Sweep it up,” he said to Millicent.
His ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the tree-boughs.
A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything sharp and hard. In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. All was scrupulously clean and perfect. A baby was cooing in a rocker-less wicker cradle by the hearth. The mother, a slim, neat woman with dark hair, was sewing a child’s frock. She put this aside, rose, and began to take her husband’s dinner from the oven.
“You stopped confabbing long enough tonight,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands.
In a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner. The doors were shut close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines under the house made the doors not fit. Aaron moved his chair, to get out of the draught. But he still sat in his shirt and trousers.
He was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years old. He did not talk much, but seemed to think about something. His wife resumed her sewing. She was acutely aware of her husband, but he seemed not very much aware of her.
“What were they on about today, then?” she said.
“About the throw-in.”
“And did they settle anything?”
“They’re going to try it — and they’ll come out if it isn’t satisfactory.”
“The butties won’t have it, I know,” she said. He gave a short laugh, and went on with his meal.
The two children were squatted on the floor by the tree. They had a wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets, which they were spreading out like wares.
“Don’t open any. We won’t open any of them till we’ve taken them all out — and then we’ll undo one in our turns. Then we s’ll both undo equal,” Millicent was saying.
“Yes, we’ll take them ALL out first,” re-echoed Marjory.
“And what are they going to do about Job Arthur Freer? Do they want him?” A faint smile came on her husband’s face.
“Nay, I don’t know what they want. — Some of ‘em want him — whether they’re a majority, I don’t know.”
She watched him closely.
“Majority! I’d give ‘em majority. They want to get rid of you, and make a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. Strikes me you need something to break your heart over.”
He laughed silently.
“Nay,” he said. “I s’ll never break my heart.”
“You’ll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just because a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to do the Union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you, and you eat your heart out about it. More fool you, that’s all I say — more fool you. If you cared for your wife and children half what you care about your Union, you’d be a lot better pleased in the end. But you care about nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don’t know what they want except it’s more money just for themselves. Self, self, self — that’s all it is with them — and ignorance.”
“You’d rather have self without ignorance?” he said, smiling finely.
“I would, if I’ve got to have it. But what I should like to see is a man that has thought for others, and isn’t all self and politics.”
Her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed. A blank look had come over the man’s face, as if he did not hear or heed any more. He drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with two fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children.
They had laid all the little packets on the floor, and Millicent was saying:
“Now I’ll undo the first, and you can have the second. I’ll take this — ”
She unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament for a Christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy indentations on each side.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it LOVELY!” Her fingers cautiously held the long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious, irritating possession. The man’s eyes moved away from her. The lesser child was fumbling with one of the little packets.
“Oh!” — a wail went up from Millicent. “You’ve taken one! — You didn’t wait.” Then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began to interfere. “This is the way to do it, look! Let me help you.”
But Marjory drew back with resentment.
“Don’t, Millicent! — Don’t!” came the childish cry. But Millicent’s fingers itched.
At length Marjory had got out her treasure —
a little silvery bell with a glass top hanging inside. The bell was made of frail glassy substance, light as air.
“Oh, the bell!” rang out Millicent’s clanging voice. “The bell! It’s my bell. My bell! It’s mine! Don’t break it, Marjory. Don’t break it, will you?”
Marjory was shaking the bell against her ear. But it was dumb, it made no sound.
“You’ll break it, I know you will. — You’ll break it. Give it ME — ” cried Millicent, and she began to take away the bell. Marjory set up an expostulation.
“LET HER ALONE,” said the father.
Millicent let go as if she had been stung, but still her brassy, impudent voice persisted:
“She’ll break it. She’ll break it. It’s mine — ”
“You undo another,” said the mother, politic.
Millicent began with hasty, itching fingers to unclose another package.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 303